As an advisor you might not think, at first glance, that there are many lessons you can learn from the scientific method to help you build your business. But, you should think again, says Bob Simpson, president of Synchronicity Performance Consultants in Mississauga, Ont. “What advisors really need is a system to focus their practice,” says Simpson. “Once you have that plan in place, you can be really focused and achieve so much more – you can plan out a week, month or year in advance what you need to do.”
Ultimately, the methodology you choose is entirely based on the basic hypothesis you choose, whether that is building stronger prospects, developing a social media strategy or simply to be more efficient with your time. Simpson offers some tips on how you can apply science-based principles to refine your practice:
1. Construct a roadmap
Having a roadmap — a customized charter for what you and your clients want to achieve and where you want to go — is a critical step in offering a consistent client experience.
Simpson suggests that you take the time to create a roadmap document with each of your clients detailing how you plan to interact with the client over the next 12 months.
Armed with this document, you will be able to easily identify client preferences and how you can tailor your services to each client and ensure a high level of satisfaction.
“Having a well-defined roadmap will help make your life much more simple,” says Simpson. “It will be just like having a script ready and acting it out.”
2. Save your time: forget the “improv”
Without a good roadmap, or script, too many advisors tend to repeatedly waste potentially fruitful hours of their day improvising with clients.
Not having a script is “much more stressful than if you can just learn your lines and deliver them each time you go out,” Simpson says.
With a script in place, predictability and practice will help improve your performance.
“All you have to do is look at your calendar and you know exactly what you have to do today — you just have to follow the bouncing balls,” Simpson says. “You won’t have to worry about time management problems anymore.”
3. Prospecting time you can measure
A major concern for many advisors is finding sufficient time to find new prospects to help fuel growth in your business.
One way to make sure you find that time is to closely measure the amount of time you spend on each client interaction. For example, if you have 100 clients in your book of business, Simpson says, you can reasonably take care of those clients in 100 days per year.
With a defined roadmap, you can hypothetically devote an eight-hour period — or roughly one working day — for each client. That period can be broken down, for example, into four one-hour client meetings; 15 minutes to talk to clients over the phone in months where there is no scheduled meeting; and a few hours of prep work to keep the client on their roadmap over the course of the year.
“If you can stick to a plan like that, it will give you plenty of time to prospect for new clients,” says Simpson. “It’s also a concrete way for you to manage your time.”
4. Don’t be afraid to experiment
As in the world of science, sometimes experiments can produce surprisingly positive or negative results. Don’t let this deter you from continuing to experiment to find the right formula that works for your practice, says Simpson.
What you need to do is to understand how different actions cause separate reactions. For example, if your most recent newsletter didn’t garner as many clicks as you would have liked, then take some time to study the problem and figure out “why?” It’s all just part of testing new ideas.