Managing a growing advisory firm is never easy, and the
COVID-19 pandemic has made it more difficult. While the drastic and immediate
shift to remote work has created new problems, the hardest part of running a
business remains the same: managing people.
You want your advisors to use their time wisely and be
productive, but you also need to understand how they work and what their limits
are to avoid causing burnout.
Burnout has been a persistent problem in American
businesses. As far back as 2012, 40% of workers said they were so stressed that
they felt burnt out. And now in 2021, the pandemic has led to new levels of
exhaustion.
What’s an advisory firm owner to do? The answer is found in
modeling a workweek. Here’s how to do it:
Begin With Your Client Experience
Before designing an action plan, it helps to understand your
advisors and what they can handle. Not causing burnout is the most important
thing.
If you’re unsure how to gauge what an advisor on your team
can handle, look at your own capacity. How many clients can you reasonably work
with before your client experience begins to suffer?
For instance, you may have found that you can handle three
client meetings a day without feeling stressed. At that level you still have
time to address phone calls, emails and other immediate issues.
All advisory firms offer different client experiences,
though, so not all firms can answer the capacity question in the same way.
In general, break out the client-to-advisor ratio like this:
Semiannual client meetings: 85 clients/advisor
Annual client meetings: 144 clients/advisor
Team approach: 220 clients/advisor
Model Your Workweek
Once you have an idea of how many clients you can serve
without creating an inferior client service experience, set up an advisor’s
ideal workweek to maximize productivity.
Structuring a workweek helps each advisor to know how many
prospect and client appointments and miscellaneous tasks they can reasonably
handle without getting worked into the ground.
Consider this if you’re still having trouble with planning
out a model workweek:
The average advisor has two prospect meetings a week
The average advisor has 2-3 client meetings every day
The average advisor spends an hour in each client meeting
You should be able to track your own schedule against these
averages and adjust from there to plan out the maximums each advisor should
expect in a week. Once the limits have been reached, it’s time to hire.
Hire More Advisors
Knowing when to add more staff is the other side of keeping
your team from burning out. And somewhat surprisingly, adding more support staff
is not the answer when you want to grow your team fast.
Instead, focus on building and hiring more advisors so you
can continue to add more clients and maintain a rapid growth trajectory.
This does mean that advisors will need to continue
performing service work instead of spending all their time prospecting and
providing advice; it’s only temporary. The faster you grow, the faster you
climb toward the right time to add those service staff members instead of
another advisor.
Productivity and growth go hand in hand. Determine what a
maximum efficiency workweek looks like, and you’ll serve clients (and
prospective clients) better. As your service improves, you’ll likely see your
firm start to grow as referrals become more common.
And best of all, you’ll grow with a positive culture and an
intact team that levels up instead of burns out.
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