With the hectic RRSP season over and many clients away on vacation, advisors may find that they are not as busy in the summer as they are in the fall and spring. But although client demands may have slowed, this downtime presents opportunities for advisors to strengthen their teams, build morale and boost productivity.

“The summer is a good time for advisors to review what they have accomplished in the past six months,” says Joanne Ferguson, co-founder and partner of Advisor Pathways Inc. in Stratford, Ont. “Schedule a meeting with team members to revisit projects they haven’t completed, and go over team calendars to see what still needs to be done for clients,” she suggests.

Catherine Nomura, director of business development at Strategic Coach Inc. in Toronto, suggests advisors who are going to be in the office in the summer and haven’t a lot of work to do with clients use the time for team development. “If you are all in the office together, work on communication,” Nomura says. “Sit down with the team and talk about how members would like you to communicate with them, whether in person, in writing, by e-mail or voice mail, and what time of day they would prefer — first thing in the morning or at the end of the day.”

This type of meeting allows advisors to understand team members and how to communicate better with them. “It’s a team development thing that doesn’t take much time, but gets overlooked when things get busy,” she says.

Advisors who are going to be away from the office in the summer could give their staff more time off, Nomura suggests. “If you like your team members, think they are doing a great job and want them to stay with the company, more time off is a great way to rejuvenate people,” she says. “It’s an investment because you are improving their quality of life. Their work will probably be better, and they’ll be more likely to stay with you.”

Here are more tips to keep the office productive in the summer:

> Hire a student to clean up filing, set up a Web site or put a new system in place for the fall. Ferguson knows of a team that is redoing its filing system. Members are colour-coding their files to make the system more efficient: red for administration; green for insurance; and blue for financial reviews. “From a compliance standpoint, advisors have to keep all information about a client in one file,” she says. “When an advisor has to meet with a client, he or she takes only the review file. It helps the team save time.”

> Get organized for the fall. Plan ahead for your busy time of year.

> Prepare “touching base” letters and RRSP mailings. Have these client-contact pieces ready to mail at the beginning of September.

> Prepare a seminar for the fall. Work on the content and send out invitations in August.

> Clean up your office space and get rid of clutter. A cluttered office space looks unprofessional and is distracting to clients. “If you don’t have time during the busy periods, it’s a good thing to do in your downtime,” Ferguson says.

> Check your contact management system to see which clients prefer to come in during the summer and set up meetings with them. “Sometimes clients are busy and keep putting off a meeting,” Ferguson says. “You can hold the meeting outside the office. Go to their house and sit on the deck and have a financial planning review meeting, or have them come to your office for the meeting and then take them out for lunch.”

> Examine the systems you have in place to see how well they are working. Look back at the last busy period to see what worked and what didn’t, and how things worked in general.

“Are there procedures you want to improve? Then sit down as a team and look for ways to improve,” Nomura says. “Even if nothing major went wrong, there are always tweaks to make the system better. When you have downtime, you can think more creatively, as you are not stressed by what’s happening at the moment.”

> Use this time to strengthen the team. “Do some platform-building,” Nomura says. “It’s a good time to send team members to train for particular types of skills.”

@page_break@> Have team members describe in writing how they do their jobs and the results they expect. When they go on holiday, the people filling in for them will have instructions to follow.

> Use summer activities to show appreciation to clients. Golf and baseball games, for example, are a way to meet new clients. “Summer is a great time to book golf games with clients,” Ferguson says. “It’s a way to show appreciation, and to prospect if you invite clients to bring a friend with them.” IE