The challenge:
Unless you position your value as a retirement rollover resource for your top clients now, you risk losing out on the significant assets these clients hold away from you.
This month’s focus is on capturing the retirement rollovers of your best clients and gaining referrals to their family, friends and their 401(k) coordinator at work.
Last week, we focused on segmenting your clients and aligning platinum-level reviews for the very best. If you didn’t have a chance to do that, go back and review last week’s suggestions. By trying to provide all clients with in-person reviews, advisers don’t provide their best clients with in-depth analysis.
This week we’ll work on scheduling reviews effectively.
The solution:
Keep scheduling simple by creating and committing to a review-plan calendar and a specific process. This will take about three hours to work out, but it will save hours of time for you and your team.
A review calendar will set clear expectations for all clients, align the platinum, gold and silver services to each group and get your year-end reviews done before Thanksgiving — and in time to hold your Thanksgiving charity event.
Start at the top. Take your list of your top 50 clients and send out a client review letter or e-mail. Allow enough time (60 to 90 minutes) to complete each review. Here’s a way to create your calendar that’s been successful for many top advisers.
Review plan for top 50 clients
For this group, map out three reviews a day. The key is to write it down, get a commitment from your clients for the date and time, and build your calendar. Many advisers will hire a college intern to coordinate their reviews, have files ready the day before and help with the follow-up communications.
Try doing follow-ups one week after each review, rather than completing all your reviews first and then going back to complete the details. This helps eliminate follow-up procrastination, owing to the tedious nature of the work. For example, if you do three client reviews on Monday, do the follow-ups for each of those clients on the following Monday.
Schedule your first week so that 15 reviews are completed by Friday. Schedule your second week for the first week’s follow-ups. Then repeat the process.
If you start client reviews in early October and complete 15 every two weeks, your in-person reviews will be completed by mid-November. Since these are the clients that represent the majority of your revenues, you are treating them with the attention they deserve.
Review plan for next 50 clients
Assign these reviews to a partner or junior associate to conduct mainly by phone. There may be a few clients for whom in-person reviews are appropriate, but be selective. Don’t take on more than you can handle.
Have your office send out or e-mail your client review year-end survey and then set a time for a phone interview. Keep it simple and use the same calendar format you used for platinum clients – conduct the phone reviews one week and use the following week to complete follow-ups. The goal during these reviews is to confirm the financial status of your second-tier clients and identify their retirement rollover assets. Use a retirement tracking chart for this step and remember your lower-tier clients may be incredible savers with substantial 401(k) plans.
Review plan for remaining clients
Assign to an associate the responsibility for coordinating the mail or e-mail reviews for your lowest-tier clients. The goal of these reviews is to look for ways to streamline clients’ investment choices with solutions that provide asset allocation and diversification. The other goal is to ask questions that uncover each client’s retirement assets. Use the same calendar format as above, except conduct 40 to 45 phone reviews every other week.
Within six weeks, all the reviews will be complete. One change is to keep the phone reviews to 30 minutes and track clients’ retirement assets.
By mid-November, all the reviews are completed and your clients and staff are ready to enjoy the holidays. This is a great opportunity to kick off the season with a Thanksgiving charity event.
Success Story:
Recently, a top adviser adopted this review process and uncovered millions of dollars of new and future assets from his clients. His old review process consisted of annual reviews on clients’ birthdays, which sounds nice, but really doesn’t help clients in need of year-end advice. He found he was running around, trying to be all things to all clients. With his new system, he completes in-person reviews with his top clients twice a year and has a more productive practice.
Week 3: Using a checklist to identify retirement assets
Week 4: Following up and tracking retirement assets
Maureen Wilke has helped thousands of advisers increase the value of their businesses and now offers The Connected Advisor: 8 Steps to Building an Extraordinary Practice (www.connectedadvisor.com) to distribution firms, wholesaling teams and advisers. She has spent nearly two decades in wealth management, marketing, sales and wholesaler training at firms including Nuveen Investments and can be reached at Maureen@connectedadvisor.com.
Read our weekly online columns:
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TUESDAY: Tax INsight
WEDNESDAY: OpINion Online by Evan Cooper
THURSDAY: IN Retirement
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