Beverly Flaxington is a practice management consultant. She answers questions from advisors facing human resource issues. To submit yours, email us here.
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Dear Bev,
I am very fortunate to be working with a senior advisor who is readily giving me some of his clients. We have segmented the group and I am working with those who have a next generation component – children and grandchildren with whom we want to extend our relationship.
The problem is that I still support this senior advisor in scheduling his own meetings, gathering portfolio information and the like when he meets. I no longer attend most of the meetings but I am the go-to for getting it all organized.
As a result, I’m no longer organized in what I do. There are things coming at me from all corners – my own clients, his needs and other projects he wants me to be involved with in our firm – and he is asking me to obtain a certification, which I haven’t even been able to investigate yet. On one side, I am excited about new opportunities but on the other I am daunted by what I need to do and having no time to do it all.
It sounds insane, but the days when I have the most to do I am the least productive because I can’t accurately focus my attention. I don’t know if I should push back, do less for my clients or generally get better organized around time management. Is my situation unique or I am just in over my head?
L.S.
Dear L.S.,
First – take a couple of deep breaths! You are doing just fine. It’s a compliment to your skills that you are getting directly engaged with many of his clients, and that he still continues to lean on you for his own client work. This is a positive statement about the contribution you are making and your future career path at this advisory firm.
A couple of things to consider. Your senior advisor may need to be “re-trained.” Remember you have been supporting him and working with him in a specific capacity. He obviously sees your talent and ability, but also may have fixed in his mind what you are doing now. He leans on you for the things you have always done. Sit down with him and remind him you are also dealing with a number of clients and could use some support infrastructure yourself. Reinforce how well you are doing as a client advisor and explain you are feeling stretched between what he needs you to do and what you need to do for your own clients. Put the emphasis back on what’s good for the clients and outline how a support person, part-time or full-time, might be able to complement the two of you.
Examine your time management approach. I often find that advisors who are pulled in too many directions haven’t done a great job of managing themselves and creating a plan. Start by listing all of the to-dos you have on your plate, and then break those to-dos into smaller, discreet steps of what you need to handle.
I’m a big fan of using the calendar to track everything. Color-code if you need to, but make sure every activity, and every step to get you to your goals is broken down and recorded. At the end of the week, review where you spent your time and whether it was on “green” activities (i.e., those high-gain tasks that make the difference) or whether you wasted it on “red” things you really shouldn’t be doing. Guard your calendar closely and put everything you need to on there.
Last, ask your senior advisor to be your own mentor in a more formal way. Ask him what he needed to do to move from being a junior service oriented person to a more senior professional. It’s possible when he outlines his path you might be able to point out places where you could become more efficient if you had the resources to do so.
Most importantly, stay positive about what you are doing. You are on a path to success and your senior advisor obviously believes in you and supports you. Push for what you need, but do so acknowledging the positive strides you have already made.
Dear Bev,
We have a dominant position in the retirement marketplace working with well over 200 plan sponsors. The issue of financial wellness continues to come up – our plan sponsors are asking us what we are doing specific to this area. We believe everything we do is related to financial wellness – it’s not like you can separate it out and say it is its own “thing.” What are some of the trends in this area? Should we be offering more hands-on materials? We’re not sure where to invest our time and dollars.
M.S.
Dear M.S.,
It’s a little known fact that when my original partner and I incorporated our firm over 20 years ago we did so as The Collaborative for Investment Education, Inc. Coming out of the retirement business, we were appalled at the lack of really good information available to both the plan sponsor and the participant. We found quickly that no firms were willing to pay for our great ideas, so we invented a board game, wrote a book and moved on to sales and marketing consulting, which were our backgrounds.
It is fascinating that, 20 years later, we are still trying to crack the nut on financial literacy and wellness. When the majority of Americans could not cover a $1,000 surprise expense out of cash flow, you know we aren’t doing a great job of educating people!
On the topic of financial wellness, there are so many components and ways to educate your population. Perhaps you could start by conducting a survey of your plan sponsors to see what sorts of questions they are fielding from their participants? Ask them what the most important areas would be to focus on, and then get really good at focusing on those. You could write blogs, create worksheets or get higher tech and do videos or gamification if you know what topics on which to focus.
Don’t dismiss the importance of this – I understand everything you do is wellness related, and that’s great, but helping your retirement clients educate their masses in a workable and actionable way is an ongoing need in the market.
Beverly Flaxington co-founded The Collaborative, a consulting firm devoted to business building for the financial services industry in 1995. In 2008, she co-founded Advisors Trusted Advisor to offer dedicated practice management resources to advisors, planners and wealth managers. She is currently an adjunct professor at Suffolk University teaching undergraduate students Leadership & Social Responsibility. Beverly is a Certified Professional Behavioral Analyst (CPBA) and Certified Professional Values Analyst (CPVA).
She has spent over 25 years in the investment industry and has been featured in Selling Power Magazine and quoted in hundreds of media outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, MSNBC.com, Investment News and Solutions Magazine for the FPA. She speaks frequently at investment industry conferences and is a speaker for the CFA Institute.
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