Which they? The product folks.  The relationship managers, wholesalers, Regional VP’s, sales management and sales people.

We are now planning our 13th annual vendor dinner.  Take a look at the blog below and begin to realize what an incredibly valuable group of people these are.

http://theadvisorscenter.wordpress.com/2009/07/26/the-vendor-event/

Eliot

Guide: The folks that call on you usually know more about their stuff than anyone.

Action item: Appreciate them and consider showing them your appreciation.

© 2012 The Advisors Center, LLC – All Rights Reserved

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Email to all involved.

Phone calls to top 10 today, next 10 tommorrow or have staff call them today.

Just check in!

“Mr. And Mrs. Client, as we are having our discussion today, you will find yourself wearing two hats. Your citizen hat and your investor hat. My job is to discuss both but keep you focused on your investor hat. The citizen hat can be very distractive and destructive towards your investment success. The investor hat is the one that allows you to take action regarding your portfolio.”

Focusing clients on the opportunity or the action item is usually more productive.

Guide: The citizen hat clouds investment decisions.

Action item: Get your clients to realize that they tend to wear two hats.

© 2011 The Advisors Center, LLC – All Rights Reserved

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For our accounting friends, “It’s the most wonderful time of the year” (hum it?).

Long hours, not much sleep, poor diet, not well rested – so what can you do to help?

How can you impress these weary tax warriors?

It is time to send – The Tax Season Survival Pack!

This is a nice package of food and goodies for their office. Whether its Hickory Farms, Swiss Colony or a giant food basket from your favorite market or vendor, send one.

Make sure it is enough to feed the crew for a day or two.

Enough for them to say, “Wow, isn’t that nice” – because it is!

They work very hard this time of year and will truly appreciate your support.

So the next question is when to have this care package delivered?

You might think near April 15th…nope.

I would suggest March 11th for 2011.

As you may now, April 15 has now become a soft date.  It is very easy and common for folks to go on extension as that date gets closer.

But the best clients they have are the business/corporate clients, whose returns are due March 15th – and they don’t want to go on extension!

Delivering on March 11th is about the time when the nights and days all blur together and the crunch is on. 

Think about it:  your nice package arriving during the heat of battle. A beautiful thing!

Guide – Treat your accounting centers of influence to a treat during their most stressful week of the year

Action Item – Send the Tax Season survival Pack and feed them and their staff.

© 2011 The Advisors Center, LLC – All Rights Reserved

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The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads This blog is doing awesome!.

Crunchy numbers

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 2,800 times in 2010. That’s about 7 full 747s.

In 2010, there were 19 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 50 posts. There were 2 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 14kb.

The busiest day of the year was January 5th with 83 views. The most popular post that day was About Eliot M. Weissberg, CFP.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were facebook.com, linkedin.com, networkedblogs.com, twitter.com, and mail.yahoo.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for tax season survival kit, client segmentation matrix, client segmentation, client service matrix, and center of influence marketing.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

About Eliot M. Weissberg, CFP May 2009

Client Segmentation & The Service Matrix December 2009

About The Advisors Center August 2009

The Tax Season Survival Pack February 2010

About Kathleen A. Weissberg, CFP September 2009

Do you think your clients care?

I put our best phone person on to the task of answering the phone and the results have really paid off.

This staff member loves to talk on the phone. Sometimes I think she thrives on it! This genuine behavior comes through over and over again as people comment about how nice it is to call our office.

Since she was originally hired as an operations person, she is able to handle most customer inquiries right on the spot without transferring the call. The experience of the caller is dramatically improved. They feel cared for instead of feeling like they are imposing.

Guide: A person connects with a person, not a machine.

Action Item: Put an enthusiastic voice who is empowered as your client’s first point of contact.

© 2010 The Advisors Center, LLC – All Rights Reserved

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Upgrading software can be both painful and expensive:  the learning curve of new features can slow you down and the monetary outlay can make you scratch your head!

There are the costs: of purchase, the consultant, the training, the training materials, the resulting upgrades of software that work WITH this software such as add-ins, etc.

Upgrading as you go means you are not left behind and future upgrades are incremental instead of horrific.

So what to do?

I recommend you always upgrade mission critical programs that run your business.  Examples might include your CRM system, tax software or your planning software.  Optional upgrades might include email software or office applications such as word processors. 

However, make sure you upgrade anything that is no longer supported by the authoring company.

I am a big fan of staying as current as possible, but you might consider waiting for the first round of patches or hot fixes so you stay away from the “bleeding edge.”

Also evaluate the competitors’ products during an upgrade cycle.  If you are not really happy with your current tool, then it is time to consider changing vendors.

Guide: Software upgrades are generally a positive, adding capability and productivity.

Action Item: Strongly consider upgrading carefully.  Mission critical applications are usually a must purchase.

© 2010 The Advisors Center, LLC – All Rights Reserved

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You have just received a call from a client.  They are going on a trip!

Likely they have contacted you regarding a financial, legal or insurance matter for this trip.

Usually the conversation starts with, “Hi, I am going on a trip and I need…”

My first response is always – “Great!  Where are you going?”

After what is usually a pleasant conversation about the destination and addressing the reason for the call, I head right over to www.amazon.com and quickly search for “travel books (insert destination)”.

Once an appropriate choice is selected, I send it directly to the client with a cover note wishing them best and that we thought they might enjoy reading up on the destination.

The book arrives a few days later which has generally been followed by a big smile from the client and a very genuine thank you.

Guide: Clients work very hard and get very excited about a big trip to a special destination.

Action Item: Send them a travel book and let them know you share their excitement.

© 2010 The Advisors Center, LLC – All Rights Reserved

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Are you over delegating? Is there really such a thing? Does it matter?

I recently read story of an business owner who found himself nearly out of business when three of his four staff people quit and left over a very short period of time. This mass exodus caused great strain on the operation of the business and caused great concern for the owner’s clients.

Are you and your small business prepared for such a possibility? What would you do? Could you survive? Why did this professional’s business nearly fail?

The author of the above referenced article suggested that this was a clear cut case of over delegation. Our business owner had become so far removed from the day to day technology and systems of his business that he was unable to run them in the absence of help. The systems were also of such a proprietary nature that temporary help wouldn’t work. In the short run, outsourcing was also out of the question. However, after immersing himself for a sufficient period of time, the systems were quickly learned and the business did survive.

Was the author correct or was there more going on here? The owner may have been over delegating or there may have been other possibilities might including: Understaffing. Poor pay. Poor employee morale. Lack of cross training or any number of normal employee issues

In the story, we never find out why the employees left but there are clearly some lessons to be learned.

Take a look at your business and realize that it is vulnerable to all sorts of risks and perhaps knowing how to “run the machinery” is a really good idea. Carefully consider your critical systems and ask: Can I run these?, Should I know how to run these?, Do I want to know how to run these? What training will I need?

Also ask: Should I change these systems so they are less proprietary? Can I get temporary help if needed? Can I outsource these functions if needed?

Realize that nothing can take the place of a well run business where your skills are best used where YOUR talents lie.Also, the “care and nurturing” of your staff can be as important as any other business function just like customer service or marketing.

Guide: Oil the machinery: take great care of the staff as well as the hardware, software and systems they use every day.

Action Item: Know which machinery you don’t know how to run and consider what you would do if someone else was not there to run it.

© 2010 The Advisors Center, LLC – All Rights Reserved

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I was able to do this because I told them I wanted to order and have delivered a pizza to every CPA and tax preparer firm in town.

Then I went to MSFT Word and found a picture of Uncle Sam pointing his finger and I did a flyer that said “Take a break on us”, Compliments of myself and my firm. I took the flyer to the pizza place and attached it to the pizza box.

The pizza’s were then delivered and my telephone rang and rang with thank you’s from the CPA and their staffs. Referrals started coming in. It was a win win for the pizza place and a win win for me.
—
Guide – People remember and appreciate the gift of food, especially when they are hungry.

Action Item – Try Pizza Time in your town.

© 2010 The Advisors Center, LLC – All Rights Reserved

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