Effective Time Management is KPI #1
“Time is money,” said Benjamin Franklin long before “financial advisor” was a job description. There is arguably no more valuable piece of advice one could give a young advisor, but even the most conscientious and driven advisors can misunderstand what the old adage actually means. Effective time management means understanding which activities are compensated and, therefore, worth doing and which are uncompensated and, therefore, best outsourced or delegated.
A number of years ago, the consulting firm Rydex conducted a survey of advisor compensation in an effort to answer one fundamental question: what separates elite income earners from average ones? The answer is simple: more time spent facing clients and prospective clients equals more money. A lot more money; a huge amount more, actually.
Rydex’s survey divided advisors into three groups: those who spend less than 30% of their time facing clients, those who spend between 30% and 60%, and those who spend 60% or more of their time in client meetings. Advisors spending at least 60% of their time facing clients make, on average, over eight times as much income as those under 30%.
Perhaps you should stop for a moment and ask yourself how much time you spend with prospects and clients. Which group are you in? How many hours did you spend with clients last week? Last month? Last year? If it was less than 60%, it’s important to understand why that is.
For newer advisors, it can be tough to spend that kind of time for the simple reason that they don’t have enough existing clients or leads on new ones to equal 24 hours per week. For those with an established book, it is often because they are so busy doing undercompensated, or literally uncompensated, tasks. Back office tasks like trading, or operations, or administrative tasks like payroll and compliance, or middle office chores like sending paperwork or calculating RMDs.
Since you are the best person to land new accounts and drive referrals into your business, it just makes sense that the more time you spend doing those things, the more successful your firm will be. To reach the elite level of success, there are three things you will need: a great tech stack, a productivity machine to support you, and a marketing engine to keep the deal flow flowing. Those things come to full fruition when you also have a delegation mindset.
So, what exactly is a delegation mindset? It’s an attitude, a vision, and a leadership skill. It’s an attitude of trust in the people and processes around you, an ability to see the big picture, the intersection of your ideal clients, your unique value proposition, and the rivalry in which you operate. It’s also the skillful practice to let go of the things that others do better, or more productively, or for lower costs. There’s a bonus on top of all the other good things a delegation mindset gives you: it creates a culture of collaboration and growth that can only be good.
There’s no I in TEAM, but there is a ME
Pick any successful team in any endeavor, and you’ll find talent diversity. Defense, we are constantly told, wins Super Bowls despite the fact that the MVP is almost always the quarterback. What was Abbott without Costello? Clyde was nothing without Bonnie. There would be no Buffett without Munger. Winning teams have great specialists in every role. Your advisory is no different.
You need people, processes, or a partnership arrangement to handle activities and chores that either produce no revenue, like compliance and payroll, or tasks that can be performed at low cost, like trading and portfolio management. You also need marketing, but you shouldn’t be doing it. Marketing can produce leads, but only you can produce sales. Writing content and managing your digital enterprise can be seductive activities, but they will crush your productivity.
If Franklin were alive today, he’d probably say you should delegate everything that isn’t client interaction, but he might also note that you should even delegate some of that. You don’t have to answer the phone, or make trades, or send Docusigns. You should delegate everything like that, not only to protect your own productivity but to build the muscle memory in your team for handling all administrative functions.
Time only runs in one direction, and there are no do-overs. The sooner you begin to delegate, the sooner you’ll see positive changes. And it’s important not to let perfect be the enemy of very good. Yes, mistakes could be made, but they’d be made in any event, so the sooner they happen and you learn from them, the better. Mistakes that lead to better processes and expose weaknesses are a good thing—if you learn from them.
Here’s another key point: don’t surround yourself with people who are just like you. That would only compound your current problem. Instead, make sure everyone on your team works for common goals and understands the vision and mission of your company.
Advisors who go independent carry a big burden, and it’s natural to worry over every little thing. It’s lonely at the top, but you just won’t make it on your own. You set the tone and define the goals, but hire people who can do the job and let them surprise you with how well they do.
Franklin wasn’t saying work until you drop. He was saying make every moment count. Work when you’re working, and enjoy your personal and family time. Make the most of all of those things and you have a claim on a very happy and rewarding life.
Financial Gravity’s Done For You advisor support model is built to support the productive advisor. The founders and executive team have learned the simple truths about division of labor and have structured their company around their advisor partners. They understand that the advisor’s success is their success.
