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Keep yourself organized, and subsequently keep your clients
organized with an organizer / binder.
Getting organized. As Louis Pasteur said 'Success favours the prepared
mind'. Think of how organized a doctors office is in regard to files and
information. Is the file or chart as it is referred to in doctors offices
look organized, or did they forget your history? When you received your
will from your lawyers office or tax return from your accountant, was it
in a presentable folder to keep all the documents organized ? Keeping
yourself and your clients documents organized shows your professionalism.
Have organized client files and client document organizers in a very
professional and presentable manner.
STRATEGY: If I walk into your office right now, is it organized? How about
if I am a client or prospect and walk out after a review. As a client or
prospect, do I walk out of your office with a life insurance policy in a
plastic bag? Or do I have a professional looking organizer with all
aspects of my financial plans in an an organized fashion. Or do I always
have to search for documents and information?
When a client has a review,
do you have a well organized file of information, updated and summarized,
or are you scrambling to remember details ? Have your files organized,
whether paper copy or on computer, to give the impression of organization.
Are your files labeled professionally or scribbled on? Do you have
systems for file preparation or is it just throw it in and file it away?
Set up your files so the access to information can be obtained by anyone
on your team easily. For example, paste client details on one side of the
file folder, and personal details on the other side.
Put colour coded file
folders inside your legal size file folder ( which I recommend) with
relevant documents such as tax planning, insurance planning, or investment
summaries where they are easily identifiable by your team. ( Note , your
compliance officer or department may have file procedures and I would
check with them for guidelines. It will also help if you get audited or
reviewed on a regular basis by your compliance officer.)
For your clients, do you have policy wallets if you sell insurance? Do you
have client review binders or organizers? If you don’t I suggest to ask
your company if they have organizers, or take a trip to your printer or
stationary store and get client binders and organizers for them. Just
imagine if I turn my portfolio over to you and the last firm provided me
with a client organizer and you don’t have one. What message are you
sending? Some firms have customized material, which you may decide not to
use for everyone, but your top clients.
Grant's Tip - You may be asking yourself at this point, how does this fit
into my marketing plans? If I was a prospect and you showed me your
personal prepared binder, organized with all the documents, tabs and
information on your financial plan, and then you said to a prospect, this
is what you can expect, would they have a reason to do business with you.
Would your image and professionalism be one notch higher than the advisor
who handed them a cheap brochure ? Have a client binder prepared for them
with the following tabs printed , depending on your type of business.
Tabs:
-
Financial Goals - Portfolio Summary- Portfolio
-
Benchmarks- Annual reviews
- Financial Plan/
-
Financial Planning documents- Retirement Plan /
-
Retirement Planning Documents - Estate plan
-
Insurance documents / Estate
planning documents
Under the tabs you can have
listing of documents to put in each section for example:
Estate Planning documents may
include:
-
Copy of Will
-
Copy of Power of Attorney \
-
Copy of Health care directives
-
Copy of instructions to Executor
-
Life Insurance Policies
-
Net worth statement
-
Pension summaries
-
Investment summaries
-
Notes / To do
Have a client binder for accountants and tell them to keep it as a
reference to your ideas that you send them. Then your ideas are now seen
as excellent reference material. You can go and purchase leather binders
with tabs in them from stationary stores, and customize the tabs for your
clients. You can also put a nice pen in the binder as a gift.
The next
time you meet, they have the binder and are well organized for the meeting
as well as you are. Most clients receive all kinds of financial mail and
sometimes are not sure what to keep. Ask them to bring it in and the
important documents you will add to the binder.
A valuable estate planning strategy to help keep your clients organized is
an estate organizer. ( see personal financial organizer) I recommend to
clients to put their estate planning documents in order and pick a date
where everything is up to date. Then write a note to your estate
administrator(s) stating that everything is up to date as of a certain
date so they don’t have to go back any further when they uncover documents
after your client has passed away.
I will repeat that last sentence since
it is very important to a clients estate plan. Have the client bring
everything up to date and then write a letter to the executor telling them
that everything is up to date as of that day. The executor who finds old
papers and documents will NOT have to search these items out to see if
they are valid anymore, thus saving hours of time for the executor.
It is
a valuable exercise for your clients and ask if they need help with it ,
you can do it together. You may uncover hidden planning opportunities for
your client also, and the level of trust is heightened. Then think how
helpful it will be to your estate administrator.
Copyright 2003 By: Jay Conrad Levinson and Grant W. Hicks, C.I.M.,FCSI - Co-author of "Guerrilla
Marketing For Financial Advisors
", Trafford Publishing 2003.
You may use these articles in your
marketing, newsletters and web sites as long as you retain the copyright
information at the bottom, including the link to our web
site and inform us where it is being used as well as sending us a copy of
the publication.
Always check with
your compliance office and or branch manager before implementing any
marketing idea. The information does not constitute a recommendation for
the sale or purchase of any securities or insurance. |
