Rookie mistakes

“Don’t fret it,” Hartman says. “Just chalk it up as a learning experience.”

That’s good advice, he says, particularly for new advisors who might be starting out in the business this summer.

Below is advice from practice-management experts to help you avoid and overcome the common errors made by less experienced advisors:

> Regretting your mistakes
Understand that you will become a better advisor by learning through your mistakes.

Take comfort in the fact that even some of the country’s top advisors will at one point “blow a big opportunity somewhere early in their career,” Hartman says.

Perhaps the advisor failed to return a telephone call and lost a client as a result, or omitted to ask a key question of a client and missed a lucrative sales opportunity. Either way there are lessons to be learned.

What often separates the elite advisor from the mediocre one, Hartman says, is that the top advisor embraces his or her mistakes and figures out how to learn from them.

> Not knowing what you want
One of the most common errors made by rookie advisors, Hartman says, is neglecting to properly identify his or her target market.

“Rookies feel that their opportunity is anyone and everywhere,” Hartman says. “But with a modest amount of thought, they could narrow things down and be much more successful at getting where they want to go.”

So, instead of trying to lasso every opportunity that comes your way, be aware of what kind of book of business you want to create and how it fits with your client profile and overall value proposition. Pursuing business outside of your preferred market can distract you from your goals and delay the development of your practice.

> Working without a plan
Once you have decided what you want and where you hope to take your business, commit those goals to paper in the form of a plan, says Eileen Chadnick principal of Big Cheese Coaching in Toronto.

“It’s kind of ironic,” Chadnick says. “But many rookies don’t actually have a plan for their business and how they want it to grow.”

Think of your plan as a living tree, Chadnick says, rather than a formalized document. You will want to be able to revise and update your plan frequently as your practice grows.

To start, jot down some specific goals to work toward, and when you hope to achieve them.

For example, you might decide that you want to focus your practice on managing doctors’ portfolios. Your plan should contain specific details about what you need to know in order to make yourself unique in this market and how you plan to recruit clients. Will you visit the next annual meeting of the Canadian Medical Association to pass around your business cards? Or will you prospect using targeted online or print marketing?

Whatever you decide, having a proper plan is as much about setting goals and understanding how you hope to achieve them, as it is a business-development exercise.

This is the first instalment in a four-part series on rookie mistakes.

Next: Don’t try to do it all yourself.