Reviewing 2009 and setting specific goals for 2010

This week, we will be covering two critical areas for reaching your goals for 2010 and beyond. The first is retaining your top clients. If you have completed year-end reviews, keep in mind that your clients will be receiving their December statements. Prioritize communicating with them, especially your top 50, with a phone call. They will be looking at their year-end numbers, which should be better than last December's. This is an opportunity to reinforce why they need to stay the course with you. The second critical area is to start outlining your business plan for 2010. While this may seem daunting with the current markets, it is critical to give you and your team a jump-start when the new business year kicks off. THE CHALLENGE The challenge is finding the time to call your clients this week, while also thinking about planning for next year. Determine the highest revenue-generating activity you could do this week. What is the risk of not communicating with your top clients? Keep in mind the surveys that have been published indicating that investors may still want to change advisers. THE SOLUTION Here are two steps a successful advisory team are taking to stay connected before the holidays. Team members are spending two to three hours each day over the next six business days calling their clients personally to wish them a happy holiday and to review December statements. It reinforces the message that the year has ended on a positive note. You may be busy, but what is the cost of lost revenue if your clients move to another adviser? Keep in mind that it takes at least five times more effort to acquire a client than it does to retain one. STEP ONE: Don't hesitate to pick up the phone. Contact 10 to 12 top clients each day between set hours such as 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. Over the next week or so, you will have contacted your top 50 to 60 clients. The strategy is to keep the calls short — about 10 to 12 minutes each — and concise. How do you keep the calls short? Let clients know why you are calling. A few tips: Wish them a happy holiday. Review the key points between their December statement from this year and 2008. Update them on planning for 2010 with specific investment strategies and communications. Keep in mind that many smaller businesses and self-employed clients will have to allocate money for their retirement plans, and this is the perfect time to set up a January call to review investment options. The goal of your call is to listen to any concerns, provide a market update and reassure them about staying the course. Start the call by asking how their family is doing. After they respond, let them know you are calling to review their statement, provide a market update (call your best wholesaling teams for a client-approved market overview) and start scheduling financial planning calls for 2010. Let them know you will be e-mailing a market update (from your firm or another qualified source) by the end of the day. STEP TWO: Finish your 2010 business planning. Review your 2009 business plan and the questions we discussed last week. What was successful, and what wasn't? If you didn't have a chance to do this, go back to that section; it will set the foundation for your future plans. The next step to creating an effective business plan is to write up a clear vision statement that spells out where you want your business and top three life goals to be in one, two and even five years. Once you have identified your goals, you can develop the action steps needed to achieve them. Next week, we will complete the business plan and then align your personal goals around it. Keep in mind that any number of professional and personal changes can shift your plans, so a five-year time frame is more realistic than just doing a one-year period. When changes happen, adjust your plan, but it is important to stay focused. Define your practice's vision statement. What is your vision for your practice? Defining a clear and compelling vision is what sets a great financial practice apart from an average one. This is where you identify what you do, for whom and why. Once you have created a vision statement, get input from colleagues and clients to see if it seems realistic and reachable. Answering these key questions will help articulate your vision: Where would I like my practice to be in five years? What is the profile of my typical client? Do these clients represent the type of clients I really want to work with? How do I serve the baby boomer segment — both pre-retirees and retirees? What does my typical workday and week look like? What would I like it to look like? What are the skill sets of my team? Do I have one experienced member dedicated to reviewing my top clients' financial plans? Do I have the right personalities to expand my team and my business? Identify your top three revenue-generating activities. With today's markets, it is hard to project the areas you can't control, such as volatility. But you can focus on areas you can control. A few areas to consider are asset allocation changes, adding more-conservative investments and identifying two practice-management strategies to lock in top clients' assets and referrals. Keep it general. Also, use your firm's standard-business-plan template. If you are an independent or RIA, you can visit the Small Business Administration's website, sba.gov, for a template. Now the challenge is getting started. Start tomorrow, contacting top clients for two hours in the morning with the call plan above and conducting business planning for two hours in the afternoon. Over the next week, you will have achieved these two critical tasks. Just keep reminding yourself and your team that you worked hard to win the clients you have. Don't lose them because of a lack of communication. (Next Week: three successful client communications to send first thing next year.)