Resolutions For Financial Advisors For Year 2020-21

Every year time time around, everyone engages in a tradition of setting New Year Resolutions. The most popular resolutions tend to be related to getting healthier, getting financially sound, finding a new job or learning a new skill or hobby. We may succeed or fail, but is important that we give it a serious try.

For financial advisors it is time again to reassess the business and commit to make the next year your best financial year. But before you read on, here's something that you need to think about – it is not about how many resolutions you make but about how many resolutions you keep. So, relax and spend some time to decide what resolutions you want to make. To help you find some resolutions, here's list of resolutions which you can think of ...

1. Convert Clients to E-Wealth Accounts
   This resolution is the need of the hour and frankly should be treated more as a mission for the business than a resolution. None-the-less, you can resolve to convert all existing clients on to the NJ E-Wealth platform within this new year by some date.

   The shift towards E-Wealth is critical for many reasons like, offering convenience & comfort to clients, reducing operational time, costs and mistakes, making business scalable, standardising client information at one place and so on. It is also important to ensure that your business stays relevant and your clients stay with you in face of a digital revolution happening all around us where all clients are actively doing e-commerce transactions for almost everything.

2. Acquire New Clients only through E-Wealth Account
   While converting all existing clients to the E-Wealth Account will save a lot of time, here is one thing that you can do from 1st January itself. You may resolve to compulsorily register for E-Wealth Account for all new clients and not make any transaction before the same is opened. This resolution requires strong clarity and conviction by you. Going forward, it is sure to save a lot of time and effort and you will yourself see the difference in your business once this resolution is adopted.
3. Plan your business properly
   You may resolve to make advance plans for your business and act according to a plan. If has been observed universally that a majority of advisors do not plan or target the growth of their business and in fact carry their businesses in regular manner. At NJ, we have now ensured that the planning and tracking of business targets is simple, easy and comprehensive at the same time.

   Using Partner Business Planning modules (Client Services > CRM > Partner Planning System) you can create business plans and can also extend your plans to the Group level by targeting business from them. The achievement is also automatically measured with our ready reports. With this module, we have removed a big excuse for not planning your business up till now.

4. Do Financial Planning for All Clients
   Have have often talked about the importance of financial planning for our clients. But how many of us can proudly say that they have talked about financial planning with our clients and prepared plans for all our client families? We now have the opportunity to resolve that we will do financial planning exercise for all our clients. One may be discreet in covering or excluding clients which may not be suitable for financial planning or for other valid reasons.

   Doing financial planning can open up the relationship with the client and help you get closer to him, know him better and in the process, also acquire new accounts /references from the client. Needless to say, their is a hidden potential for business, both in existing products and for new products, when we will talk of holistic financial planning with the client. To plan for this activity, we may create a rough schedule as per client nature and feasibility. Obviously you need to commit yourself to this important activity and enter the schedule in to NJ CRM or any other tool you use.

5. Make More Use of Partners Desk
   It is hard to imagine that, as per study, approximately half of the existing Partners are not 'activity' using Partners Desk. The Partners Desk is your gateway for almost everything you need in business. It has many great tools, MIS reports, client information and so on. Many Partners are also not aware of the many tools /contents which are already available in the Partners Desk and even if known, many modules are underutilised.

   You may resolve that you explore the Partners Desk fully and be a very regular user of same to plan, monitor, manage your business and to service your clients. Beyond MIS, you would want to have a closer look on modules like E-Saathi, My CRM, Partner Business Planning, BizMall, Web Nest, Need Assessment Tool, Family Needs, Subscriptions, Employee Management and so on. Go ahead and make the full use of Partners Desk in the new year. As an immediate task, you should install the NJ Partners Desk mobile application in your mobile today, if not yet done...

6. Build The Referrals Network
   Acquiring new clients does not qualify to be a resolution. It is something which is very obvious and critical to growing your business. But often it has been found that financial advisors adopt differing strategies to acquire clients. Some focus only on marketing activities for leads while some are comfortable with acquisition through walk-ins. Many financial advisors are often shy and hesitant to ask for references from existing clients.

   You may resolve to build a strong referrals network in the new year. As studies show, acquisition through referrals carry a higher conversion ratio and are also much cheaper compared to cost of acquisition per client by other means.

7. Add to Credentials with Certifications
   Frankly, what I wanted to say was on learning about new areas and topics relevant to you as an advisor. While this holds very true, many of us may go beyond and aspire to have some Certifications /licenses which you would like to highlight to clients. Adding credentials to your resume is not a bad idea for resolution in the new year. As financial advisors, we all are expected to be knowledgeable and skilled to carry out our role and ongoing education and certifications helps us keep pace with the profession.

   Adding credentials is also important going forward where clients expect quality professional advisors in face of growing awareness, competition and need for differentiation with online platforms. While there are many related certifications available in the market like Certified Financial Planner (CFP), Chartered Trust & Estate Planner (CTEP), Chartered Wealth Manager (CWM), Chartered Financial Goal Planner (CFGP), NISM Certifications, NSE Certified Market Professional (NCMP), etc. Of these, CFP & CTEP are the prominent ones carrying recognition and which is also offered by NJ Gurukul in select locations /online.

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