Cody Foster - Are Your Processes Rock Solid?

As you’ve heard me repeat at least 1,000 times now, our mission is to help good advisors become great business owners, so you can help people enjoy an amazing retirement. One of the most important aspects of building a great business is creating operational efficiency and excellence. As your business grows and increases in complexity, this becomes even more critical. I want to highlight a few core areas I think are most critical to focus on as you scale, many of which sometimes get overlooked.

Workflows

Building out great workflows that are easy to understand and, more importantly, easy to follow, allows new team members to be efficient from the beginning. It also helps improve the client experience. 

If you haven’t documented your workflows yet, here is a simple hack I learned from business coach and author Rory Vaden. Have the team member responsible for each workflow document every step. Let them know that in the future, as they want to advance in the company, it’s important every step is documented so you can train up their replacement. If every team member focuses on documenting their workflows over the next 30 days, you can create a great operations manual for future training.

CRM

Rory also said something great at one of our training events when someone asked him what CRM system he recommends. His answer: “Whichever one you are going to use consistently.” As you think about your CRM system, it’s important to future pace your organization. Some systems are great for where you are today but may not be efficient as your organization scales. And trying to change CRMs when your business is five to 10 times larger than it is now will be a nightmare. 

I believe Salesforce, and what we’ve custom built on top of it, has the potential to be the best CRM for advisors. Does it require some training and some adjusting of your current process? Probably, but in the long run, Salesforce is the 800-pound-gorilla in that space and continues to innovate what it brings to the table. I have no doubt that no matter how big your business scales, it will be able to meet your needs. 

Hiring Process

Few things have changed the direction of Advisors Excel more than adjusting and implementing a robust hiring process. Around 2011, Dave, Derek and I had removed ourselves from the hiring process. We told ourselves we weren’t good at it, but the truth was we didn’t really enjoy it. One day Derek told me, “I’m not sure I’d have hired some of these people.” A few weeks later, I attended my first Darren Hardy High Performance Forum, and Darren said something that made the lightbulb flip on: “Nothing is more important as the owner of your business than making sure you are hiring great people. If you let cancer into your organization, it will grow and destroy everything.” After that event, we changed our process to a four-step interview, with multiple people, culminating with an interview with one of us. It’s one of the most important “operational” things we’ve ever done.

Onboarding Process

This is likely the area most business owners struggle with the most, and we have a plan to help you fix it. As you bring on a new team member, it’s critical to not only train them well so they can do their job but also to set clear expectations up front about what it means to be a team member at your firm. As a small business, it can be tough to dedicate the time and resources needed to adequately train all the different roles. We want to help you make this as easy as possible, so we will be rolling out a robust, two-phase training platform you can use for your business soon. 

The first phase is an online training you can use immediately when a new team member starts. We will build out a recommended training agenda, day by day, and all the resources to go along with it. The second phase, back by popular demand, will be an Operational Excellence boot camp where you can send team members to be trained by our team of veteran operations members. The current labor market is tough, so when you get a good new team member, you need to make sure you prepare them for the job they are hired to do. 

Finally, remember nothing is more important to your growth in all areas of your business than constantly putting yourself in learning-rich environments that push you to get better. Almost every Advisors Excel event you come to will give you “shortcuts” to building a great business by learning from those who have done it already. Make sure you take full advantage of every learning opportunity you have so you can continue to become a great business owner.