Celebrate Your Path

Paul Kingsman

“Segment your book into “A,” “B” and “C” clients. Or, whittle down your client list to include only 50 “A” clients.”

“Develop your own practice your own way. Or, seek out partners to put together a comprehensive team.”

“Be available to clients whenever they want to talk. Or, segment your time, with only specific hours or days available for client meetings.”

The tight economy has opened the floodgates of advice about how to run your financial services practice. Everywhere you turn, there seems to be a new “right” way to do it. The sheer volume of information can have us lurching back and forth, constantly looking for a new “best” way to run our practices, but ultimately leave us spinning our wheels.

While desiring to keep making changes in an effort to stay at the cutting edge of the industry can sound good, the reality is that it often becomes a huge and costly distraction, actually preventing you from performing at your best.

Occasionally changing details of how you run your practice and tweaking techniques to improve can be useful. I often warn against getting into a rut–– doing things the same old way simply because that’s how they have always been done. When working with my own clients, I examine and analyze their practices to determine where they need to make changes to improve their results.

But because changing set routines always requires some “coming up to speed” time, even good change, which will ultimately make your practice stronger, slows you down in the short term. Therefore, your time for alterations and experimentation must be defined and limited: once you have picked your route, stick with it!

This sounds simple, but it can be a difficult to implement because it goes against the accepted grain. We have been taught that we need to be open-minded to new ideas and refusing to give new approaches a chance is simply being rigid, old-fashioned, and even selfish.  We hear that because the business environment is constantly changing, we must keep changing, too, just to keep up.

Advisors can lull themselves into a false sense of progress by continually trying new things, but constant changes and last minute alterations before important presentations mean unnecessary costs and uncertainty in your performance. Continual adjustment to your routine can waste important time, use up valuable resources, and drain your conviction because you’re always second guessing yourself.

In fact, there are multiple valid and valuable methods to build your business, but ultimately you have to carefully consider your options and pick a path that is the right one for you.  Then, with the conviction that your course has been well chosen, keep your energy and focus on that path so you can make real progress.

To develop deep, motivating conviction, carefully critique your current business model and:

• Honestly evaluate your daily actions. Ask yourself, is it working? Is it right? Is it best? Does it move me toward my objectives?

• Know why you do what you do, and cull unproductive activities.
  
• Listen to new ideas through a selective filter: don’t rush to adopt new activities simply because they are the latest fad or today’s media favorite. If you are going to alter your current practice and format, do so thoughtfully and evaluate the effectiveness of the change.

While you cannot control a prospect’s or client’s decision making process, you can control how you run your business. Make your process one that is worthy of celebration. Work excellently so that you earn the right to expect success. When your process is worth celebrating, you are more likely to experience results worth celebrating.

© 2009 Paul Kingsman

Paul Kingsman provides financial services professionals practical tools to achieve consistent, outstanding results. As a motivational speaker and executive coach, he is a sought after expert on how to make your split seconds count. Having won an Olympic medal by only four one-hundredths of a second, Paul knows the importance of keeping focused and now teaches people how to overcome distractions and achieve their own success. His experience as an adviser for Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo has given him an insider’s understanding of the unique business challenges faced by financial services professionals and an ability to guide his clients in implementing results-oriented solutions.