Are you spending a considerable part of your day putting out fires? As a financial advisor usually the culprit is miscommunication. Let me give you an example…

Your client has been planning a dream trip to Europe.  It’s been her lifelong ambition to spend a month visiting the castles and absorbing the history of the region where her family originated.  She discussed this with your team and it’s been part of her financial plan for a long time.  

Only trouble is, she’s been expecting funds to be transferred into her operating account, and the funds haven’t arrived.  Somehow, something has gone wrong.  Does this situation become a mad scramble in your office as everyone tries to follow the trail, and in the process, starts blaming everyone else for the breakdown of office efficiency? 

But, that’s not the worst of it.  You, as the trusted financial advisor, haven’t been apprised of the situation. Late in the day you accidentally discover that this client is very irritated that your team have been working all day (without success) trying to locate a funds transfer, which never showed up in her account. 

Wouldn't you have preferred to know?  Shouldn't you have known from the beginning?  

A standardized process for handling all problems can help your organization avoid such an unfortunate occurrence.  Yes, it takes some time to document processes and then even more time to implement them among all of your team members, but the results  are truly worthwhile.

Once you’ve created and established the process, then it’s critical to create a culture of insistence regarding the use of your processes.  Since you’re the leader of the team, it falls to you to insist upon its consistent use.  

What can you do if one of your team members is less than enthusiastic in complying?  Consider giving examples of how their awareness might help resolve problems more quickly. 

Help them visualize the negative outcome. Illustrate how uninformed, or even foolish, they’d look if they contact a client on another matter, totally unaware of a major problem being aggressively tackled by another team member.  For clients to have confidence in your organization, team members should never appear unaware, negligent or flaky. Give an example, putting them in the situation.  

Then show them the positive outcome of following processes.  Describe how impressed and satisfied a client would be, if an unrelated team member has the ability to give an update regarding their problem.  This demonstrates an exceptionally effective and impressive communication system among your team that instills confidence in your clients.

Would you like to learn how you can create a foolproof process for solving problems as well as many others that save time, money, and effort? Check out The Trusted Advisor Toolkit.  It makes creating a fine tuned financial organization easy.