7 Excuses that Prevent Your Financial Team from Being Prepared
Help your team overcome these 7 mental roadblocks to documenting processes, so your financial organization can keep running smoothly even if someone is unavailable.
You trust your team but what if one of your team members were suddenly unable to perform their job? What if sudden illness or an accident made the person you trust and rely on completely unavailable to you? Would your financial organization come to a screeching halt or have a terrible time scrambling to cover everything?
Now imagine that someone else is able to step into the role and immediately fill the need. While it may sound unlikely, you really can have a business that functions that smoothly. The key is documenting all of your processes. It’s the smartest business model and creates the only foundation upon which you can build a growing team of experts.
However, as financial advisor, you’re coordinating a team of highly experienced professionals (Estate Planning Attorneys, CPA's, Financial Planners, Insurance Consultants, etc). They are highly successful business owners in their own right, and they may not be accustomed to following any process other than their own. So, when they’re first introduced into your team, there could be confusion, or lack of compliance because of mental roadblocks.
Let’s examine 7 excuses you may hear from your team when you ask them to begin documenting every process and how you should respond:
- “I don’t know where to start.”
You as the trusted financial advisor must have a clear vision of how everything should be organized and documented so you can give your team clear direction from day one.
- “The office is too busy doing the work to stop and document the process.”
No business can afford to shut down for a week to get it all done. Rather, your team must agree to create processes every day as part of their normal routine.
- “Everyone has a different method of documenting processes.”
Provide your team with easy-to-implement templates for documenting each process.
- “There’s not an organized place to post and share processes with the entire team.”
As financial advisor, it’s part of your role to give your team a place where it’s easy to access and share information.
- “Nobody is accountable for updating the process when something significant changes.”
Assign someone to stay on top of this, perhaps your Administrative Manager.
- “Once everything is documented, I’ll become dispensable.”
Nothing is further from the truth. The documenting of processes is an ongoing process itself. As each client brings in a unique need, a new process will be created. So, make sure your team understands that they won’t become disposable. They’ll become more valuable as they document the processes.
- “We’re reinventing the wheel. There’s no process to create a process."
Yes, there is. It’s called The Trusted Advisor Toolkit. Our team has done all the work for you so your team can create a documented process for anything in your practice in 20 minutes or less. We’ve uploaded proven documented processes, so you can pick the one you need and customize it to your office. There’s also a secured intranet where you can store your major processes for everyone on your team to access.
The success of your financial organization depends upon all of your team members being committed to documenting processes. Is it realistic to think there can be processes documented for every step? Yes! Why not take a look at the case study of financial advisor, Kate Wilson and see how The Trusted Advisor Toolkit works.
