Capacity is the number one challenge for elite financial advisors

I speak with 10-20 financial advisors every week. For the last 3 to four weeks, I have seen financial advisors' capacity issues grow. Why? It is because they have more business coming in than they can handle, dealing with their client's emotions during volatile markets, and trying to communicate as much as possible. But the toll is starting to grow, because most financial advisors have not taken enough time off in the last two years, and feel they need to catch up, but when? What does this mean for them and their staff, if they are feeling overwhelmed, as more calls, more technology, more compliance, more volatility, and more issues pop up every week? Ready for some good news? Replace your feeling of overwhelm with gratitude. Reach for something positive, a book, a website, and start every morning by working on yourself first. You can only do what you can do. For example, a successful financial advisor I work with spends the first hour of every weekday morning focusing on getting into a state of gratitude and positive energy. He has a positive habit pattern. What is your daily positive habit pattern? Everyone calls us to help grow our business Why is it that all these firms think we need help in growing our business? From technology companies to investment firms, do they not understand that the number one issue for financial advisors is capacity? Do they not understand that we have a successful business already and business is going well. We are growing however, the challenge we have is managing our capacity, as we have too many clients and we're trying to figure out how we're going to manage it all, not how we're going to grow it. We don't want to grow anymore If marketers and firms took the approach that people were already successful and that we need help in other areas of our business, I think they would get a lot more clients, don't you? The financial advisors I work with are often not trying to dramatically grow their business. They are not looking for a lot of new clients. Yes, they would like to acquire a few more ideal clients but only high net worth, high revenue ideal clients usually 10 ideal families in a calendar year. What is the number one challenge elite financial advisors face? Capacity is the number one challenge for most elite financial advisors and their teams. Imagine if you can get another 200 to 400 hours in a calendar year, what that might do for your business or your lifestyle in 2023? How do you build and manage capacity? There are six areas to help you manage your capacity as a financial advisor. The first area is segmentation the second is technology the third is practice management processes the 4th is people the 5th is delegation and the sixth is time management processes. Let's examine how you can build capacity in your practice in 2023?   Segmentation Most financial advisors segment their business every few years. Elite advisors segment on an annual basis and they usually have two segments not three or four. They segment based on ideal families and everyone else. They focus on finding not just ideal clients, but ideal families which generate ideal revenue for them. They know where they want to spend their time and who they want to spend it with. Most importantly they know who they want to spend less time with. I get it you want to spend time with everyone however, they just know there isn't enough time so they make sure clients are being well serviced by the people that have the time to do it. This is usually another financial advisor. Email me at grant@ghicks.com for a copy of our segmentation guide Technology Technology does it better job in doing repetitive tasks than people do. Check out our technology checklist to see where you can leverage your time by using technology. The tech categories seem to grow each and every year and practice management focuses on leveraging technology for financial advisor practices. https://technologychecklist.getresponsepages.com/ Practice management processes Practice management is about three things. Process, process, process. Financial advisors know they need three clearly defined and written processes that they can articulate. Process one is the ideal client acquisition. The second is the ideal client service. The third process is all the other processes is that you need to manage your business and your practice effectively. Get a copy of our comprehensive practice management checklist here https://practicemanagement.getresponsepages.com/ People How many ideal clients or families can you manage in a calendar year? Now how many ideal clients and families can your team effectively manage in a calendar year? Most elite teams are working past capacity and they know they need more people on their team yet lack the time to add more people to their team because training these people takes time. The average advisor trained staff 4 hours per year. Adding people to your team will give you an extra 200 to 400 hours each year. at $500 per hour, this is a simple return on investment calculation. Delegation You can delegate everything in financial services except prospecting. The more you delegate to your team and the more processes you have, the more you'll be able to spend time with your ideal client's ideal families and ideal prospects. You can also spend more time with your ideal centers of influence. With elite teams, we go through a delegation checklist and see where we can delegate and save the advisor a tremendous amount of time by putting processes into place. Time management strategies Your goal this year as a financial advisor is to find 100 to 200 hours of extra time this year. How you do it is up to you. It starts with your calendar and managing it on a daily weekly and monthly basis. We all have time management strategies and how that works well for us. We also have bad time management habits. In the never-ending struggle of important versus urgent, urgent usually wins, unless you stick to your calendar. I encourage you to segment your business and think about implementing technology training staff or adding staff delegates and letting go and being really strict with your calendar. Remember elite advisors usually take 8 or more weeks off every year. They trust their team because they have processes in place. Take a sheet of paper and write these six strategies down so you can find more capacity in your business this year.   Simple time management ideas for financial advisors First off, do you have a perfect week mapped out and time blocked? Create the perfect week, then the perfect month, map out the perfect quarter and there you have the perfect year. You have control of your time, so control it. How many clients do you want to see per week, per month, and when? How many prospects do you need to see per week, per month and how many do you need to add to your pipeline per week, per month? How many COI'sdo you need to see per week, per month, and how many do you need to add to your pipeline per week, per month? Be in control of a few weekly numbers, ___ ideal clients to see ___ Ideal prospects to see, Ideal COI's to see and ___ add how many ideal prospects per week to the pipeline. For example see 6 clients 4 ideal and 2 non-ideal per week, 2-3 prospects per week, 1-2 COIs per week to see and add 3 Prospects to the pipeline per week ( from COI's and clients introductions, events weekly, and other marketing activities) Now map out your week and create the weekly habits, because this is what you are in control of. You do not need to call everyone this week and follow up with everyone immediately. They understand you are a busy professional. Take back the control of your time! Book ideal client service time differently Mornings are booked for elite advisors as the time to work with ideal clients and Ideal prospects. Afternoons are planned for client service issues. If non-ideal clients ( not in your top 25) call in the morning, they can be dealt with in the afternoon. If you run out of time, then they roll to the next afternoon, not the next morning. Be firm on your service, as your best clients are paying the most to get the best of you!    How do you go from where you are now, to where you want to be? How can financial advisors generating $500k of income get to one million plus revenue? How do you go from $1 millioin to 1.5 million or 2 million to 3 million?  I will give you a hint. It’s not about time management. It is also not about products or services. It’s about your path to success, are you on it? What is Your Path to Success?   For financial advisors struggling to grow, they are on the path to frustration and as one advisor told me, chaotic. How can you go from $500k in revenue to over 1 million, 2 million 3 million or more? What are the keys to your path to success? Let’s examine your current path?   Ideal Clients Defined   Do you have a clear definition of what an ideal client is? How much revenue do you want to generate for every ideal client, family or household? Is it $5000 or $10,000 or $20,000 $50,000 or more? Defining what your ideal revenue is first. Then plan on delivering more value to those clients that pay you the most, and you will gain confidence by delivering more to your best clients.   What Value Add Did You Deliver Last Year?   What are the value-added items did you deliver to your best clients last year? Did you deliver a comprehensive estate plan in writing? Did you build a legacy binder for them, or do a beneficiary audit? Did you give more comprehensive planning and advice, or was it all about performance? What are you going to deliver of great value this year? “Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is Albert Einstein’s definition of insanity. Deliver more value, means you are worth more. This is how you are going to go from generating $5000 per client to eventually $10,000 to $20,000 or more revenue to you. ( Note I am not saying charging fees, depending on your compensation, it is the revenue generated by assets, fee-based commissions or other methods. This is up to you and your firm.) Measure Your Revenue   The number on thing advisors measure is their overall revenue. Divide your total revenue by the number of clients, and you have your average revenue per client. Now measure your top 10 revenue per client. This will help you determine your ideal revenue per ideal client.   Measure the Number of Ideal Clients   How many ideal clients do you have now generating your ideal revenue per client? If your ideal revenue per client is $30,000 and you have 20 clients paying that, how many could you manage in a calendar year, if that is all you did? If eventually all of your time was spent on ideal clients and prospects, how many could you manage in a calendar year delivering more value to each year? Usually, the number is 100 or less. Is this the path you are currently on? Or are you just getting more and more clients and less and less time?   Steps on the Path   So let’s focus on the path to success. First focusing on delivering more value to your best clients. Let’s say you have 50 clients generating $30,000. Then acquiring more ideal clients where the revenue is more. Let’s say you acquire 10 new ideal clients per year at $40,000 each. Now in 5 years, you have 50 clients generating $2 million in revenue. You end up with fewer clients and more revenue. Is this the path you are on?