Distraction-Proof® Advisor Ideas

AdviserBlast – Quick Tips to Accelerate Your Practice
In this issue: If you want to make real progress, get specific

Distractions abound like never before. So staying focused takes more effort than ever before. Getting specific about how you use your split seconds each day is the most powerful tool you can use to move toward your goals.

Question:
Your advice last month to consider what I want and why was helpful, but I feel like there’s more I could do day-to-day to help me achieve my goal. I’m just not sure exactly what to do.

Answer:
When I swam, I always had the indisputable and specific measurement of the clock to give me an honest assessment of my progress. Setting specific marks to measure your progress is a great way to be realistic about how you are tracking in business, too.

The following are three effective ways to help you make and measure the progress you want to achieve.

1.   Set a definite date by which to achieve your goal.
If you want to be a $500,000 producer, by when do you want to do that? If you’re not specific, you could spend the rest of your life trying to achieve that and still never make it. After reviewing your book of business and determining a realistic goal, you should then set an “achieve by” date.

Then, work back from that point to set your short- and medium- term goals, with specific dates, to ensure you stay on track.

2.   Make your efforts quantifiable and realistic.
To build your book to generate $500,000 from fee-based assets, how many $10mm households do you want?  How many $5mm households do you want?

Many advisers want a huge book, but can’t provide definite details about the specific clients that book will comprise. Then they can too easily fall into seeing anyone as a potential client, and their qualifying criteria become blurred and haphazard.

When your target is quantifiable and realistic, you don’t “need” everyone as a client: instead of looking for a monstrous-sounding $120 million to have under management, all you need to find are the right 25 people.

3.    Are you doing the most effective activities?
Simply doing activities which could possibly help you reach your goal is actually causing you to lose ground these days. You must be certain that your daily activities are directly moving you closer to achieving your goal.

For instance, you might be spending a lot of time segmenting your book, preparing to call your “A” clients. In fact, it may be smarter and more effective to hold a conference call with many clients on the phone at once, where you can provide expert market commentary and timely reassurance, presenting answers the whole group would benefit from hearing.

If you have your specific, quantifiable, actionable goals written down, with definite deadlines, you have everything you need to objectively evaluate your daily activities and make real progress toward your goal.

Get ruthless, and cull those things which are distracting you from where you are going.

Stay Tenacious!
Paul

Copyright Paul Kingsman 2009
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Paul Kingsman provides financial services professionals practical tools to achieve consistent, outstanding results. As a motivational speaker and executive coach, he is a sought after expert on how to make your split seconds count. Having won an Olympic medal by only four one-hundredths of a second, Paul knows the importance of keeping focused and now teaches people how to overcome distractions and achieve their own success. His experience as an adviser for Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo has given him an insider’s understanding of the unique business challenges faced by financial services professionals and an ability to guide his clients in implementing results oriented solutions.

To find out more about how he can help equip you or your team to achieve your own Split Second Success® through his presentations or executive coaching, email him at Paul@PaulKingsman.com

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