We all know the expression “A picture is worth a thousand words.”

This speaks to the fact that we can talk to existing and prospective clients all we want about our recommendations, but a couple of well chosen graphs and charts can dwarf the impact of any number of words.

That’s why whenever possible,  recommendations should  be supported by a couple of well chosen charts and graphs.

This is especially true when using structured telephone reviews to supplement face to face meetings. Structured phone meetings may lack some of the personal connection of a face to face meeting so don’t replace meetings entirely, but they tend to be more focused and also avoid having to ask clients to fight traffic and part to come to your office.

To be effective though, you have to establish a visual connection when discussing statements, reviewing portfolios or making recommendations. You can email this beforehand for clients to refer to.

 As a better alternative, more and more advisors are payng $15 monthly to subscribe to web meeting sites like gotomeeting.com, Microsoft line or Webex  - these allow you to email clients a link, when clients click on it, you control their computer and you can walk them through a powerpoint presentation or other visuals.

As another example of the power of graphics to present date in a compelling fashion, a site called www.gapminder.org  does a remarkable job of depicting economic progress going back to 1800 – this may be worth sharing with clients.

It shows how life expectancy and income per person have evolved each year from 1800 to the present  and makes for compelling viewing – especially when you see how China and India stagnated initially but have been playing catch up of late.

Click below to see that chart:

http://graphs.gapminder.org/world/#$majorMode=chart$is;shi=t;ly=2003;lb=f;il=t;fs=11;al=30;stl=t;st=t;nsl=t;se=t$wst;tts=C$ts;sp=6;ti=1827$zpv;v=0$inc_x;mmid=XCOORDS;iid=phAwcNAVuyj1jiMAkmq1iMg;by=ind$inc_y;mmid=YCOORDS;iid=phAwcNAVuyj2tPLxKvvnNPA;by=ind$inc_s;uniValue=8.21;iid=phAwcNAVuyj0XOoBL%5Fn5tAQ;by=ind$inc_c;uniValue=255;gid=CATID0;by=grp$map_x;scale=log;dataMin=194;dataMax=96846$map_y;scale=lin;dataMin=23;dataMax=86$map_s;sma=49;smi=2.65$cd;bd=0$inds=

One of the important changes is a basic shift in what investors look for  in terms of communication from their advisors.

In my October column in Investment Executive, I outlined four new imperatives for client communication that advisors ignore at their peril.

Since last fall, I have talked to more than 500 investors in round-table focus groups and one-on-one interviews about their response to the market downturn.

Some of the things that investors seek from their financial advisors have stayed constant . Investors still look for advisors who listen, demonstrate they care, put their clients’ needs first and provide advice tailored to each investor’s needs  along with the ability to recommend solutions that choose from the widest range of offerings.

At the same time, a fundamental shift has occurred in some other things that investors look for from their financial advisors – and four new imperatives have emerged.

Imperative one: Demonstrate empathy

In many cases, the first priority for financial advisors is to establish a bond of empathy and to tap into client feelings – often, clients are unable to listen to their advisor until they first feel listened to.

If an advisor hasn’t had an indepth conversation about how a client feels, one of the better ways to start a meeting is to say something like: “Many investors have lost sleep because of the market events last fall. Tell me, how have you been affected by the market over the past while?”

Imperative two: Provide guidance and direction… with an outlook of balanced optimism

While almost no one is happy with what’s happened to their portfolios in the past, most investors aren’t blaming their advisors for this – they see everyone they know in the same boat.

What is causing dissatisfaction among many investors is what’s happening today.  Many clients say that their advisor is overly passive and not providing direction on what they should be doing going forward. Today, investors are looking for guidance on how to move forward – and if they don’t get it from their existing advisor, they’ll look elsewhere. Even given the uncertainty of today’s environment, advisors need to sit down and talk to clients about the different scenarios for the period ahead and the implications for their portfolios.

Imperative three: Incorporate fresh perspectives

A common complaint among investors is that their portfolios are unchanged since the market meltdown began last fall – a comment I hear a lot is “If my portfolio made sense then, given everything that’s changed, I don’t see how it can be right now.”

In cases where investors are in mutual funds or managed money, of course, their portfolios have been actively managed – and it’s incumbent on the advisor to help clients understand how their investments have changed.

In other instances, it might make sense to introduce a new element into client portfolios, such as investment grade corporate bonds. Clearly, any recommendation has to be appropriate and you never want to make change for the sake of change – but failing to recommend appropriate changes runs the risk that clients will see their advisor as taking them for granted.

Imperative four: Ramp up  communication

The final new imperative for advisors relates to the demand for communication.

The events of last fall have dramatically heightened demand for frequency of contact  – whatever level of contact clients wanted a year ago, it’s almost certainly higher today.

And it’s not just demand for quantity that has increased – many investors are looking for more substantive commentary on prospects for the market and for their portfolio.

Many advisors can’t meet this demand simply by increasing the number of meetings and phone calls. New communication vehicles need to be be used to supplement the traditional personal contact – emailing articles, conference calls and group sandwich lunches in a boardroom to name just three.

The events of last fall have caused investment managers to re-examine their practices and adopt new approaches – in a similar vein, to be effective investment advisors need to fundamentally rethink their approach to client communication, bearing these four new imperatives in mind.

To read the full article, look at the October issue of Investment Executive.

And to watch a video summarizing these changes, click http://tv.investmentexecutive.com/video-8273-What-clients-look-for-in-an-advisor-today

Being busy is good to a point – as long as it’s not the “hamster on the wheel” effect  –  where the faster we go, the faster the wheel we’re on turns (the source of the expression “spinning our wheels.”)

And being busy is also good provided it doesn’t get in the way of periodically stepping back and thinking about our business – that’s the only way we ensure we’re working smart as well as hard.

In fact, research shows that consistently committing the time to think critically can lead to a dramatic boost in overall productivity.

So how do we go about ensuring we’re “working smart”?

There are five opportunities to build thinking time into your business – you can do this annually, quarterly, monthly, weekly … maybe even daily.

Let’s start by understanding why we’re all so busy.

Partly it’s a function of choppy markets and anxious (and often increasingly demanding) clients.

Today’s “do more with less” mindset doesn’t help.

And of course technology and the internet mean that we’re all drowning in the volume of information that crosses our desks.

In light of that, taking the time to step back and think critically about your business won’t typically happen on its own – you have to make it happen, with different levels of time commitment entailed.

Once a year, say in November or December, you need to step back and spend a day or two preparing your plan of action for the coming year. This means really thinking hard about your business  – and needs to be done in a structured format . There are lots of business planning templates out there – one useful example is on the U.S. advisor site Horsesmouth. (There’s a cost to subscribe but a free trial subscription is readily available.)

This can be done along with your team or if you don’t have a team in conjunction with one or two other advisors  in your branch; sometimes a branch or firm will hire a facilitator to take a whole room of advisors through this.

The key is to walk away with a plan for the year ahead but also with specific steps laid out for the first 90 days.  

Constructing your action plan is only the starting point in thinking about your business, however.

If your year starts in January, you and your team need to carve out half a day a quarter in early April, July and October to review your progress against your plan, identify any course corrections you want to make and set out a plan of action for the next 90 days.

You need to go through the same exercise for the two months between each quarterly session – taking an hour a month to lay out your priorities for the upcoming 30 days at the beginning of February and March for example.

Thinking about your business can also happen weekly. Last year, I wrote a post about how one advisor has advanced his business by taking a few minutes at the end of each week to reflect on what he’d learned in the last seven days and what he would do differently in the week ahead as a result.

You can read this article here: http://www.strategicimperatives.ca/blog/?p=71

The final opportunity for thinking about your business is at the of each day. I recently talked to an advisor who had started wrapping up each day by taking two minutes to go to a file on his computer and answering a couple of questions – what one thing had worked best that day, what had he learned as a result.

Some might say that spending this much time thinking about your business will undermine your ability to get things done.

Add up the time I’m suggesting – a day a year, a half day quarterly, an hour monthly, 15 minutes weekly and 2 minutes daily – and you end up with about 45 hours over the course of the year, or roughly 5% of a hard working advisor’s year.

Bear in mind, you’re not really spending that time – rather, you’re investing it, in order to make the other 95% of your time more productive.

In fact, you may find that spending 5% of your week to step back and think critically about your business may be one of the best investments of time you make.

A key topic was the frustration  most were experiencing in attracting new clients.

In discussing this further, consensus emerged that for almost everyone in the room, the number one objective for this fall is developing prospecting momentum, so that they hit the ground running in January.

 Three things need to happen to build prospecting momentum this fall.

 Step One: Giving client development priority

 First, you have to make prospecting a top priority.

Over the last few year many advisors have gotten away from focusing on client development in a systematic fashion, giving it priority and investing time and money against it. Quite simply, advisors were getting enough new assets from market growth and referrals that they didn’t need to go through the pain of prospecting.

Referrals are clearly the best way to attract new clients – the difficulty is that given markets over the past year and the typical client mindset today, for the next while at least most advisors are not going to get sufficient referrals to achieve their business goals.

What  most advisors need to do is identify a two tier approach to client development – with a continued focus on referrals, supplemented by another prospecting strategy

And they need to make that other prospecting strategy a core priority in their business. 

Step Two: Make a commitment to client development

To develop prospecting momentum, you have to invest consistent time against it.

Too many advisors see client development as something to do with the time left over in their day or their week. They simply don’t give it the priority it needs.

Start by making a decision on how much time you’re prepared to allocate to client development each week. This will vary with the advisor but the first step is to say okay, this is the amount of time I need to commit – it could be three hours, six hours, ten hours or twenty hours.

Once you’ve made a decision on the amount of time you’re prepared to commit, go to your calendar and make an appointment to spend that time.

So if you’re spending six hours, you can block off three hours on Tuesday morning and Thursday afternoon or you can block off 90 minutes from 2 to 3:30 every afternoon from  Monday to Thursday.

 The key is to treat this like you would an appointment with your most important client and to cancel that commitment the same way you would an appointment with a key client.

Step Three: Pick a strategy to focus on

The final step is to develop a consistent process to use that time.

Successful advisors have learned the importance of a consistent process when it comes to existing clients.

But when it comes to client development many are all over the place – they try a little of this, do a little of that – so end up diluting their effectiveness and never develop any traction.

Here are four client development processes that advisors are seeing results from today:

Focus on professionals

One advisor who attended the Top Advisor Summit in April was inspired by a talk on developing referral relationships with accountants.

As a result, he has blocked off lunch time every Friday and on hour each Wednesday.

In that hour, he calls the accountants and lawyers of his key clients, after getting clients permission to do so – and says the six magic words:  “We have a client in common.”

Then he goes on to say: “I’ve heard great things about you. I’d like to buy you lunch or schedule time for a coffee and talk about our common client, he’s given me written permission to share his information with you.

I’d also like to learn more about the kind of work you do and also tell you a little bit about what I do.”

At the lunch, this advisor focuses most of the time on getting the accountant or lawyer talking. At the end of the lunch, he offers to put them on the distribution list for the material their common clients receive. He’s had 100% take-up on this offer – and has started seeing referrals come as a result.

Building your prospect pipeline

Earlier this year, another advisor began emailing his clients an article every second Friday – something from the Economist, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Fortune, the most credible sources he could find.

He carves out two hours every Friday morning to call people he knows – people from his golf club, guys he went to school with, people he knows casually.

And what he reaches them he says that the reason he’s calling is that he’s recently begun emailing clients articles from publications such as the Wall Street Journal and the Economist and clients have found these very useful. And in light of concern about markets, it occurred to him that the person he’s talking to might find those articles helpful also – and that he’s calling to see if they’d be interested in being added to the distribution list.

His goal is to add three to five prospects to his pipeline each Friday morning. He’s received a good response to his calls and to the emails – and has started seeing meetings with prospects happen as a result.

Become a go-to resource

In a post in August, I talked about how one advisor positioned herself as the go to resource for a major employer in her community when the company announced layoffs. She responded by organizing some lunch time and after work workshops at a hotel across the street from its offices, in conjunction with a lawyer and accountant who she recruited to participate in this.

As a result, not only has she ended up with clients but she’s started getting unsolicited calls from other employees of this company who have heard her name.

Click here to read more about this: http://www.strategicimperatives.ca/blog/?p=199

Turn client sandwich lunches into prospecting events

In a post in April, I talked about how advisors can use a series of sandwich lunches in their boardroom for clients to communicate with prospects as well. The idea is to get nine people into your boardroom – six of them existing clients, three of them prospective clients.

One advisor began doing this in January and he now runs these lunches in his boardroom every two weeks – this has become the major driver of his client development focus. When he follows up with the prospective clients, typically he gets a follow up meeting in at least one of the three cases, in the other two people almost always agree to be added to the distribution list for information he’s sending clients and give him permission to follow up down the road.

Click here for the article about organizing sandwich lunches http://www.strategicimperatives.ca/blog/?p=164

And here to listen to a free webinar on how to make these sandwich lunches happen: http://www.strategicimperatives.ca/blog/?p=180

Remember, there is no one right approach to bringing new clients on board – only the approach that is right for you.

Think about whether you need to use this fall to develop prospecting momentum for your practice. If the answer is yes, remember those three key steps –  give client development the priority it deserves, make a firm commitment of time to focus on it and pick an approach that works for you and stick to it.

Do those three things – and chances are that when it comes to client development, you’ll hit the ground running in January.

This advisor’s success would likely be hard to replicate in a larger city and it’s unlikely that any reader is going find everything in this article relevant to their situation .. but consider whether there are some aspects of his approach that you might apply to your practice.

Growing a practice in America’s Fastest Dying City

Bob Huebscher, Editor, Advisor Perspectives

Youngstown Ohio has the distinction of being America’s fastest dying city, losing its population faster than any large metropolitan area. It is also home to Young Financial Group, whose found Mowry (”Mo”) Young had implemented a unique client-centric marketing strategy that has allowed him to add several hundred new clients over the past four years.

 While many – perhaps most – advisors use client appreciation programs as part of their marketing efforts, Young has embraced this idea and made it his sole marketing focus.  Young believes other advisors can utilize his strategy, and he agreed to tell me how it works.

 Young began his career in 1996 and developed a successful brokerage practice selling investment and insurance products.  To attract prospects, he had a telemarketing staff cold-call residents in local counties to find attendees for seminars he ran on a weekly basis. 

In 2003, the federal Do Not Call list made his strategy obsolete.  Young’s practice had grown to $50 million, and he no longer needed a prescribed rate of growth each month, but he still needed to grow.

Young decided on a marketing strategy based on regularly scheduled client appreciation events, with the long-term goal of having his clients show their appreciation by providing referrals.

Developing the strategy

To develop this strategy, Young formed an advisory board of 15 of his most loyal clients, and used the first two meetings to educate his board about the proposed new approach.  He wanted his client base to be his salesforce, but he didn’t want to press them too aggressively for referrals. “I believed I could rely on the nature of quality people – my most loyal clients – to reciprocate for the value they received,” he said. 

Young first converted his board to his way of thinking, because he knew they would be good advocates.  He had chosen his board based on their asset value, attitude, and ability to advocate on his behalf.

Young then ranked his clients on those three criteria and surveyed his clients to identify their interests beyond those he already knew.  He went back to his advisory board to refine his plan.  They confirmed his belief that clients would value special events with educational content geared to their interests more than they would other incentives, including fee reductions.  “Most of my most loyal clients were not even aware of the fees they were being charged,” he said.

“You go to church because of the minister,” Young said, “and I realized I was the minister.”  Young wanted to develop a degree of fraternity among his clients, and to position his program as a scarce resource.  Under that premise, he invited only the top two-thirds of his clients, based on his three criteria, to his special events.

He held informational meetings with small groups of those clients to incorporate them into the process, just as he had with his advisory board.  He included members of his advisory board in those meetings to get additional feedback.

Young defined a vision statement: “To create an exclusive club of prudent disciplined advocates who would achieve their goals and benefit from relationships with each other and the firm.”  Young presented this statement at the informational meetings and made sure his clients bought into his approach.  He supplemented his vision statement with a code of conduct and explained exactly how clients could help with referrals, if they were inclined to do so.

Individual meetings were held with advisory board members for Young to refine his understanding of their interests and goals, and he wrote a follow-up letter to them summarizing what he heard in those meetings.

Once this process was complete, Young assembled the data and formalized his plan for client events.  He held another meeting to present his plan to his board.  By that time, they had taken on ownership of the plan and were ready to deliver its message to his entire client base.

 Rolling out the plan

To roll out his plan, he hosted meetings for groups of 50 couples, presenting his vision statement, code of conduct, and the benefits he would offer over the course of the coming year.  Those benefits included items such as a new financial planning process, relationships with strategic partners, a newsletter, and, most importantly, the events he planned for the year.

At the end of the meeting, he presented a slide show of the upcoming events and had stations around the room where clients could sign up for events.  Those clients who didn’t attend were mailed information to sign up for events.

The annual schedule includes two ladies’ events, one men’s event, two trips, three or four educational sessions, three or four entertainment sessions, one major educational event with a dinner, one charitable event, and a Holiday party for his advisory board.  His board meets one other time during the year, and he has lunches with board members regularly.

The annual schedule of events Young now offers, which changes from year to year, includes a mix of educational, recreational, and charity-oriented activities.  In the past year he has offered classes on economics, finance and investing – even giving final exams at the end of each session.  Grading was competitive and the top scorer was designated the valedictorian 

At another event, he aired the movie The Secret of My Success, a 1987 movie starring Michael J. Fox, who joins a poorly-run company as a mailroom employee and then assumes a second identity as a new executive, ultimately orchestrating a hostile takeover of the company.  After the movie, Young had members of his advisory board masquerade as AIG executives while his clients threw nerf footballs at them.  Young also gave a 10-minute talk on how the Fed is addressing the financial crisis.

He has run trips to casinos, New York City, the Baltimore inner harbor, and has seven bus loads of clients signed up for an upcoming trip to the Cleveland air show.

On the charity side of things, he held a wine tasting at a winery.  After the tasting, a group of Special Olympic athletes arrived and each talked about their accomplishments and the importance of the Special Olympics to them.  Young raised $5,000 for the charity.

Young even brought in his local congressman to discuss how he is addressing Youngstown’s population decline.

Clients are always welcome to bring guests, and Young said that some guests attend events over a two-year period before becoming clients. 

Young employs a permanent part-time employee to manage his client appreciation program, which costs approximately $70,000 per year.  This is his only marketing expense; he does not spend any money on traditional marketing.  “Why would I spend money on people I don’t know?” he asked.

Young says his key competitive differentiator is that he commits 100% of his time and effort to transforming his clients into advocates.

Young is constantly refining his program and looking for ways to improve it.  He solicits feedback on each event, and he gets regular feedback from his advisory board on how to grow and improve in the future.  “We will never figure this out completely,” he said. 

Young gets as many as 65 unsolicited introductions per year from his program, and he converts about 75% of those into clients.  His client retention rate is exceptionally high, with less than 1% annual turnover, even during last year’s bear market.

To see more articles from Advisor Perspectives, go to www.advisorperspectives.com - note that there is no cost to subscribe to their weekly online newsletter.

What’s often missed is the role that clients themselves play – quite simply, there are some clients whose mindset and behaviour make a deep bond impossible. In many regards, it’s clients themselves that more than any other single factor determine whether a strong connection is possible.

The fact is that advisors aren’t powerless victims when it comes to the clients you deal with – advisors do have a choice on this matter.

In August, a column in the Globe and Mail outlined seven attributes that investors can bring to the relationship with an advisor that allow an advisor to work more effectively and maximize the value those investors get.

 While written for investors, this column also offers useful guidelines for advisors when talking to prospective clients.  A previous Globe column outlined guidelines for investors seeking a new advisor, suggesting that investors write down the key things they’re looking for before meeting with a potential advisor.

Advisors should do the same – while you might still choose to work with a new client who doesn’t meet all your criteria, it’s nevertheless worthwhile to identify the important things you’re looking for in a new client – and the dealbreakers that might cause you to take a pass.

Finally, please note that the seven attributes in this column won’t be a fit for every advisor – they may be a starting point, but to be effective you have to take the time to identify the qualities in a new client that apply to you.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/investment-ideas/features/experts-podium/how-to-get-the-most-from-your-financial-adviser/article1261951/

 Last week I’d talked to an advisor who had invested $2 to make a small change in his routine – and immediately began feeling better about his progress at the end of the day as a result.

 The $2 investment was for a yellow highlighter.

 He starts each day with a list of calls to make and things to do.

 And as he completes calls and checks things off his to do list, he marks them off his list with the highlighter.

I know it sounds silly” he said, “ but seeing that list of calls with the yellow lines through the ones that are completed makes me feel a bit better about what I’ve achieved at the end of the day.

He went on: “And dumb as it sounds, sometimes my reward for getting something done that’s been lingering on my to do list or making that tough call is being able to stroke it off the list.”

 We all find motivation in different ways – but the fact is that few of us are so self-directed that we can’t benefit from a bit of external reinforcement.

Whether it be taking a mid morning break at Starbucks if you’ve finished the tasks you set out or spending $2 on a highlighter, think about whether there are some simple steps you could take to help increase your motivation level.

There are five qualities to an effective client letter.

A good client letter needs to be:

1 Substantive

2 Candid

3 Backed up by facts

4 Clear and easy to read

5 Tailored to each advisor’s personality and views

Below is a template that you can use as a starting point for your own third quarter client letter – summarizing where we’ve been, where we are today and the outlook for the period ahead.  Remember, this letter is only designed as a starting point – be sure to take the time to inject it with your own point of view and personality.

September 18, 2009

To my clients

As I write this letter, it’s two weeks from the end of the third quarter in what continues to be a most eventful year for stock markets and the economy.

It’s also one year since the weekend that shook the foundations of Wall Street and of the global financial system – when Lehman Brothers collapsed, Merrill Lynch vanished as an independent entity and AIG was taken over by the U.S. government.

In light of that, I thought it might be worthwhile to briefly summarize where we’ve been this year, where we are today and the prospects for the period ahead – and also to highlight some lessons from last year’s financial collapse.

Where we’ve been

Six months ago, in early March, it truly did feel like the world might be coming to an end – talk of a return to a Great Depression like economy dominated radio, television and newspaper. Understandably, fear was rampant – and stocks responded to these nightmarish scenarios by hitting the lowest levels in years, with financials especially hard hit.

Although no one knew it at the time, that turned out to be the bottom. Since then, we’ve seen the economy move back from the precipice – there is a growing consensus that we’ll return to economic growth in the second half of this year. The Economist recently ran a cover story discussing the extent to which the economic recovery was led by Asia.

As a result, we’ve had a strong recovery in markets – from their bottom in the beginning of March, stock markets are up 50%, retracing a good portion of the losses since last fall.

The second quarter of this year, from March to June, was especially strong – since 1956 the Canadian market has only had three quarters that rose more than this one.

In the meantime, here are six lessons from the last twelve months:

1. We were reminded of just how volatile stocks can be.
2. And of the importance of true diversification.
3. Many investors discovered that they’re less comfortable with risk and volatility in their portfolio than they had believed.
4. Investors were also reminded of the need to focus on what they can control – understanding cash needs and thinking through how much risk they can live with to fund those needs.
5. In some cases, investors began rethinking retirement plans as a result.
6. Finally, we were reminded that in today’s world, we need to expect the unexpected.

Where we are today

A year ago, the market was characterized by rampant optimism. The Canadian market had hit a new high in June of 2008 and any concerns were set aside as minor annoyances.

By contrast, six months ago the market was overwhelmed by absolute pessimism – there was no sign of hope anywhere.

Today, the market is somewhere between those two extremes and many investors can be characterized as extremely nervous. 

As a general rule, I think a certain level of healthy anxiety is positive – what gets investors in trouble is an excess of either optimism or pessimism. While today’s mood may be erring on the side of being a bit too pessimistic, I think being cautious in the current market makes sense … provided that prudent caution doesn’t cross the line into panicked inertia.

The good news is that there are still excellent opportunities for investors who are prepared for short term volatility. I spend a lot of time listening to the best market minds and to managers who have lived through multiple cycles. I am reassured that most say that they are still finding very good value – not to the extent that they did earlier this year, but still well ahead of what they would have seen a year ago.

The outlook going forward

In August, Business Week ran a cover story called “The case for optimism.”

The premise was simple: Beyond the issues facing the global economy, there are many underlying positives that give cause for optimism if we look out two and three years and beyond.

There are things happening under the surface that will drive economic growth … and with that economic growth will come growth in stock prices. Examples include the positive impact of technology, the recovering US housing market, the revitalization of economies and the incredible energy from the developing world’s educated youth and emerging middle class

Click here to access all the Business Week stories on The Case for OPTIMISM :

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/toc/09_34/B4144optimism.htm?chan=magazine+channel_top+stories

And here to view a three minute video with interviews with CEOs of Dow Corning, Eastman Kodak and Intuit.

http://feedroom.businessweek.com/?fr_story=34b1f5ab213d48a160a767c9c6c50d091f6cc7a3

Volatility

Let me close by talking about market volatility.

In 1907, U.S. financier J. Pierpoint Morgan singlehandedly averted a banking panic among U.S. investors.

Later in life, someone asked him his best guess on the direction of markets. His answer: “They will go up and they will go down.”

One hundred years later, that’s still the best answer to someone looking for a short term market forecast. No one can predict market movements in the immediate period ahead – all we can do is understand clearly how much short term volatility we can live with, adjust our portfolios accordingly and stay focused on the horizon as we deal with the rough waters. No one likes volatility … but for most of us it’s the necessary price to arrive at our ultimate destination.

Direction of portfolios

This needs to be customized to each advisor

In the meantime, my team and I are constantly looking for opportunities to realign portfolios to give our clients the best tradeoff between risk and return.  Given the current uncertainty and volatility, we are continuing to focus on higher quality companies in both stock and bond portfolios and are maintaining a healthy fixed income weighting, with particular emphasis on quality corporate issues.

Over the past while, I’ve talked to most clients about their portfolios. If I missed you for some reason or you would like to discuss your investments in more detail, I am always delighted to have that conversation.

Thank you for the continued opportunity to work together – remember, my team and I are always here should you have any questions or wish to talk about anything related to your portfolio or your finances.

Name of advisor

Change is possible however – recently I had a conversation with an advisor on a large team that had succeeded in implementing some significant new initiatives since the beginning of the year.

They key was time blocking, setting aside time each week for a major new undertaking and implementing a proven formula for change behind that commitment.

Recognize the obstacles to change

Change is an incredibly powerful force – it can word for you or against you. The trick is to harness it to work in your favour.

Focus your efforts

This advisor and her team started by agreeing to concentrate on one and only one new activity.

Limit the commitment

She’d tried to get her partners to buy into time blocking into the past without success – this time she proposed they each commit three hours a week to new initiatives for just 30 days, a much easier sell. Each team member blocked this time in their calendar for that four week period.

Give change priority

Once you’ve blocked time for a key activity, you need to treat this seriously – cancel that commitment on the same basis that you would an appointment with a key client.

Create accountability

This advisor and her colleagues carved out time in each weekly meeting to talk about how they had done on their key activity in the past week.

Celebrate success

We all know that success breeds success. Focus on little wins to build momentum behind your new activity.

Maintain momentum

Once they had momentum behind one new activity, they shifted focus and used the time block that each team member had dedicated each week to concentrate on the next initiative they would tackle.

In summary

You can think about how to organize your time each week in two ways.

Most advisors have their activity drive their schedule – they identify what they want to do in the coming week, then set aside time to do it.

Time blocking reverses that process. Rather than activity driving your schedule, your schedule drives your activity – by blocking time off for priority activities, those time blocks then define how you spend your day.

For those of you who aren’t sure about how to get started in making changes in your business, consider these words from German philosopher Johann van Goethe:

“Whatever you dream, begin it – but be bold. Few things have the power of boldness”.