Scaling your business to effectively serve more clients

Dentists can be efficient time managers, often seeing multiple patients daily. The process at the dentist’s office is that you usually spend almost all of your time with the hygienist. The dentist comes in at the end, gets updated by the hygienist, looks in your mouth, discusses anything that comes to his attention and leaves.

This allows dentists to see many more patients every week than they might otherwise. It also allows them to spend more time with patients who have more complex problems that the hygienist can’t handle.

There are at least two ways that you could set up a similar model in your business:

• With clients other than your top ones, visit with the client briefly to catch up and then have an associate take over the meeting. This frees up time for you to focus on your top clients and new business.
• Have a team member handle everything that needs handling after your client meetings. This could involve having someone work with the client to go over all the details and follow up on documents. It should involve preparing applications and forms for your review. It could also involve things such as teaching clients how to use your portal, following up on paramedical appointments and with underwriting, calling to set up client appointments, keeping track of the CRM and so forth. If there’s enough business, it could involve a paraplanner obtaining the information needed, inputting the information and running hypotheticals for your review.

In my 25 years working with and observing top financial advisors, most only perform three functions:

1. Getting in front of and speaking with prospects and centers of influence
2. Keeping in touch with their best clients and keeping them happy (and much of this work can be delegated)
3. Supervising — not doing — all the other work for running the business

Even for financial advisors who only have one assistant, the dentist’s model can help them make the most effective use of their time.

Fixed appointments

Another aspect of this model is fixed appointment times. While we all want to accommodate clients and prospects to the extent we can, too many advisors let their clients run their schedules.

You offer a client a 2 p.m. or 4 p.m. appointment next Tuesday and they want 3 p.m., so you move someone to accommodate them. Or you make Wednesday evening available for them and they ask for Thursday, and you go ahead and change your evening plans. This tells the client that you’re not that busy and that they are in charge.

Imagine arguing with the dentist’s office about the appointment day and time you want after being told what is available. Do you think you would be successful? Dentists have a set schedule, which is flexible only for emergencies. Do you follow a master schedule with fixed appointment times?

Delegate as much as you can to your team, teach clients and prospects to respect your time, and you’ll have more time to do the work that you do best.

Sandy Schussel is a performance acceleration coach who has been working with financial advisors for more than 20 years, helping them break through to higher production levels. Contact him to learn how he can help you make selling the least of your concerns.

Learn more about how to make the most of your time:

• Watch “Delegate: How you spend your time counts”
• Read “How to go from MDRT to Court of the Table by delegating”