Two years ago, Sylvain Brise-Bois’ financial planning practice was out of control. “We were having meetings all the time, we had piles of things to do and I never got to my monthly client calls,” says the wealth advisor with BMO Nesbitt Burns Ltd.’s private client division in Ottawa.

At the time, Brisebois’ four-person team was dealing with slightly less than 400 client families — about 135 too many, he realized. “There was a pile of clients we didn’t work well with,” he says, “the small ones and those who didn’t have any connections.”

Brisebois decided to shed that “pile” and, as a result, when combined with some time-management techniques, he regained control of his business. Today, Brisebois’ office has a call schedule in place guaranteeing six to eight client contacts a year. Brisebois also started blocking time into his schedule for portfolio reviews, cash reviews and working on his model portfolio.

“We’re less stressed, more confident and have better control,” he says, “and our clients are certainly seeing it. Whereas my calls never got done before, now I’m batting 1,000.”

The icing on the cake? His assets under management have grown quickly — even though he is working the same number of hours a week as before the change.

In an industry imbued with the notion that time equals money, many advisors believe putting in more hours is the only way to increase profitability. However, a new Advisor Impact Inc. study on practice management has turned that assumption on its head.

“It’s tempting to cling to the notion that more time is the holy grail of efficiency,” says Julie Littlechild, president of Toronto-based Advisor Impact. “However, our data suggest that the most efficient advisors take a unique approach to planning, scheduling and prioritizing in the same number of hours as everyone else.”

The study, sponsored by Waterloo, Ont.-based Manulife Financial Corp. and Univeris Corp. of Toronto, involved more than 1,000 advisors from across Canada. Advisors were identified as “less efficient” or “more efficient,” based on common approaches to time management.

The study found that “more efficient” advisors — no matter the size of their businesses — manage more than three times the assets, generate triple the revenue and make roughly double the profits of their “less efficient” counterparts, despite having been in business for about the same length of time. “There certainly seems to be an equation there,” says Littlechild.

So, how can you achieve the same results in your practice? “There is a system and a process to improving time management, and it all starts with assessing where you are today,” says Littlechild. “You need to have a really clear link between what you are trying to accomplish in your life and what you do on a day-to-day basis.”

Effective time management comprises two distinct parts:

> personal efficiency, which includes a planning process, appointment scheduling and how time is spent on a day-to-day basis;

> structural efficiency, which includes the team, the client selection strategy and business processes.

The Advisor Impact survey found that “more efficient” advisors are more likely to have a clear vision of their personal objectives and to link those goals to the business through a formal planning process. “In a lot of respects, we are in business to support our personal goals,” says Littlechild.

Drawing a connection between personal objectives and professional goals is a smart move, agrees Catherine Nomura, director of business development in Toronto for the Strategic Coach and co-author of The Laws of Lifetime Growth. “The idea for us in planning is how to do more of what you love — the things that give you energy and generate great results,” she says. “It’s what got you into the business in the first place.”



SHORT-TERM GOALS

Once you have established long-term objectives in your business plan, the next step is to develop a series of short-term goals that work toward meeting those objectives. The Advisor Impact study found that “more efficient” advisors devoted a chunk of time each week — at least 30 minutes — to short-term planning.

“This is time carved out to think about what you want to accomplish and set some real priorities,” says Littlechild. These priorities are most likely reflected in a daily schedule: 35% of “more efficient advisors” have a “very set” schedule of both meetings and tasks for each day; none of the “less efficient” advisors did.

@page_break@“It’s quite clear from our data that ‘more efficient’ advisors know what the majority of their week is going to look like,” says Littlechild.

David Mullen Jr. of Colorado, author of The Million Dollar Financial Services Practice, swears by a daily schedule. “You can be busy from nine till five, but still feel as though you didn’t get anything accomplished,” he says. “You need to build a schedule that outlines what you need to get done to have a successful practice.”

Mullen recommends that advisors create a master schedule — blocking out time slots for top-priority activities such as calling clients and prospects, meetings and marketing — that can be customized each morning. These blocks of time should be taken seriously: “I think it’s a mistake to come out of a block to handle something that’s not an emergency,” says Mullen. “Of course, an advisor should drop everything when he has a big client who really needs to talk to him, but those occasions should be few and far between.”

Littlechild also endorses blocking out time slots: “We gain momentum by doing the same type of activities for awhile rather than stopping and changing,” she says. But she concedes that everyone knows what can happen to even the best-laid plans. The key is to return to the schedule after you have been pulled off it.

“One of the biggest problems is that advi-sors are aware they can’t control everything in this industry,” she says, “and instead decide they won’t control anything.”

This attitude can have a direct effect on productivity. “More efficient” advisors are more likely to stick to their schedules unless there is an emergency with an important client, while “less efficient” advisors are more likely to deviate from the plan for a wide variety of reasons.

“More efficient” advisors are also more likely to designate certain days for meeting with clients, set parameters for the way appointments are conducted, have more activities scheduled into their day planners and define clear blocks of time for responding to calls and e-mails. It all boils down to personal preference.

For Najam Rafi of Rafi Associates in Woodbridge, Ont., scheduling the majority of his client meetings on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays works best, but he has no set schedule for returning calls and e-mails. “I design my schedule based on a general idea of what I need to accomplish,” he says, “but there must be room for manoeuvring.”

Brisebois allots about 20% of his week for key activities, not including client meetings. He doesn’t limit client meetings to certain days of the week, but never meets clients on weekends and schedules weeknight meetings only in cases of emergency. His remaining time is spent checking items off his prioritized to-do list and putting out any fires that may arise during the day. He also does his best to respond to e-mails and calls without a set schedule.

“Phone calls and e-mails can be a distraction,” he says, “and, in theory, you shouldn’t return them right away. But to me, that’s a bit of a barrier to service.”

While strategic planning — both for the long haul and the short term — is essential to increased efficiency, the Advisor Impact survey identified a second, equally important factor: business structure.

“It doesn’t matter how personally efficient you are if your underlying business model is inefficient,” says Littlechild. The study found “more efficient” advisors were more likely to:

> take a team approach to client management;

>  have a defined asset minimum as part of their “ideal client” definition;

> focus on improving systems and processes as the best way to increase overall efficiency in the practice.

Delegation is the obvious advantage to having a team practice but, as Littlechild notes, it’s the degree of delegation that separates “more efficient” advisors from their “less efficient” peers. “It’s not that [the former] delegate more often, or have larger teams,” Littlechild says, “but that they delegate a broader range of activities.”

Most advisors in the survey — in both categories — handed off tasks such as handling incoming calls and routine client queries, preparing documentation, setting up new client accounts and current business processing to team members. “More efficient” advisors were more likely to delegate the more responsible tasks of setting up client meetings, managing workflow, conducting product and client-specific research, and updating financial plans based on recommendations provided by the advisor.

When explaining the importance of delegation to advisors, Mullen uses a theatrical analogy: “An actor concentrates only on his performance; he doesn’t worry about the lighting or the set. Similarly, advisors should focus on building relationships — because that is where the money is — and assemble a team to handle all of the background work.”

Some advisors find it difficult to relinquish even the slightest degree of control over their practice, and that can have a detrimental effect on their businesses. “It can be hard to delegate because you might think that someone else can’t do it as well as you can,” Nomura says. “But even if the team member can’t do it as well as you, it frees you up to do something that is going to bring revenue into the company.”

The Strategic Coach encourages advisors to take delegation a step further by occasionally leaving the team to its own devices. “We tell our clients to schedule free days throughout the year — 24-hour periods that are completely free of all work-related thinking and activity,” Nomura says. During this time, you shouldn’t call the office to check in, nor should team members contact you.

“This forces your team to become more capable and confident,” she says, “because it has to deal with things without the advisor being around.”

Still, there must be room for error. “You have to be willing to allow your team to make mistakes along the way,” Nomura says.

Letting go of the idea that every task must be perfectly executed is an important step when it comes to delegation. “You should be delegating everything you can,” says David Allen, author of Getting Things Done and founder of the David Allen Co., a California-based professional training, coaching and management consulting firm. “If you are doing a task that staff members who make less money could do reasonably well, you are losing money by not delegating.”



MAJOR THINGS

Duncan MacPherson, co-founder of Kelowna, B.C.-based Pareto Systems, a business-development consulting firm, agrees: “If I could offer advisors just one piece of advice about time management, it would be not to major in minor things.”

Adopting the 80/20 rule — investing 80% of your time in the 20% of clients who generate 80% of your business — is a crucial element of Pareto’s time-management philosophy. “Most of our advisors make 80% of their income in about one hour, every day,” says MacPherson. “Our ‘ideal client’ profile is based on three As: assets, attitude and advocacy. ‘Assets’ means the client’s needs are a perfect fit for your area of expertise; ‘attitude’ means you get along well with the client and have good rapport; and ‘advocacy’ means the client isn’t just buying something, but buying into something with you.”

Brisebois found that focusing on a specific client segment has radically improved the efficiency of his business. “It has made a huge difference, but we needed to convince ourselves that it was a business decision,” he says. “We had thought about doing it for years, but didn’t because we felt sorry for the clients we would have to let go.”

Eventually, the team decided which clients didn’t make the cut, and broke the news to most of those clients via a graciously worded letter. “We said that our business was growing to the point that it had become difficult to manage our clients’ expectations,” Brisebois explains. “So, we had to make the difficult decision to work only with the clients that have been with us the longest and, as such, you have been reassigned to another advisor.”

MacPherson applauds this approach: “Disassociation should be done in a forthright, professional manner.”

The situation was largely win/win for Brisebois: his team got to focus on bigger clients, while smaller clients were reassigned to advisors who had more time to meet their needs. “Overall, we were able to persuade the majority that this was the right thing to do,” Brisebois says. “Most are still with advi-sors here and, in many cases, our clients have transferred in more assets along the way.”

The Advisor Impact study also showed that “more efficient” advisors are more likely to focus on improving systems and processes as the best way to increase overall efficiency in their practices. They use strategies such as reducing product options, using managed money and defining the client experience for every segment.

“It’s the entrepreneurial paradox. You are truly successful when you have made yourself obsolete,” says MacPherson. “If you are employing maverick talent, as opposed to technicians who are following processes, you are vulnerable to inconsistencies.”

To increase consistency and efficiency, he suggests creating a chart that outlines who does what in the office and tie it to a procedures manual that outlines every process of the business. “Ask any advisor who has ever lost an assistant. In many cases, it can take up to six months to recover,” says MacPherson. “If you have a procedures manual, it’s a case of hiring the new assistant and handing it to him or her. Within two weeks, you’re back on track.”

While there’s often little you can do to avoid the pitfalls of running a practice, proper planning and structural efficiency can help smooth out the bumps in the road — thus, increasing efficiency and, ultimately, improving the bottom line.

“There are elements we can control,” Littlechild says, “and the more we focus on those things, the better.” IE