How to Develop a Repeatable Process
If you want to make your life easier and become a truly elite advisor, make sure you have repeatable processes in place. This especially applies to tasks such as prospecting, presenting, following up and servicing your accounts. Remember: Repeatable processes produce repeatable results so make your goal consistency, not perfection.
In this post we’ll look at some practical steps you can take to incorporate repeatable processes into your working life.
1. Identify what’s preventing you from implementing a repeatable process
List the things that are pulling you away from your most vital tasks. Are these phone calls, research, compliance, due diligence, staff issues or portfolio rebalancing? Once you know what’s stopping you from implementing your core, value-producing tasks (especially prospecting) you can refocus and get on with doing what you should be doing on a consistent basis.
2. Create an ideal client sheet and stick to it
Top advisors don’t shoehorn just anyone into doing business with them. They prospect only to people who fit their business model. So identify in detail the type of people you want to do business with and why they should want to do business with you.
Which clients do you love working with and why? Pin down the characteristics that make them the right fit for you and write these down. If working with engineers who live within 25 miles of your office turns out to match your ideal client profile then decide to only do business with this demographic.
Stick to the plan and you’ll only be prospecting to people who value your opinion – increasing your chances of turning them into clients.
3. Set achievable targets and hit them repeatedly
Work out where you want to be in 5 years’ time and work backwards, setting clear goals or markers to hit along the way. This will enable you to achieve your long-term objectives.
Write down yearly, monthly and weekly targets. Then each day set yourself daily tasks that will ensure you’ll meet your ongoing goals. For example, this could be to prospect for an hour daily from 9am to 10am. Stick rigorously to your schedule – and don’t forget to congratulate yourself each time you achieve your targets, no matter how small – it will give you the inspiration to keep you on track.
4. Prepare to make every day a great day
What do you have to do in the morning to ensure you always have a great day? Is it reading the papers, buying a coffee or driving the kids to school? Find out what it is and do it every day. Get ready for tomorrow so you can start over again. And every day for the rest of your career. Do what unsuccessful advisors don’t do.
5. Develop patience – slow and steady wins the race
Once you start to instigate repeatable processes, you will develop momentum and increase your business year over year. However in a bid to get to the top as quickly as possible few advisors have the patience or tenacity to persevere – they don’t seem to understand that the road to success involves hard work over time.
Talent alone is not enough to succeed in this industry – you need to take your talents and turn them into skills. And that requires a commitment to practicing every day. The difference between becoming a concert pianist versus a high school piano teacher is practice – thousands and thousands of hours’ worth of practice that could add up to ten years or more of repetition. The same applies to your career as a financial advisor – to get something right, you need to do it again and again.
Don’t be like mediocre advisors. Don’t chop and change – don’t try something this month then something different the next. Set aside time to focus on key tasks then keep hammering away at them until your skills are second to none.
Remember – you’re not trying to boil the ocean so just put one foot in front of another, day after day, after day. If you can do this then you’re ready to gather assets in all kinds of weathers.
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