Addressing multiple areas to maximize growth

The team of 4 advisors was leveraging an outside 3rd party for help in guidance on investment management. The challenge was in finding the time to effectively leverage the information from the 3rd party to make portfolio decisions. The team of investment advisors struggled to find the time to interpret the information and make the trades across thousands of accounts. This also created a challenge with administrative tasks, such as determining what to sell within a portfolio to accommodate a distribution request. 

I Sourced numerous options to take these important tasks off the plate of the advisors and presented the pros and cons to the team. After considering the objectives of the organization and the cost of the options available, the team chose to move down the path of hiring an in house employee with a background in trading and account management. 

I sourced numerous candidates for the organization, pre-screened them and passed them along to interview. The organization found the right candidate, both in experience and as a culture fit and hired their newest employee.

Marketing for this organization was not defined or measured. This made it very difficult to determine what activities were worth repeating and which ones were not. We began with an exercise to lay out what has been done in the past, and when available, what the results were. Engagement conversations were had with each member of the team and collectively to determine both individual and organization objectives. A Keep, Start, Stop exercise was held with the team and from there a full calendar year marketing plan was created. Deadlines, action items, and roles and responsibilities were clearly defined as well as tracking metrics to make annual planning easier moving forward. 

Client service was a challenge for the team because clients were not properly identified based on the value to the overall business. AUM was used as the defining factor of where a client fell on a very loose segmentation spreadsheet; however, other, relevant factors were not included at all. We conducted a series of reviews to account for other factors and the segmentation output changed drastically. From there, proper service and support standards were created for each segment as well as defined touchpoints. Staff took this information and updated the shared CRM as well creating a defined process for labeling new clients as they are acquired.  

Multiple staff members were involved in the day to day operations of the organization; however, the tasks and responsibilities of each staff member were not defined. Confusion was constant because each advisor and each staff member completed the same tasks differently. We began by creating defined workflows, shared those workflows with all members and adjusted accordingly based only upon agreed processes. Once everyone agreed to the new processes, the advisors knew that staff would not deviate from these processes, meaning the advisors too had to adjust their approach and expectations. Getting organization wide buy-in to the consistent processes and team structure ensured a simple, repeatable workflow that would help if/when the organization chose to add more advisors or staff. 

 As a result of the individual and collective conversations, it became clear that the organization was suffering from numerous cases of right people, wrong seat. This led to conversations about how to leverage an individuals personal objectives to still reach the overall company objectives and culminated in staff and advisors changing their roles and responsibilities within the organization. The organization was now crystal clear on how to implement their growth objectives when it comes to recruiting.