Five reasons why 'summer-is-slow' is no excuse for an advisor to slow down

Brooke’s Note: Abby has an exciting new job that she is starting after hardly catching her breath from her old one. She is the poster woman for summer productivity. See: Abby Salameh joins LPL’s largest branch office. So when I was talking to her about the leap I asked about her philosophy of work during the summer doldrums. The answer is this column.

The summer months can be eerily quiet at the office. Clients are at their country homes — or just laying low — and it feels like you need to run through quicksand to get anything done.

Either an accountant, lawyer or family member with decision-making powers is at some un-Skype-able lake in Ontario. More commonly, clients are simply indifferent to the niceties of financial planning and investing amid the sounds and smells of the seashore, mountains or mown grass.

It happens in every business — outside of snow cone stands — and financial advisors are not immune. In fact, I know many advisors who do not have any office hours on Mondays or Fridays in the summer. I recently asked one advisor why and his response was: “Summer is a really slow time.” See: How RIAs are becoming as complacent as wirehouses — and what it’ll take to snap out of it.

There is a legitimate argument to be made for deliberately going with the summer slow flow and indulging your inner European. Life is short and so is summer. There are golf balls that need hitting and picnics lunches that need packing.

But what an advisor should not do is give into the summer slowdown on false pretenses. Sure the trading market has less zing to it and clients have aren’t as eager to hear from you. But what exactly does that have to do with building your advisory practice?

I am here to debunk the myth that summer office time is wasted time and say to you summertime sloths, “Put your cocktail — and/or golf club, sailboat, tennis racket — down and get to work!” It’s not too late to make the most of the last few weeks of the summer and kick yourself into high gear for the fall and the fourth quarter.

Here are five activities to spark August productivity.

1. Streamline your office

What better time than summer days to go through your processes and determine if they are streamlined? Look at your client-onboarding process and map it out. See: Financial advisors need to look at client onboarding in a whole new light. Take a look at your prospect pipeline and create a process for continuous drip on that list. Take the processes you create and convert them into workflows in your customer relationship management system. Assign tasks to the appropriate staff in your office, then set the workflow to work. You will see immediate improvement in efficiency. Mark, a financial advisor in New Jersey, estimates he was able to shave off at least five hours a week of unnecessary confusion over who was doing what and trying to determine whether a task had been completed or not.

“Taking the time to create simple workflows for my office for all recurring activities was a real time-saver for me and my operational staff,” he says. See: Nine pitfalls for advisors to avoid when taking on new employees.

2. Seek opportunities now

Heather, an advisor in New York, spent the last few weeks evaluating her book of business. She took a look at what her clients were currently invested in, making sure they were appropriately invested for their goals, and revisited clients who had cash on the sidelines or had insurance needs they’ve been putting off.

“It was a great time for me to reconnect with some of my clients that mentioned additional needs to me earlier in the year, but then we both never followed up on them,” Heather says. She was able to generate some new revenue from existing clients just by revisiting their situation. See: The art of breathing: How to handle the overwhelm of being a financial advisor in 2012.

3. Dust off your business plan

Summertime sloths: Put your cocktail —
and/or golf club, sailboat, tennis racket
—down and get back to work!

Break that business plan out from the archives and look at it. Have you accomplished your goals for the year? Were there initiatives you said you wanted to achieve that you did not? Did you bring in the 10 new clients you said you wanted to? If not, you still have time to do so. Put the plan in place now to take you to the end of year with success.

4. Use procrastination to your advantage

Take a look at that dreaded to-do list and trick your brain into making those tasks less dreadful. This is called productive procrastination. It means putting your most dreaded task further down on your list of things to do and starting with the smaller tasks first. When you complete each smaller task, the bigger one seems like less of a pain. See: What Target, Apple and Whole Foods tell us about Black Friday and our economy.

I met one advisor who was incredibly skeptical that this would work. So, we worked together to create his to-do list and the biggest “to do” was to call his A clients and ask each one of them for a referral. He was dreading making those calls. So, instead, we put three or four smaller tasks higher up on the priority list. Once he got through those easily, there was nothing left for him to do BUT call his A clients and ask for referrals. Not only did he do this willingly, but it resulted in more than 10 new referrals and six new clients.

5. Stay on top of the game

Even pro athletes keep busy in their off-season. Many of them take that time to get bigger, faster or stronger — and so should you. Take this time to expand your knowledge by completing any continuing-education classes, complete that license or designation you have been putting off, make yourself more valuable to your clients and brush up on skills you need to be the best financial advisor you can be.

Abby Salameh is chief marketing officer for Private Advisor Group. See: Abby Salameh joins LPL’s largest branch office. She brings 20 years’ experience working directly with independent advisors. Having started her career at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. Inc. in 1992, Abby went on to help launch InvestmentNews for Crain Communications Inc. In 2002, she joined TD Ameritrade to head the marketing efforts for its institutional services. More recently, Abby has been providing strategic and tactical marketing consulting for leading industry firms, including large broker-dealers and independent advisors. She joined Fusion Advisor Network in 2011.