by Jennifer Goldman, CFP ® and Kelli Cruz
Your strategic plan, your organizational structure and systems, and your people practices are the necessary elements that drive the growth of your firm. The key foundation to building any business is to ensure you have the right people doing the right things. Building a business strategy that supports what you are delivering to your clients and how you want to deliver that service through your organizational structure should be priority one.
We all want to create a great client experience for our clients while keeping our employees happy and productive. So here are some operational & human capital strategies or “wins” to create a remarkable & excellent client and employee experience and to spur growth.
Human Capital Win #1: Increase role clarity with your team.
Benefit: With greater role clarity and focus, team members know their role well and become more competent and productive in the way they approach their work. If you are building an advice and service business model then every team member should be focused on delivering advice and service. Even your support team should be externally focused on the client relationship and should understand how their role is supporting your firm’s preferred client experience.
Operational WIN #1: Choose only ONE software program for your clients to access all pertinent data.
Benefit: It reduces the number of software programs your staff has to learn, explain, brand, update & market to your clients with conviction to produce high use.
Human Capital Win #2: Define the functions and create job descriptions and clear goals.
Benefit: Each person on the team knows what is expected of them and can be a successful contributor to the firm.
Operational Win #2: Create a sample client experience, cost out the labor to ensure it a profitable experience, and share it with a few clients to ensure it is valuable.
Benefit: You now have a profitable servicing protocol you can easily explain to new clients, delegate to staff via a CRM workflow, and can be confident this new servicing experience is valued by the clients. Your clients will feel the renewed energy from your firm, the organization and added value, and they will refer more business.
Human Capital Win #3: Increase the specialization and the depth of skill that is needed to deliver to your clients.
Benefit: Ensuring that every advisory position can focus on the delivery of advice and revenue generating activities will drive growth in the firm. This effort will allow your support team to focus on the client relationship and with renewed energy due to your firm’s effort to support their career development.
Operational Win #3: Outsource the back office work such as portfolio reporting, data entry into the financial plans, bookkeeping, tax return prep and more.
Benefit: Your client-facing staff will have more time to meet and talk with the clients, solve more technical planning issues, and create smarter, long term strategies to share with the clients. This, in turn, will create a happier client base and happy clients refer more new business.
Operational & Human Capital Win #4: Schedule a monthly brown bag lunch and show your staff the benefits of using a particular software program, such as the CRM.
Benefit: Optimal use of software will lead to less work, more clarity on the progress made on client and operations work, and free up time for staff to focus on more important projects. You will increase your employee engagement and motivation if there are trained on the CRM and can see how the software will allow them to really focus delivering value to your clients.
While you may not be able to implement all the wins today, look to those that will meet your goals for the firm and clients. Then delegate those wins to your staff as a special project and enjoy the growth from having the right people doing the right things.
Authors:
Jennifer Goldman, CFP® is the founder of My Virtual COO. You can email her at jennifer@myvirtualcoo.com.
Kelli Cruz is the founder of Cruz Consulting Group. You can email her at kelli@cruzconsultinggroup.com.
Originally posted on Junxure’s Blog.
