The Practice Doctor is In: Making Life at Your Practice Less Taxing

Al Depman , CLU, ChFC, CMFC, BH

Todd is an advisor in Hartford, CT, getting off to a sluggish start in 2007.  Last year, his 12th as an advisor, was his best yet, qualifying him for the President's Club of his broker/dealer.  Todd's business is a healthy mix of products.  His main focus is on wrap accounts, individual mutual funds, life insurance, annuities and long term care. He lost an assistant he had had for 4 years in 2005, so 2006 was a scramble to hire and train Rose.

Todd, Rose and I recently had a conversation about his slow start and discussed tactics to help them move forward.  While I normally respond to questions readers send in, I thought recapping our conversation would be useful to advisors who are experiencing similar challenges.

Todd: "The big issue right now is that we're running all over the place trying to get my clients their tax information.  You know, cost basis on investments, putting money into IRAs, taking out new IRAs, reviewing IRAs, wanting to discuss gains and losses...that sort of thing."

Rose: "Last year, I was so new that Todd had to do it all, and though this year he's starting to delegate more, I'm still not licensed to do much more than fill out applications and some of the tax basis and other research."

Todd: "Right.  And this is causing some serious stress at home. We have a 2-year-old son my wife Judy watches until 4:45 when I arrive home to take over and help through bed time.  We just found out that we have another one due at the end of August, so Judy and I need to have a plan in place for managing my time and hers, and stick with it.  But I'm falling behind and the balance is being taxed – pun intended – to the point where we need to take action."

The bulk of our subsequent conversation revolved around how Rose and Todd managed their time.  We ultimately agreed to five basic "time management truths" in their practice:

1. Todd should be face-to-face with key people 25 hours a week.  This includes prospects, clients, COIs (centers of influence), and networking to develop new relationships and maintain existing ones.  

2. With one dedicated assistant doing a combination of administrative and marketing work and buttressed by a minimal firm support system, Todd's clients cannot expect a live voice to respond if case work is to be done efficiently, effectively and without anyone burning out.

3. Pockets of time need to be designated as "sacred," and not to be interrupted (except for emergencies).

4. For Rose, no work is expected to be taken home. 

5. For Todd, any work at home is done after his son and spouse have gone to bed.

Let's look at each one:

Face-to-face time.  In a mature practice, face-to-face time amounts to thirty hours per week and includes rainmaking, generating prospects, as well as opening and closing the business. It requires, at minimum, a full time administrative assistant and a full time marketing assistant.  Of these 2 positions, Todd has currently about 1.25 between Rose and additional support provided by an outside firm.  To expect 30 hours at this point is simply not realistic.  Twenty hours a week is manageable, especially since Todd is doing all the case design work.  Twenty five hours will remain the goal after Todd gets out from under tax season.  He and Rose will track all the clients and others who are calling in for tax-related information and at year end prepare their information in advance for 2008, avoiding the tax season shuffle.

Support.  This is the big one. Since you can't tell who's calling in for service and requests via a caller-ID system, you must either answer all calls or divert them to voicemail.  To streamline workflow, diverting all calls to voicemail makes the most sense, even though you'd like to be able to respond to A-level clients quickly.  Todd will let all incoming calls go to voicemail on the business line.  If he is leaving a message and wants to be able to grab a call-back, Todd will leave them his cell phone number, which generally will display caller ID for incoming calls, or his email address.  For selected A-level clients, he will communicate to them that they can use his cell phone number for direct access on critical issues and that he prefers email for less pressing concerns.

Everyone else gets routed to voicemail, which will be accessed once an hour, with calls being returned during specific times during the day.  Todd's message to callers is:

"You have reached the office of Todd Robertson.  We value your call. Due to a high volume of phone requests, Rose and I will be responding to voice mail messages twice daily to better focus on your specific need. Please leave you message at the tone and include your email address if you have one. Thank you."

Pockets of Time:  This strategy should result in being able to concentrate without being interrupted by calls.  Here is where a log tracking how Rose spends her time will be important.  She needs to keep a record of how she spends her time starting next Monday for two weeks or more, if practical.  Every thirty minutes she needs to take a minute to record what she has been doing during that time span.  This can be done very simply using a legal pad with 5 headings:

Once we identify the activities that take up the most time, we begin to determine where Rose is spending the bulk of her time, the amount of time various tasks and projects take, and then design checklists and priorities around them.

No At-home Work for Rose.  We are working with Rose to work smarter, not more.  Tracking her time will help us do that.

Todd's Life Balance.  Todd needs a more balanced life.  However, with the resources he has he needs to figure out a way to enable him to take some of the pressure off of the work day (having promised his wife a more consistent 8 hour work day).  This can be achieved by getting in some extra time before he turns in but after everyone's sleeping or coming into the office earlier. This time is dedicated to email (no phone calls), investment research and case prep.  If and when the firm gets case support, the need for this extra time will either diminish or be transformed into a different focus.

I'll be working with Todd and Rose on these issues on an ongoing basis, and will share their progress in a future column.  While their situation is unique to them, most advisors run up against similar life balance challenges which always seem to hit home during the months leading up to April 15.

Until next month, make your life less taxing! 

The Practice Doctor is OUT. 

Al Depman , CLU, ChFC, CMFC, BH, a.k.a. “The Practice Doctor”, is mitchanthony.com’s Business Practice Consultant. He is the creator of “The Practice Management Assessment” tool and materials and has authored numerous articles in professional publications on practice management. Al combined his Liberal Arts studies with 10 years of management experience with McDonald’s Corporation to enter the financial services world 22 years ago. Since then, Al has evolved from an MDRT-level sales rep into a full-time consultant specializing in helping others engineer their business practices to the next level. Contact him at al@mitchanthony.com .