Resolutions to Keep in 2018

The New Year’s resolutions shared by these top producers will help move your practice to a higher level of success.

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By Laurie Adams, John Enright, Dan Finley, Greg Gagne and Brian Haney

In our never-ending quest for ideas to help enhance your practice, we recently asked top advisors about the goals they have set for themselves this year. Their answers should be top-of-mind for you as you finalize your plans for success in 2018 and beyond.

Laurie Adams, CFP, CLU, LUTCF, is a financial professional with Country Financial in Peoria Heights, Illinois: The No. 1 action I take is to review my calendar for the previous year and then determine if I missed any opportunities with my clients. Just seeing their name on a date will remind me of the conversations I had with them, which frequently included their intention to meet with me again to discuss a financial need “once things calm down.”

My clients are always happy to hear from me. There’s something about giving them the specific date on which we talked and asking whether their situation has “calmed” down. This discourages them from putting off meeting with me any longer. I think it’s recognition that even when our intentions are good, time tends to get away. ***

Greg Gagne, ChFC, is with Affinity Investment Group, LLC in Exeter, New Hampshire: The No. 1 resolution I would suggest is: “Do now and take action now.” On many occasions, we hang in a “get-ready-to take-action phase,” but never move forward with the action itself because we think we are not ready or because of a distraction that we use as an excuse not to go forward. But moving forward is one of the most important aspects of creating success. Whatever you are thinking of working on does not need to be perfect before you implement it. Implement what you are thinking and then seek perfection.

Moving forward is one of the most important aspects of creating success.

The amount of progress that can be made with this simple idea will be a game changer. So for me, and hopefully for you, 2018 will be a year of action instead of one of getting ready!

What are you waiting for? ***

Daniel C. Finley is the President and Co-Founder of Advisor Solutions, which is dedicated to helping advisors build a better business, one solution at a time:

If you are like most advisors and agents, you begin each year with the best of intentions to accomplish your business goals. Ironically, it’s not the goals in-and-of themselves that point you in the direction of finding success. It is compartmentalizing them so that you can create quarterly, monthly, weekly, daily and even hourly goals. By doing this, you make the journey more approachable and the destination a by-product of your actions.

If there is one thing that I believe you have to do to ensure your continued success as a financial professional, it is to take daily actions towards achieving your goals by focusing on activities that take you one step closer towards your desired results.

Remember that in the financial-services industry, there are plenty of things that are out of your control—the market, clients’ emotions, investor confidence—to name a few. But one of the things that you are in control of is what you do—your activities.

Compartmentalizing the goal setting process is just a way of creating a daily manageable plan. In addition, it is a great way to psychologically accept your goal. It can be easily accomplished by dividing your activities into specific, quantifiable daily activities.

The following is an example of how to compartmentalize the goal-setting process:

Financial Advisors’ Goal Compartmentalizing Example

My #1 Goal Annually is: $12 million in new A.U.M.

My #1 Quarterly Goal is: $ 3 million in new A.U.M.

My #1 Monthly Goal is: $1 million in new A.U.M.

My #1 Weekly Goal is: $250,000 in new A.U.M.

My #1 Daily Goal is to find: $250,000 in new assets a day!

The key to compartmentalizing goals is to take emotions out of the process and simply divide the numbers to determine daily goals. Once you have accomplished this, it’s time to determine daily activities.

The key to compartmentalizing goals is to take emotions out of the process and simply divide the numbers to determine daily goals.

In the aforementioned example, the daily goal is to find $250,000 a day in new assets from existing clients or prospects. The theory is that if this advisor accomplishes the daily goal of finding new assets by the end of the week, he will have collectively gathered $1,250,000 in new assets under management because of converting prospect to clients or gathering additional assets from existing clients.

Now, the only other question is: What activities need to be done each day to find those assets?

The solution is to spend at least an hour each day prospecting for new clients, recording the names and assets found via a pipeline report, as well as recording any new assets found from existing clients. Finally, adding a daily reward/punishment system will surely help to make your resolution a reality! ***

Brian Haney, CLTC, CFS, CFBS, LACP, is Vice President with The Haney Company in Silver Spring, Maryland. He is one of the recipients of Advisor Today’s 2017 Four Under Forty Awards: Process dictates everything, and in most cases, I believe it is the difference between winning and losing.

Analyzing my book of business for opportunities, and building a 2018 business development and marketing plan come second to this. Year after year, this remains true: the better I am at psychology, behavioral economics, reading, connecting with and understanding my clients, the more I capitalize on each engagement.

In fact, I have found that in most cases, I don’t need to increase my prospecting volume to increase my revenue; I simply need to maximize the opportunities I already have. Here is a theme that cuts across a variety of professions: The peak performers keep winning because they constantly improve themselves and their fundamentals.

My goal in 2018 is to be a better me than I was in 2017. If I achieve that, I trust everything else will fall into place.

***

John Enright is a former recipient of Advisor Today’s Four Under Forty Awards and a private wealth advisor with Custom Wealth Management in Syracuse, New York:

My resolution for 2018 is to get back to “Time Blocking” on a daily and weekly basis. The benefits of time blocking will not only be realized by me, they will also be realized by my team, and in turn, the entire practice.

At the weekly level, it is important to allocate specific days to client meetings. Ideally, I would only like to meet with clients from Tuesday to Thursday. Of course, there will be exceptions, but anticipating meeting with clients only on those three days allows me to stay in the “mindset” of meeting with clients without distractions.

This also allows my team to have adequate time to prepare the deliverables or presentations for those meetings, which allows the practice to truly shine in the spotlight. I am striving to allocate Mondays to meeting with Centers of Influence, Industry Representatives or other non-client related meetings, as well as team development. This helps my assistant to easily schedule meetings when requests come in for meetings that are not client-related. Stacking my schedule in the previously discussed manner allows me to spend my Fridays out of the office with my family.

Each morning, I plan to allocate some time to emails, team questions, etc., between my 6:30 a.m. arrival at the office, and the time the day gets started, which is about 8 a.m. We schedule my meetings for 90 minutes, with small breaks in between for me to address phone calls and questions that team members may have.

Time blocking this way allows us to honor the promised response time we have with our clients (24 hours). The end of each day will be blocked for debriefing client meetings to ensure that all follow-up items are communicated to the team and are addressed immediately if necessary.