Thursday, February 17, 2011

Does Your Practice Have a Social Media Plan?

Fort Lauderdale: “We’re considering integrating social media into our marketing plan,” Joseph started out saying. Then he backtracked—“Yet, all we hear about it is what we can’t do from a compliance perspective. What is the benefit of even getting involved?”

First, as I explained to Joseph, it is essential that he understand his broker-dealer compliance guidelines regarding the use of social media. Then I reminded everyone in the audience of the recent 60 Minutes interview with Wael Ghonim, the Egyptian Google marketing executive, who attributes social media as the driving force behind Egypt’s regime change.

Social media is already playing a huge role in how people throughout the world communicate. My feeling is that it’s smart to become an early adopter, but in doing so, it’s important to be careful and to engage it with strategic intent and guidelines.

To help address this topic in more detail, I’ve decided to ask Kevin Nichols, our resident social media guru, a handful of questions.

Q. Can exposure through social networking be helpful to an advisor’s practice?

A. Yes, but it must be used properly. The reality is that every member of your practice is an extension of your brand. If used properly, social media can serve as a powerful tool that allows every member of your team to have their “ear to the ground.” This will help them listen to clients and develop a reputation for being responsive–just the opposite of the former Egyptian government.

Q. How can advisors use social media effectively in today’s environment?

A. It’s important to be operating from a plan. As an advisor, what is your objective? If your intentions are to connect with prominent players in your community to enhance your brand, it is important to approach the possibility of connecting to these people through mutual connections—and ask for permission! The last thing you want to do is make a bad social media impression. On the other hand, if your intention is to enhance your prospecting, social media is a great vehicle for enabling you to understand the relationship between people you currently know (top clients and centers of influence) and people you want to know (prospects).

However, you don’t want to ask for an introduction through social media. Once you’ve gathered your intelligence, you simply call your client or COI, as there are various ways to segue into that conversation seamlessly.

Q. What are your thoughts about advisors tweeting and blogging?

A. For most advisors, this should be avoided. This is what scares FINRA and most compliance departments. For advisors who do a lot of writing, they should check with their legal department and explain exactly what they plan to do. If they get permission, they will want to make certain that it’s in writing. Reading something like “Corporate Blogging for Dummies” is not something I’d recommend for advisors. FINRA is currently giving social media another look, but as it stands now there are simply too many legal ramifications for advisors who blog and tweet.

Q. If an advisor adopts a social media plan that involves COI branding through establishing the right connections, and marketing by orchestrating an introduction, how much time and attention needs to be devoted to monitoring all the connections?

A. That’s a great question. Ideally, I recommend advisors review their connections as the first thing they do every morning and then again in the evening. You can never be certain what has been posted, who has asked to be connected, and so on. This can happen during the day or at night, and people who use social media are on it constantly. I recognize this is a bit much for most advisors, but at a minimum, your social media plan should include daily maintenance—either morning or evening.

As you begin to get a feeling for Kevin’s social media advice, everything appears to revolve around common sense. You want to adhere to the same communication guidelines you would use in any other communications medium. If you don’t want to see your communication on the front page of your local paper, if you don’t want an association you have with someone broadcast all over town, or if you don’t want to be associated with private information being broadcast to the world, stick to your plan and work it.

Also, any attempt at using social media as an infomercial for your practice (testimonials, etc.), will likely lead to being shut out of most affluent connections in your community. On the other hand, if your plan focuses on developing the right connections to be used very carefully, you’re likely to significantly expand your affluent connections.

Friday, February 4, 2011

Advisors Letting Go & Gaining Control

Richmond: “I do everything for my clients, they love me, and at the risk of sounding arrogant, I get introduced to their friends, clients and colleagues without asking,” Warren explained in sort of a frantic staccato. “But I’m killing myself. I can’t go on at this pace or I’ll be dead next year.”

Sounds quite dramatic, doesn’t it? But after a rather lengthy discussion, Warren confessed that he’d been working on this issue for over two years. Still alive and well with a healthy business, over $100 million of assets and north of $1 million in production, Warren wasn’t some young Turk sharing an assistant with five others. He’d been working with his own personal assistant for a number of years. I recognize that many advisors would love to trade places with Warren; however, many veteran advisors are facing similar challenges – letting go of control. They can’t let go.

For example, after Warren finished explaining all he had to go through to procure the proper documents for a client and his attorney (the attorney also referred the client) — how he succeeded, how only he could’ve done it and how pleased both were — I asked, “Couldn’t your assistant have handled that task?”

His body language provided more insight than his non-answer response. His assistant “wasn’t good at solving problems, she was smart but didn’t like to think for herself,” and was too busy doing routine clerical work. Huh? But you get the picture. Like many advisors, Warren didn’t trust his assistant to handle anything but routine administrative work. He prided himself in being the indispensible “go-to” professional. However, because he’s been incapable of letting go, he’s still a one-man band and killing himself in the process.

Now that we had gotten to the root of the problem, Warren confessed that he’d interviewed at least four junior advisors to help him manage client relationships and help his assistant with administrative issues, but none was up to his standards. The same was true in his efforts to hire a part-time assistant. Go figure. It was obvious that Warren was smart and knew his problem, but he was going through the motions of attempting to solve it as he was creating obstacles each step of the way. Warren was afraid to give up control.

I walked Warren through an exercise we use frequently when refining roles and responsibilities. Whether you’re on a team or solo, working through exercises should help you improve your overall efficiency.

1.) Determine your primary role. Like many advisors, Warren finally concluded that what he could never delegate was a) relationship management of top clients, and b) relationship management with his centers of influence (this was his rainmaking turf.) But he could delegate relationship management of smaller clients, money management, and administrative problem-solving.

2.) Outline everything that is interfering with you spending 70 to 80 percent of your time performing your primary role (above). Here you want to list all the tasks you must delegate/let go.

3.) Determine the primary role of each member of your team/practice; partner, junior advisor, expert, support, intern, etc.

4.) Have each individual sign off with your description of his or her primary role and then ask everyone to outline what is interfering with them being able to spend 90 to 100 percent of their time performing their primary role (you’re spending only 70–80 percent of the time in your primary role because you must oversee what you’ve delegated/inspect what you expect.)

5.) Determine the changes necessary to implement the above; jettison smaller clients, create a better service model, hire another assistant, hire a junior advisor, hire an intern, fire a poor performer, etc.

6.) Outline the role of your future new team member, junior advisor, part-time assistant, intern, etc. (if no new additions are on the horizon, outline the ideal role of your primary assistant.)

7.) Take action! Whether it’s delegating, hiring, firing, or communicating, baby steps that are linked to an objective bring about tremendous results.

None of this is complex, but for many advisors (Warren has lots of company), letting go is very uncomfortable. They must be in control and hate paying money for someone who can’t perform tasks at their level of perfection. Unfortunately, they end up doing all the low-dollar tasks that elite advisors delegate.

The irony of control is that you must let go of control in order to gain control. For every advisor who is serious about growth, letting go is essential. Granted, it’s not easy getting the right people in the right roles and then training them to the ways of your practice. This is work, but also a requirement for growth.

Who knows what Warren will do. But his COIs have asked about his capacity, and in his words, “I know I’d get a lot more business from them if I develop a team.” It’s obvious that he’s at a fork in the road; one path is letting go (delegation), team building and growth, while the other leads to insanity (his words). Letting go is far outside of his comfort zone, but my hunch is that he’ll opt for growth. How about you?