BachrachBlog

Keeping your head above water. Drowning in paperwork. Trying to stay afloat. Up a creek without a paddle. Smooth sailing. Have you ever noticed how many water-related expressions there are for describing the way you do business? That’s because it’s such a great metaphor, and one you can easily relate to.

Do an interesting little exercise using this metaphor. Take out a piece of paper, draw a horizontal line across the middle, and pretended it was a water line. Above the line, list all the activities that really matter in building a successful business. Below the line, list the distractions that could keep them from being successful financial advisors. Basically, only three activities belong above the line: acquiring clients, serving clients, and building your team.

ABOVE-THE-LINE ACTIVITIES

Nearly everyone agrees that brand-new advisors should spend a huge amount of time on client acquisition. Unfortunately, many established advisors think the rule doesn’t apply to them. They often ignore this crucial above-the-line activity. Instead, they spend their time on all the activities below the line and soon find their businesses starting to go under.

The second above-the-line activity, serving clients, simply means delivering what you’ve promised. Meeting your clients’ expectations is an absolute must for keeping your head above water. This includes ensuring the timely delivery of financial plans, money management services, and advice about insurance, budgeting, debt reduction or elimination, cash management, and emergency reserves.

The third above-the-line activity is building your team. This means organizing your employees and creating successful relationships with outside resources who can provide the services your clients need.

Basically, that’s it. Unless you’re doing things to acquire clients, serve clients, or build your team, you’re spending your time on below-the-line activities that do nothing but distract you from becoming a successful advisor. Here are five common examples.

BELOW-THE-LINE ACTIVITIES

1. Overeducating Yourself: Some advisors think their job is to know everything about insurance, investments, and financial planning. Instead of harnessing the knowledge of experts who can best serve their clients, they spend all their time becoming educated in those areas.

2. Reading Financial Pornography: Watching 24-hour news reports, reading financial newspapers and magazines, tracking the prices of oil and gold, and trying to guess the impact that the next terrorist bombing will have on the market is a waste of time, yet advisors are consumed with that kind of stuff. Your clients really want you to help them achieve their goals—and for the record, beating the market is not a goal.

3. Hanging Around with the Wrong People: If you’re hanging out with people who have average businesses with average client satisfaction and average productivity, then chances are your business will be a lot like that, too. Don’t confuse consensus with wisdom. Just because most of the financial services industry is living below the line doesn’t mean it’s the right place to be. As Jim Rohn says, you can do anything you want. You’re not a tree. Move! Be where you want to be, and do what you want to do. How can you tell whether you’re hanging out with people who are living below the line?

4. Failing to Delegate: Trying to do everything yourself is the last and probably worst example of below-the-line activity.

No one wants to see their businesses sink. To keep your head above water, remember this simple metaphor and spend your time above the line. Focus on the three activities that really matter—acquiring clients, serving clients, and building your team—and don’t get drowned in a sea of distractions.

In the previous blog, I mentioned that I have identified 12 clear choices that are turning points in the careers of virtually every financial professional.  Every producer makes these choices either deliberately or by default. Six of these are best presented as positive choices that consistently lead to greater success (these were mentioned in the previous blog) and six of these choices are best presented as commonly unmade choices that lead to failure, or worse: mediocrity. 

Here are the 6 choices never made or not made soon enough:

1. Failure to recognize that what got you from where you were to where you are today may not be the best way to get from where you are today to where you want to be in the future. (Failure to change.)

Do you believe that the industry legends would do the same things they did in the 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, or 80s today?  Their genius was not in what they did then.  Their genius was their ability to figure out what worked at whatever time they needed it.

2. Failure to implement well.

Will Rogers once said, “Even if you’re on the right track you will still get run over if you just sit there.”  There are no secrets in business. 

3. Failure to master the referral interview. (Training your clients to do all your sales and marketing.)

All prospecting and marketing other than referrals should be temporary.  Prospecting and marketing is what some people who have no clients or no natural market have to do to get started.  Unfortunately, some producers get so good at it that they just keep doing it forever.

4. Failure to master the art of delegation.

My mentor said, “I’m very good at what I do because I only do what I am very good at?”  If you are only going to do what you are very good at then you have to hire people who are very good at the other things.  Hiring well and delegating is a skill that all serious business people must develop. 

5. Failure to align your choices and your target market with your values.

I am not a teacher of target marketing, but I have been a pretty good student.  One of the key decisions that I believe was instrumental to the success I enjoy today was the choice to make the financial services industries my exclusive target market.  It wasn’t an easy decision to be industry-specific, but it was one of my best.

6. Failure to write your book.

Are you currently writing a book?  Have you ever thought it would be a good idea?  Have you ever read a book on money or insurance and said, “I could have written that?”  

Simply rate yourself on a scale of 1-10 in each of the 6 areas above and then begin to make incremental improvements.  Be honest with yourself and make a commitment to make the choices that will propel you to your highest level of success.