In my last post we looked at using technology to create more time and free you up to work on high-value tasks that drive revenue growth. This week I’ll drill down and walk through four concrete examples of how technology can manufacture time and increase your return on effort.

1. Work with the right clients

The first step in getting more out of the time you spend in front of clients is to make sure you’re working with the right clients. This means figuring out who you want to work with and what characteristics they share. Doing this will enable you to focus your efforts on the current clients who really need the unique services you offer and bring the biggest benefit to your business.

To determine who your ideal clients are, take advantage of the powerful tools built into your CRM. In Kronos Finance CRM you have access to segmentation tools, filters and tags that allow you to sort your client base by virtually any criteria you choose—instantly creating groupings of clients that become the focus of highly targeted sales and relationship-building efforts. The more targeted your approach to a tight group of clients the better results you’ll see.

2. Create efficient marketing systems

When it comes to attracting more of those ideal clients you have identified you can use technology to create targeted marketing campaigns. Again, your CRM can turn this process from a chore into a largely automated, consistent source of new clients. The CRM’s tools allow you to optimize the process. Use the templates and forms features to create marketing materials and all the communication pieces you need for each campaign. You create the documents once and then you can reuse them with other clients or in other campaigns with no further effort. Activity management tools will track what needs to be done in regard to each client and provide automatic reminders so that no tasks are missed. This automation will vastly increase your efficiency. You’ll spend more time with clients working on the things that matter—understanding their needs and finding solutions.

3. Develop an effective and repeatable onboarding process

When you make a sale to one of your targeted prospects the next step is to onboard them as a new client. All advisors have their own processes for completing the work—but most of those processes have been developed without any conscious thought and risk not being repeated the same way each time. That makes the process inefficient and hard to transfer from one client to the next.

Take the time to define the steps in your on-boarding process and delegate as many as possible to technology. This will ensure you have a conscious process to proactively manage your relationships. To automate your process use your CRM to complete much of the admin work. For instance, you can:

• create forms
• template welcome emails
• automate financial needs analysis requests
• schedule future contacts and activity

Automating your process will mean each new client will receive the same quality onboarding experience and you won’t have to reinvent the wheel every time a new client signs on. This is important because the strongest practices are driven by defined, repeatable processes and systems.

Driving those systems with technology will automate your onboarding and make it consistently effective, saving you time and accelerating your growth curve.

4. Create an automated relationship management system

Take the time to review all the things you do to maintain and build your client relationships, including activities like:

• monthly value-added communication
• annual reviews
• seminars
• speaking events
• lunches

Review the steps involved in conducting each of those processes. Look to delegate steps that you don’t need to be involved in or that don’t meet your return on effort threshold.

Use your CRM to automate all the admin that goes into organizing the events and scheduling with clients. Use segmentation to identify the clients you want to touch and automate the delivery of value-added content to them. If your CRM has an integrated financial needs analysis tool you can save time and potential data entry errors by automatically sending it to clients prior to annual reviews.

Finding the right technology can help you optimize each strategy in your relationship management system, not just saving you time but ensuring you create great client experiences—and helping you retain your best clients.

Wrap up

Great technology creates time. It redirects the flow of work in your practice, diverting low-value tasks away from you and pushing high-value tasks into focus. It allows you to measure the return on your efforts instantly and accurately—and use what you learn to redesign your processes and systems to run automatically and consistently, freeing you up to work at the highest level of your capability. Sometimes that’s all it takes to move from one revenue level to the next. No drama. No extra effort. No risks or large costs.

For over twenty years Ray Adamson has held senior leadership roles in the financial services industry. At companies like Kronos Technologies, Bluesun, Great West Life and the Covenant Group he has worked to implement national practice management strategies, increase client acquisition and retention, and build out sales capabilities. As a financial advisor, consultant, practice management coach and speaker, he has helped management and advisors at the largest carriers and distributors in North America take their business to the next level. Ray has presented to many of the top North American financial services companies and associations, including MDRT & LIMRA.

As Chief Customer Officer at Kronos Technologies, Ray works with carriers, distributors and advisors—helping them leverage the Kronos suite of financial services specific web applications to manage and grow their businesses.