The Practice Doctor is IN

Getting Stale: Signs You are a Boring Advisor

Al Depman, CLU, ChFC, CMFC, BH

Practice Management Consultant

It creeps up slowly. You get distracted from––or bored with––the daily demands of the business. Maybe it’s pursuing new concepts, products, or business models. Maybe it’s a life event––family issues, medical conditions, staff turmoil, or an act of God––that saps your energy and causes you to ignore current clients or not pursue new ones. Whatever the reason, you’ve put your practice on auto-pilot—at least temporarily. Before you realize it, temporary becomes chronic, and you officially have become a Boring Advisor.

Needless to say, becoming a Boring Advisor is dangerous, and can kill your practice. Clients, prospects, referrals, Centers-of-Influence and even your team will begin to question your commitment to the business. They’ll wonder if you’re just going through the motions. The short-term effect is client and staff disillusionment. The long-term effect is clients and referrals leaving, or what I term “practicide.”

What are the telltale signs that you are a Boring Advisor?

1) Shortcuts have become the norm. The fact-finding has gone to a yellow-pad, and you’re just getting enough information to prepare a cookie-cutter solution. You’re engaging in less and less conversation with clients and remember little of what was actually discussed. What additional intelligence you collect remains with you and isn’t acted upon. The resolution to ask for referrals has been long forgotten.

2) Your value proposition is stale (or non-existent). Your ability to express the unique value you bring to a client relationship has atrophied. People refer to you as the “insurance guy,” “investment lady” or worse (“I think he does financial planning, but I’m not really sure.”) As we discussed last month, presenting a fresh, interactive way of describing what you do––and why––is a best practice.

3) Your solutions lack real-world context. Your presentations and case preparations have become routine and formulaic—you pop names and amounts into precast solutions that are “good in any financial environment.” Have you reality-tested these pre-fabricated solutions in the past couple of years? Have you committed or re-committed to a financial philosophy recently? Having a strong point of view is critical to stand out in today’s saturated financial media atmosphere.

4) Key client relationships are being ignored.  Do you find yourself paying lip service to a key client’s family? Each top-tier client has a network of fiscally-important people in his or her life. Have you bothered to discover who these folks are?  Have they been added to your CRM database? Have you reached out to them? 

5) Client contact has become impersonal. You’ve embraced and paid for a wonderful automated system of newsletters, birthday e-cards, holiday cards, monthly alerts, and review reminders. In addition to the company sending statements, reports, prospectuses, and billings, your client is getting swamped by “touches.” Unfortunately, few of these actually involve a personal call or handwritten note. Somehow the humanity has gone out of the equation.

6) You take your key relationships for granted. Has your own network of centers-of-influence, professionals, and resource contacts gone stale through lack of communication? How about your staff? Have their reviews been left undone? Do you provide bonuses as a matter of entitlement or is there a real reason for them? Is your own family––spouse and children, parents and siblings––getting their fair share of your energy and love? Are friends being nurtured? Or have you migrated into your own little isolated world?

7) You haven’t looked in the mirror recently. Dressing for success has gone through some changes since John Molloy’s namesake book and best seller of 1975. In my consultations with advisors at the dawn of the twenty-first century, dress codes were (and still are) all over the place. Some advisors adhere to the “dress one notch above your client” strategy, while others dress at the same level as their clients. There are those who are always in full business attire and some who normally operate in business casual mode unless it’s a formal occasion. There are also lots of regional variations to consider (such as urban vs. rural) and plain ole’ advisor eccentricities. The key is to dress for respect—respect for yourself and your client.

USB recently issued its Swiss retail banking staff a 43-page dress code on how to impress customers by having a polished appearance. As you might expect, the code is a formal one. What’s particularly interesting is the “don’t” list. If you have indeed become a Boring Advisor, falling prey to any of these USB faux pas will truly set you in a BA class by yourself:

• Eating garlic and onions during work hours
• Smoking or spending time in smoky places
• Wearing short-sleeved shirts
• Wearing socks that are too short, showing skin when sitting
• Allowing underwear to be seen
• Touching up perfume during or after lunch break
• Using tie knots that don’t match your face and/or body shape.

Have you succumbed to becoming a Boring Advisor? If so, let me know and I can start a support and recovery group. I can picture our first meeting:

“My name is Al and I’m a Boring Advisor.”

It’s not too late!

The 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, and author of the book, How to Build Your Financial Advisory Business and Sell It at a Profit, now available from McGraw Hill. Al combined his Liberal Arts studies with 10 years of management experience with McDonald’s Corporation to enter the financial services world 25 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.

© 2009 Al Depman