Setting and achieving your goals.

Goal setting. You’ve heard all the one liners….‘If you don’t know where you are going, you’ll end up someplace else’; ‘Fail to plan and you plan to fail’; ‘A goal is a dream with a deadline’…

In my post “The problem with goal setting”, I reveal the single biggest contributor to achieving your goals, and why writing them down just isn’t enough.

Here, I would like to share some more hints and tips about how to ensure your goals aren’t just some wishy-washy motherhood statements that end up being more frustrating than motivating. There are four key actions you can take to solidify your goals and make the likelihood of reaching them much greater.

1. Define them as clearly as possible – treat both your personal and professional goals like KPIs in a job description. Make them measurable and specific. “Reach and maintain a goal weight of 64.5kg by March 30” is much harder to avoid than “Lose some weight.”
2. Don’t just define the end result, ensure you also specify the activities you will complete to reach that destination.  Keeping your focus on the things you can control will empower you to do what needs to be done. In the previous example, focusing on ‘exercising four times a week and sticking to eating plan’ will result in a better outcome that purely looking at the scales every day.
3. Share your goals with someone other than yourself*. Articulating your goals to yourself is the first step; sharing them with either a friend or your team mates will cement them in your mind as commitments that you are really going to strive for. Naturally, if your goals require the assistance of team members, you’ll want to keep them in the loop about their participation!
4. Make sure your goals are achievable. I’m all for stretch targets – staying in your comfort zone is booooring. But if you can’t see specifically how you will achieve your goals, they are unlikely to be fulfilled. There’s no point aiming for a goal weight of 64.5kg if that puts your BMI in the ‘underweight’ category (or the ‘for goodness sake, eat a hamburger!’ category). Similarly, if your goal is to achieve CFP® status within a year and that requires completing 5 units of study while working full-time, you might want to revise your time frame.

It is also important not to set too many goals. If you try to do too many things, your focus gets diluted, which may result in only making a small amount of progress on a lot of things. A better result is absolutely nailing your top two or three, before you focus on the next set.

*Sharing your goals is important, but don’t worry if not everyone supports you. It can be helpful to have some healthy honesty from someone with your interests at heart, especially if that means you remove your rose-coloured glasses and get a fresh take on your goals with some realism thrown in. Their comments will probably come from a place of love, but be aware that not everyone might share your energy.   It is fine to re-evaluate based on other people’s thoughts, but don’t keep second-guessing yourself, and don’t let their concern pull you down. Rather, use it as a motivator to push yourself forward.

When setting a goal, ask yourself –

• ‘Do I really want it?’
• ‘Can I see what I need to do to achieve it?’

If the answer to both of these is ‘Yes!’ then go for it and don’t let self-doubt hold you back.

If in the end you don’t achieve a goal, don’t get disheartened or beat yourself up. There is a big difference between making excuses and setting dynamic goals that are updated. Readjust your reality, perhaps even change your goal completely if need be, and then celebrate what you learned and achieved along the way.

And when you do reach your goals, celebrate your achievement and enjoy the sense of satisfaction, then think again, about where to next, and set your new goal(s). Using momentum is one part of this point, as is the depleting sense of anti-climax when you have been so focused on a particular outcome, then when it’s achieved you find yourself with a reduced sense of purpose.

Finally, don’t put so much pressure on yourself that your life becomes single-dimensional and you forget to enjoy your journey on the way to achieving your chosen destination. While ‘life balance’ is a term that varies in definition from person to person, ensure that you still participate in the things that are important to you, and spend time with the people you hold dear, as they form part of your journey. To end this post as we began it (with a quote), after all: ‘life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.’

By Sue Viskovic

The post 4 things I wish I was told about goal setting appeared first on AdviserVoice.

The business basics.

Like, answering a customer enquiry.

A friend drew my attention to a short piece of research done in the UK on how accountancy and legal practices there are using social media.  It was interesting, and it seems that both sectors are using social media reasonably well.  It was notable however that few are generating much original or branded content of their own. So even for bigger firms, content creation appears to present its challenges.

Their main reasons for professional services firms using social media are apparently to:

1. Manage corporate reputation
2. Promote thought leadership
3. Attract Talent

The growth in the social media engagement has been phenomenal too.  According to their source research (PR Week; 1 Feb 2013) more than 2.7 million people now follow FTSE 100 corporate Twitter accounts – an increase of 131% since December 2011.  There has been a 98% rise in the number of fans of FTSE 100 corporate Facebook pages – 27.4 million. And there have been 82 million views of corporate YouTube videos – an increase of 105%.

So it would seem that these firms have got into using social media, and they are putting enough content (even if very little is original perhaps) out there, and the market is engaging with them.  The platforms that you would expect to see high presence in are the dominant ones, so no surprise there (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook).

What was of some interest was some of the commentary around different strategies and curent thinking.  For example, Deloitte’s see that Slideshare presents some significant opportunity to promote their corporate intelligence, and they are taking an increased interest in Pinterest it seems.  Logically, they have worked out that their people produce a lot of powerpoints and presentations in the course of a year and that can be powerful and useful content, so they are looking for ways to use that well.

Another firm (Eversheds) uses Flickr prominently to give a physical feel and presence via photographs to their brand which is selling intangibles.  Another clever idea.

A real standout finding for me though was that of the firms reviewed, half of them did not respond to an enquiry through Twitter.

So here are some of the best professional services firms in the UK, committing heavily to establishing strong social media presence, with very clear objectives and purpose.

But….half of them did not respond to an enquiry.

How often do we see that in professional services?  Smart people running good businesses with trusted brands….and they don’t do the basics of  business well?

It reminded me that it is something which all of us risk daily. We are so busy being busy, and the business is full of clever people doing terribly urgent things, and often we forget to do the basic stuff well.  Sometimes we forget to be smart.

http://financialadvisercoach.com

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These latest results shouldn’t come as a huge surprise to anyone, given that they confirm a trend that’s been in place for a while. But rather than be overly alarmed, we believe there’s a great opportunity for the industry to respond.

According to BusinessBlades, it’s an opportunity for advisers and their dealer groups to work together in partnership to re-engineer and improve client engagement.

http://vimeo.com/67616074

If you’d like to know more about BusinessBlades, visit their website at www.businessblades.com.au

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All too often I encounter advisers who have themselves been advised by an “expert” of one sort or another that they have serious business issues…or worse: serious compliance issues that can stop their business overnight!

Fortunately for the financial adviser it just so happens that the doomsayer also happens to be the solutions provider and can fix the very problem identified.

Phew!

That was lucky wasn’t it?

Part of our evolution as a profession is the need to gain commercial maturity – and in general terms it seems we have a way to go in that respect too.  As a breed, financial advisers are often remarkably trusting creatures. They tend to think that because they must be transparent in their business dealings and overtly manage conflicts of interest it must follow that other businesses act the same way.

Well unfortunately it just doesn’t work quite that way a lot of the time.

I am not naive enough to think that merely writing a single blog post is going to change the dubious promotional and business acquisition tactics of some service suppliers to financial advisory practices.  Not a thing will change there.

However, it IS possible that some financial advisers reading this will understand the Golden Hammer Rule:

When you ask the business advice of a person with a Golden Hammer, they will treat you like another gold-tipped nail.  You are there for the banging basically.

This is especially problematic in the compliance area given the combination of relatively high adviser uncertainty; fear of the consequences of non-compliance; the lack of specific practical guidance in many instances from market regulators themselves; and the usual SME business structure of most advisers businesses (time & resource poor).

Or, to put it in very simple terms; it is an area where there are lots of small business owners frantically running to stand still in their business in any given week, who try to do the right thing but always have a lingering doubt over whether they did in fact get it right….they are there for the banging.

My top 5 tips for financial advisers obtaining external advice (especially advice that they often didn’t seek to begin with):

• Ask the service provider to engage in a disclosure proces with you.  Why shouldn’t you know who owns it, makes money from it, and what it is they do that makes them money?
• Ask the service provider directly about conflicts of interest, and their processes for managing or negating such conflicts.  You then need to satisfy yourself that any “chinese walls” type conflict-management approach is substantive and meaningful.
• Ask the service provider to provide a percentage breakdown of their revenue sources.  If for instance a business offering audit services actually generated 80% of its business revenue from selling compliance solutions, then I am going to take their independent audit service with a rather large chunk of rock salt.
• Ask the service provider to suggest other (third party) solution providers to any problems uncovered.  Then go and talk to those other solution providers.
• and finally….if the service provider doesn’t wish to be transparent with you in accordance with the 4 tips outlined above, then don’t deal with them.

Good professional financial advisers have a moral right to expect those they choose to work with to operate to the same high standards of transparency.

Demand it of them.

http://financialadvisercoach.com/

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After some 28 years of helping people with their lives and their money, I am convinced that it is a conscious appreciation of your emotions and behaviour towards money that is the single most important factor in you achieving your goals, flourishing in your life, and being happy.  Regardless of your economic situation or personality, if you can understand why you act towards money the way you do, and use this knowledge to amend future behaviours, you will be in a better place.

Hence, if as planners we can be the catalyst to bring about this awareness, and then help implement the intelligent actions that it requires, then we have achieved a job well done.

However, like a psychopath with no emotional depth or empathy towards others, our financial planning process and curriculum emphasises left-brain analysis and communication.  We look at the objective facts of the balance sheet, not the subjective influences of the heart.  We focus on what a client has, not the person they are (or desire to be). Our analytical rigour is taken to the point where the average client receiving advice is left wondering ‘what is the point?’

Which is not to diminish the importance of technical competence. Fundamentally, mastery of numeracy, legal structures, and being able to understand the objective impact of legislation, mathematics and taxation on money is an essential skill. 

Presenting this information in a compliant and concise fashion is foundational in presenting strategies that stand the test of time.  But doing just this will only ever engage a small proportion of people. Without an emotional engagement, strategies will not be implemented nor persisted with by the majority of people. 

When I look around though, I see financial planning as a field of endeavour focused on numbers, facts, and compliance.

I see a profession that relies on what we sell (financial products) for its definition rather than what we do (financial planning).  

I see a national debate about tax rates on superannuation, rather than about ensuring that people feel the importance of saving. 

Why aren’t we debating how folks can find their happiness from what they have rather than from envying what others have saved?

I see lip service paid to the notion of ‘knowing the client’ but this is demonstrated through many objective facts about their possessions. At best, the psychological tools at a planner’s disposal (if even these are used) are elementary. ‘How concerned about financial risk are you?’ Really?

John Gottman is a renowned marriage counsellor, who needs only 5 to 20 minutes observing a couple to be able to predict with 91% accuracy whether their marriage will succeed or fail.  This is not because he is psychic, but rather that he has dedicated a career to scientifically studying the transactions between partners and then measuring their impact on the longevity and happiness and satisfaction of the relationship.  In other words, he took the ultimate societal manifestation of emotions – marriage – and applied scientific techniques to understanding it better and helping others improve their lives.  He used this information to demystify one of the most important relationships most people will ever have.

Why can’t our fascination with financial modelling, asset allocations and Monte Carlo projections extend also to studying our clients’ feelings about money? 

Or better yet, how to engage our clients with the connections between financial wealth and physical well-being? Where is financial planning’s John Gottman?

Financial Planning is so dominated by left brain thinkers to the point that it borders on psychopathy, seeing emotions as the enemy of wealth accumulation. After all, emotional reactions to events like the GFC only served to exacerbate investment losses.

Yet to see a person’s behaviour with money as the single biggest threat to achieving their stated goals is to misunderstand the issue. Emotions are not to be ignored or, even worse, relegated to a lower stratum than logic. What is important is to appreciate that no decision at all can be made without emotions. 

Psychotherapist Philippa Perry cites research that shows how emotions are critical to any decision making. A lack of emotion does not lead to more logical, reasoned choices – it leads to chaos. People rely on emotions to navigate their way through life, whether they are aware of it or not.

I was asked recently why more planners aren’t involved in Aged Care. It’s a financially complex area, especially when you consider the interplay between assets, Centrelink and nursing home costs. It is difficult to find a sector where people can so explicitly benefit from expert advice. It seems a no-brainer for planners to be involved here. Many financial planners have beefed up their expertise on this, developing their knowledge, and yet have relatively little to show for this.

I suspect that it has more to do with the emotional issues going through people’s minds. Seeing a parent age and become feeble is challenging at any time. But the planner who shows them how to come to terms with this, while caring for their Mum, and handling their siblings (especially the brother who has that shrew of a second wife who is just trying to get her hands on the antique dresser) without appearing to be a vulture themself is going to be the success. 

But nobody puts the research and science behind understanding and teaching skills to deal with these emotions. Easier to just leave it to the psychopaths – numbers don’t talk back.

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All too often an employer will take an ad hoc approach, taking little time to prepare for the interview. What transpires is often a meandering discussion where most of the core areas are, at best, only touched on and at worst, overlooked entirely.

This is not limited to those who have little interview experience; often the key offenders are those who have extensive experience and that in itself can be their Achilles heel. I recall speaking to a practice manager responsible for recruiting financial planners and when I asked him what preparation he made before each interview, he laughed and said ‘I don’t do any. I’ve been doing this for years and know what to ask’. But when I queried him on a particular interview he conducted with a senior financial planner, he admitted that he had left some of the key criteria for the position out of the interview.

Even employers who exercise caution when making decisions about their business seem to take a more relaxed approach to interviews – and this is not limited to those who work in the same way as our practice manager. Often it is a matter of familiarity with the candidate that lulls the employer in to less formal way of conducting the interview.

Candidate familiarity can be a positive in that you might know the interviewee as a colleague from the industry however often that knowledge doesn’t replace a formal interview where the candidate has to talk about a range of pertinent issues in a formal context.

The key to successful interviewing lies in the preparation for each interview. This not only ensures that you cover off all relevant issues, but gives the candidates a sense that you are treating the interview process seriously. I don’t know how many times I have had positive feedback from candidates who felt that the time spent with a prospective employer was well spent due to thoroughness of the questions asked.

Alternatively, I have had numerous experiences where candidates provided negative feedback on prospective employers who came across as disorganised. Some of these stories are close to comedic where employers have the wrong candidate CV, spend the whole interview reading the CV, or continue dealing with other business matters during the interview.

One financial planner told me that the interviewer was constantly distracted by phone calls and when he wasn’t speaking to someone on the phone, was checking the markets on his computer. The employer was taken aback when the candidate turned down the offer when it was made to her.

Then there are those employers who are so organised that they have compiled a check list of questions that are a mile long that would, under normal circumstances, take hours to get through. Rather than streamline the questions they plough on regardless even if the candidate is less than fully responsive. This cookie cutter approach can spell the death knell for the candidate who makes a hasty retreat from the opportunity, never to be heard of again – and once again the employer is mystified as to what has gone wrong!

The most productive interviews are a positive two way experience. I always advise clients that they should they allow the candidates to ask questions about the role and the business itself. It should also be looked on as an opportunity for the employer to sell the opportunity to the candidate in terms of the scope of the role now and potential career development in to the future.

In part two of this article I will take you through the structure of the interview questionnaire and the types of questions that you should consider using.

www.dawsonpartnership.com.au

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Be careful what you promise…

A few weeks ago, for some unknown reason, I glanced at the local newspaper’s glossy real estate insertion into the weekend edition. As a small farm dweller for almost twenty years, one ad caught my eye because of the photograph accompanying the pitch.

It was a very peaceful scene: a river setting with a gently flowing stream lined with whispering She Oak trees.  It looked idyllic – the perfect escape yet it immediately struck me that the river frontage might have been the best thing about the offering.  After all, if the house was brilliant or the land very fertile with high production capabilities, those aspects might have been more keenly promoted; brought to the fore in the advertisement.

River front, water front, harbour/mountain views or high investment returns – it’s all the same.  Pitching all that might be good about a particular decision without mentioning the less salient aspects. 

‘Harbour Views’
You’ve most likely experienced this yourself; found an advertisement for a residential property and arranged to inspect it only to be disappointed that reality didn’t match the pitch. The type of situation where the property did have ‘harbour views’ – so long as you stood on one leg on the toilet with the lid down while peering out the meshed sectioned of the frosted window.

Perhaps I exaggerate however the point I am trying to make is that in financial advice, less is definitely more. It’s a simple adage that applies to many aspects of life be they commercial or personal – under promise and over deliver. 

For as long as I’ve been associated with financial planning and advice, there have been practitioners who have promised more than they can, in all honesty, deliver.  It’s not too much of a stretch to suggest that there are advisers, no matter how surreptitiously, suggesting to both new and existing clients that 2012 style returns are on offer this year and beyond; that the worst of the GFC is well and truly over and that high returns are coming back. 

There might well be advisers making claims about when the All Ords will crest 6,000 points with the 5,000 point mark now ticked off.

The truth is that none of us know what is really going to happen over the next month let alone next 24 months and so it falls to people giving financial advice to under promise to clients – to tell it ‘warts and all’.  Tell them that there remains substantial economic risk in the world that could result in retracement of some (or all?) of the recent gains.

The truth, the whole truth and nothing but…
Note that I’m not in any way suggesting that you should attempt to over deliver on investment returns – you’ve got very limited capacity to do that without embroiling clients in excessive risk.  The ‘over delivery’ I suggest you engage in is:

• Tell the truth, the whole truth, about what you can and cannot do for clients
• Provide the level of service you promised in your Statement of Advice – and some!

Don’t shortchange on the services you promised
Service is the only thing you can promise your clients. When the markets desert you – when portfolios retreat and portfolio income declines – all you’ve got is service.

Be sure to:

• Meet with your clients as often as you promised you would
• Provide them with the reports you promised and in a timely manner
• Undertake the professional interaction with clients’ other professional advisers in accordance with your SoA promises
• Return clients’ telephone calls when you and/or your receptionist promised
• Find reason to call them on a relevant issue when they might have otherwise not expected to hear from your firm
• Occasionally, personally, call clients when they might have been expecting a call from a support staff member – show them you’re prepared to ‘roll your sleeves up’ on matters other than high level advice issues

It’s not at all complicated. Don’t promise what you can’t deliver and deliver on what you do promise – and some!

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Clients are increasingly adopting a ‘Do-it-with-me’ rather than a ‘Do-it-for-me’ approach and want greater involvement and control of their finances and portfolio. This is best illustrated by the increasing dominance of the SMSF market.

Advisers are missing out on capturing these clients because the focus (perceived or real) on products rather than strategy has meant advisers have largely failed to satisfy the preferences and needs of SMSF clients. Clients have a shifting preference for direct and low cost assets that are transparent and accessible by the retail investor.

Managed funds may be considered expensive and in recent times, their average performance (relative to a benchmark) have not been sufficiently stellar to attract investors attention. Clients’ demand and appetite for advice is firmly grounded in strategic and tailored advice. The selection of product or platform is now three or four rungs down the ladder.

Clients at all levels along the wealth scale are increasingly looking for advice that deals with single issues that are currently at hand rather than holistic advice. Dealer groups that predominantly offer holistic advice risk bucking this trend and marginalising their business and client base.

Industry reforms
The Future of Financial Advice (FoFA) reforms are built on developing a greater level of professionalism and transparency in the advice provided. Advisers will have an obligation to provide appropriate advice and prioritise the interests of the client where there is a conflict with their own interests.

The regulators are stipulating very specifically what they expect from personal advice. ‘Quality advice’ is the new catch phrase and its components are clearly defined by the regulators.

The regulator’s view on what constitutes quality advice is summarised in the diagram below:

The ‘best interest ‘ guidelines place greater accountability on the individual adviser to ensure that the advice provided is tailored to the client’s specific circumstances and needs. This extends to requiring that the adviser research external suppliers like research houses for potential conflicts of interest and benchmark products considered for the client.

Dealer groups have a reduced ability to ‘centralise’ and control key compliance functions relating to recommendations made by their advisers, which can put their AFS License at greater risk. Furthermore, the legislation places greater onus on the dealer group and adviser to understand the limitations of the Approved Product List (APL) and the need to look at products that sit outside the APL to allow advisers to meet the best interests of the client.

Dealer groups need to equip their advisers with tools and processes to enable them to tailor strategy and product recommendations for clients as a means of protecting the dealer group’s license.

For the information pack, click here.

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An adviser asked me recently about doing business with people he had never actually met – they had only had a series of  “digital” encounters.  The client had approached their business via their website, email discussions ensured, client completed a thorough fact-finding questionnaire and returned it….and business was eventually done and the adviser picked up a new client.

The adviser then had second thoughts as to whether this was “acceptable” best practice advice to others, such as regulators and competitors.  My answer was “absolutely – provide the process was robust and you’ve provided good personalised advice”.

One of the best clients I ever had was a couple that I have still never met.

My introduction to them was slightly different, but the process of providing advice was exactly the same as that outlined above. In fact, by the time we had spent many months swapping information and building an enormous paper trail, the end result was that this young husband and wife became one of the biggest personal accounts I ever managed.

It all began with a complete risk management program, which was appropriate for them at that stage of their life.  In a relatively short period of time they became fantastic savings and investment clients as their careers blossomed – and for some years their risk management requirements rose exponentially as well.

We spoke on the phone regularly (as they lived in a different city to me), and emailed regularly and abundantly – but we never met.  It was during the second full annual review (I think) when I was wondering how happy they were with the remote advisory relationship that I began to understand the power of the electronic process of engagement.  The clients told me the 3 things they really liked about how it had been managed were:

• They felt comfortable with having all the advice in writing (via email mostly), and having “time” to consider each element of the advice as it was delivered – and modify or vary along the way.
• They felt less embarrassed talking about their personal finances, goals, and medical history with someone who was simply an objective professional (and not part of their business or social communities).
• They felt like they were in control of the process, and it moved at a pace they managed.

The thing that stood out though was that the very remoteness of the engagement enhanced the professional objectivity for both parties.  As an adviser I felt highly comfortable with adopting a more analytical and objective style, that was as objective as one can get.  As clients, they felt they could be entirely frank as there was no social or professional awkwardness.

Over time other clients were gained and managed the same way, with essentially the same results, and it is a process of advising that I became very comfortable with.  To the adviser who raised the question recently, I offered encouragement to pursue this method of engaging with clients who wished to work this way. 

Particularly given that only a few months ago I spent an engaging hour or so talking to an adviser who explained his business methodology from his business base in what might be considered “rural” New Zealand. He suggested that he probably had not met in person about one-third of his clients.  He conducts a very large proportion of his business with younger professionals who are global travellers and relatively time poor.  It works well for everyone for him to chat and handle interviews virtually – which they can increasingly do via mobile devices with clients.

The reality is that a professional process of providing advice works whether the client is in the room with you or not.  The process doesn’t become compromised because you haven’t met the client personally.  All that IS at risk is being able to establish the right sort of relationship that works for each party.

Engaging with clients on-line, and providing advice electronically, will work well with many who seek professional objectivity whilst wanting to maintain a high level of control.

It is absolutely professionally appropriate and very effective – if done professionally and on a “best practice” basis – and an increasing proportion of the clients out there wanting professional advice prefer it.

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Claire Wivell Plater, Managing Director of The Fold, says the problem with asset based fees is that they incentivise advisers to recommend strategies and products that maximise the assets they manage for the client.

Under the Best Interests Duty, clients must be given non-product-related solutions where appropriate, even if that means the client is less likely to need future advice.

“The new Conflicts Priority Rule means that advisers cannot recommend strategies or products that create extra revenue for themselves or their licensees unless they can demonstrate additional benefit for the client,” she said.

“If they are not actually managing the clients’ assets or where an asset-based fee would not adequately remunerate them, they need a fee structure that remunerates them for the work they do. Advisers also cannot over-service a client to create more remuneration for themselves.”

Ms Wivell expects a trend away from 100% asset-based fee structures to fees that are based on the work done for the client, or a combination. “While the Government is not banning asset-based fees outright, they are making it increasingly inappropriate to charge them,” she said.

Ms Wivell Plater likened the rule to the Government’s current anti-smoking legislation.

“Smoking is not actually banned, but federal and new state legislation make it difficult to smoke anywhere. New anti-smoking legislation introduced this month in NSW, for example, bans smoking in places like transport stops and entrances to NSW public buildings.

“It’s similar to the legislation surrounding asset-based fees. Advisers aren’t specifically banned from charging them – but if they do, they risk either falling foul of the Conflicts Priority Rule or not being adequately remunerated for their work.”

Ms Wivell Plater said many advisers will need to rethink how they charge for their services and this is likely to present a big challenge.

“Setting up an engagement process is key to complying with the new law,” she said.

“Advisers need to understand how to define the terms of engagement from the moment they first meet with a client.  If the service proposition and the client’s fee commitment are clear from the minute the client walks in the door, the financial aspects of client relationships become easier to manage.”

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