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Capacity is emotional for financial advisors
Why is it that all these marketing firms who approach us, think we need help in growing our business? Do they not understand that we have a successful business and things are going well? We are growing but the number one challenge is managing our capacity. We have too many clients and we're trying to figure out how we're going to manage it all, not how we're going to grow it. Capacity is a feeling as well as a number. If you hit your targets but feel overwhelmed, what good is the capacity number. That is why capacity is so hard to find. It requires feeling good and hitting goals. Capacity is emotional! Don’t measure it logically. When was the last time you felt great about your business? Find that feeling first! Finding your true capacity is one of the hardest things for elite financial advisors to find.
We don't want to grow anymore
If marketers took the approach that people were already successful and that we need help in other areas of our business I think they would get a lot more clients, don't you? The financial advisors I work with are often not trying to dramatically grow their businesses. They are not looking for a lot of new clients. Yes, they would like to acquire a few more ideal clients but only high net worth high revenue ideal clients usually less than 10 in a calendar year. What is the number one challenge elite financial advisors face? Capacity is the number one challenge most elite financial advisors face. Imagine if you can get another 2 to 400 hours in a calendar year, what that might do for your business or your lifestyle in 2024?
How do you build and manage capacity?
There are six areas to help you manage your capacity as a financial advisor. The first area is segmentation the second is technology the third is practice management processes the 4th is people the 5th is delegation and the sixth is time management processes. Let's examine how you can build capacity in your practice in 2024.
Segmentation
Most financial advisors segment their business every few years. Elite advisors segment on an annual basis and they usually have two segments not three or four. They segment based on ideal families and everyone else. They focus on finding not just ideal clients but ideal families which generate ideal revenue for them. They know where they want to spend their time and who they want to spend it with. Most importantly they know who they want to spend less time with. They want to spend time with people they just know there isn't enough time so they make sure clients are being well serviced by the people that have the time to do it. This is usually another financial advisor. Email me at grant@ghicks.com for a copy of our segmentation guide
Technology
Technology does a better job of doing repetitive tasks than people do. Check out our technology checklist to see where you can leverage your time by using technology. The categories seem to grow each and every year and practice management focuses on leveraging technology for financial advisor practices.PS did you know there are 5-20 pieces of technology just to do one client progress update meeting and proposal? How many technologies or apps do you use to prepare for a meeting? https://technology-checklist.getresponsepages.com/
Practice management processes
Practice management is about three things. Process, process, process. Financial advisors know they need three clearly defined and written processes that they can articulate. Process one is the ideal client acquisition process. The second is the ideal client service process. The third process is all the other processes that you need to manage your business and your practice effectively.
People
How many ideal clients or families can you manage in a calendar year? Now how many ideal clients and families can your team effectively manage in a calendar year? Most elite teams are working past capacity and they know they need more people on their team yet lack the time to add more people to their team because training these people takes time. The average advisor trains staff for less than 4 hours per year. Adding people to your team will give you an extra 200 to 400 hours each year. at $500 per hour of your time, this is a simple return on investment calculation. Do a current and future organizational chart, and see how you can manage capacity as a team.
Delegation
You can delegate everything in financial services except prospecting. The more you delegate to your team and the more process is you have the more you'll be able to spend time with your ideal clients, ideal families, and ideal prospects. You can also spend more time with your ideal centers of influence. With elite teams, we go through a delegation checklist and see where we can delegate and save elite financial advisors a tremendous amount of time by putting processes into place.
Time management strategies
Your goal next year in 2024 as a financial advisor is to find 100 to 200 hours of extra time. How you do it is up to you. It starts with your calendar and managing it on a daily weekly and monthly basis. We all have time management strategies that work well for us. We also have bad time management habits. In the never-ending struggle of important versus urgent. Urgent usually wins, unless you stick to your calendar. Remember elite advisors usually take 8 to 12 or more weeks off every year. They trust their team because they have processes in place. Instead of managing time, manage your capacity!
Take a sheet of paper and write these six strategies down so you can find more capacity in your business this year.
Related: Scaling Revenue: Strategies for Financial Advisors to Grow Without Expanding Client Numbers