Problem solvers are the cogs that fuel innovation. Throughout history, they’ve come and gone, solving some of life’s greatest mysteries. Someone sees something that they don’t like and try to fix it. Take land travel for example. As far as historians can tell, horse riding became popular around 800 B.C. Nearly a century later, the steam engine was created to carry passengers across vast distances.
Fast forward to modern day.
We have much faster trains. We have cars. We have jet planes that can fly 800 miles per hour. Point is, things change. Technology evolves and if used correctly, it can really enhance the way the way we do things. As a financial professional, there are an increasing number of tools at your fingertips. The question is, are you using them and, if so, are you using them right?
Finding a CRM for Your Practice
More than ever managing client relationships is at the epicenter of a good financial professional value proposition; and while you might not call it a CRM, every financial professional has a tool that they use to manage client relationships. It may be a rolodex, a stack of index cards, or notes in Outlook. To say that these are tools is true. The problem with these methods is that they aren’t great for securely storing or organizing sensitive personal information.
A true fiduciary looks out for their clients’ best interests, especially when it comes to private data. This can also help save time and keep your firm compliant.
Data
Speaking of data, it’s one of the main drivers behind the increasing power of technology. The more useful data that is available to you, the more value you can deliver to clients and their financial plan. CRMs can be great tools to capture and analyze useful data. One of the best things that you can do as a financial professional (or financial professional admin) is ensure that your CRM has relevant and updated information about your client relationships.
Integration
Cross platform integration is one of the most beneficial changes that has recently impacted consumer technology. In the past few years, we have seen the trends of integration start to take off in the fintech space as well.
If you can use your CRM as a source for entry and deliver client data to other platforms through integration you might see an uptick in both efficiency and ROI. If you aren’t leveraging integrations currently, you should be. If your CRM doesn’t offer integration options, start looking for a different service.
Workflow
If you have your data and are leveraging your integrations, there’s still more bandwidth you can get out of your CRMs. The reality is that relying on humans can be risky. We are unreliable, and we forget things. Using CRM workflow capabilities allows you and your team to offload minor client relationship tasks, allowing you to focus on the more important responsibilities.
Closing Thoughts
Technology should drive efficiency. As you assess your practice, are you using technology to improve your business process? Is your use of technology adding value? If these things are not happening, you need different technology, or you need to use it differently. If that feels like a stretch, take it one step at a time.
If you’re not already doing so, a software-based CRM is a great start. If you already have a CRM, start exploring some of the additional features. Set up an integration with your financial planning software or implement a Client Onboarding Workflow. Now more than ever, technology is essential to being successful as a financial professional. CRMs are a great way to start organizing client data, integrating with other tools, and driving workflows while you spend more time building client relationships.
