January marks the one time
each year that people make resolutions to change their daily routines for the better.

New Year’s resolutions often relate to personal issues such as losing weight or ramping up exercise routines. But resolutions can also apply to your business life.

If you decide to use the fresh start that the new year provides as a catalyst to drive your business forward, the first thing you have to do is to pick one — and only one — area on which to focus. A common pitfall of New Year’s resolutions is that they are too ambitious and try to do too much, with the inevitable result that you fall short on all of your goals. It is far better to concentrate on just one area of improvement and to make that one area count.

Deciding on the right resolution for your business in 2007 comes down to two simple alternatives. Ask yourself:

1.  What one thing am I doing currently that makes the biggest impact on my business — and how do I do more of it?

2.  What one thing am I not doing right now that, if I began doing it, would have the biggest impact on my business?

Pick the one that is right for you.

Business-related resolutions typically fall into four categories: use of technology; improving team performance; prospecting; and, dealing with existing clients more effectively.

> The first area that can give you a big payoff is becoming more proficient at using technology. Some advisors, especially those in their 40s, 50s and 60s, will get a hefty return by finding out what their computers are capable of — beyond sending and receiving e-mail.

If you are one of those advisors, you might invest the time and take a couple of courses. The problem with many courses, however, is that they can be time-consuming and don’t address your specific needs. A better solution might be to take a page from Jack Welch, when he ran General Electric Co. He implemented a “reverse mentoring” program: each senior manager was assigned a recent hire who spent a couple of hours weekly helping the manager get up to speed on using computers. So, try hiring a community college or university student to come in for few hours a week at $20 an hour and work with you to upgrade your technology skills.

> A second theme for resolutions is getting a better return from your investment in your support staff. Typically, the best way to do this is by improving communication with the members of your team — whether it be one assistant or a team of four.

That might mean meeting with your assistant for 15 to 20 minutes at the beginning of each day to ensure that you are both on the same page with regard to the day’s priorities and that you’re both aware of any outstanding issues.

Or it could mean sitting down with your assistant for an hour each month to review the events of the past month and priorities for the next 30 days. Or it might mean reviewing team members’ compensation to ensure that the way they are paid drives the kind of behaviour you want.

> A third area on which to focus your resolutions for 2007 might relate to prospecting and attracting new clients.

There are lots of resolutions that might help you achieve that goal. You could decide to raise your visibility and expand your network in your community. To do that, you could select one organization in which you are interested and perhaps already involved and resolve to take a leadership role. As a result, you might commit to spend four to six hours a month to attend meetings, serve on committees, help raise funds and meet one on one with other members of that organization.

The payoff from this kind of investment of time is not immediate. But providing that you have picked an organization in which you are genuinely interested and that the other members are the kind of people you would like to have as clients, it will pay dividends over time.

REFERRAL SOURCES

An alternative route for those whose resolution is to bring new clients on board might be to invest the time to develop relationships with accountants and lawyers in your community. They are potential referral sources.

@page_break@There is no simple approach to making this happen — and many advisors who have tried this have given up in frustration. One advisor did have success by focusing on the accountants who worked with his very best clients. After getting permission from his clients, he called those professionals and said: “We have a client in common. I was talking to Joan and Paul Smith about some of their financial goals and suggested that it might make sense for the four of us to sit down so that we’re all on the same page.”

That initial meeting broke the ice. He then followed up with a phone call asking what he could do to make the accountant’s life easier when it came to getting all the information needed to prepare their mutual clients’ tax returns. At that point, he also indicated that he was hoping to establish a couple of relationships to whom he could refer clients who needed tax-planning help; he would, in turn, receive referrals to clients in need of investment advice. He asked the accountant if he was interested in sitting down for breakfast or lunch to explore this further.

Another point regarding bringing new clients on board — and the one which will typically give you the best payoff — relates to getting better at initiating client conversations around referrals. Recent research with investors who had selected a new advisor showed that a referral from one of that advisor’s clients was involved about 50% of the time. (Visit www.investmentexecutive.com to see the series I wrote last year on asking for referrals.)

> The final category in which your resolutions might fall relates to spending more time with your very best clients.

When I talk to successful advisors about the most productive part of their week and the best use of their time, the most common answer is meeting face to face with their top clients. Perhaps you are already maxed out on meetings with your top clients — in which case, your resolutions should be drawn from another category. But in my experience, most advisors would benefit from more contact with their top clients.

A few years back, one advisor made this happen with a very simple strategy. First, he booked the meeting room in his office for lunch hour every Friday for six months and blocked those dates in his calendar. Then he went to the best deli in his town and prepaid for lunch for two for each of those Fridays. All that remained for him to do was to invite the right clients to join him.

There was nothing complicated about the invitation. He called his top clients and said that, while they had met regularly to talk about the clients’ financial affairs, it had been a while since they’d had a chance to chat more broadly about the client’s business and longer-term goals. These clients were invited to join him for lunch at his office to get caught up any Friday that they were downtown.

Part of his routine every Friday was to ensure that the slot was filled two weeks out. He began calling top clients in the morning and didn’t stop until he had that seat filled.

The key to making New Year’s resolutions work for you is very simple: pick the one resolution that is right for your business and will give you the biggest payoff. And find ways to keep it top of mind. IE



Dan Richards, president of Strategic Imperatives Ltd., can be reached at richards@getkeepclients.com. For other columns in this series, go to www.investmentexecutive.com.