Kip Gregory is a technology coach and the author, most recently, of Winning Clients in a Wired World. He spoke to us about how advisors can keep track of the new ideas they learn at conferences.
Talk about your solution for remembering the innovative ideas and strategies that planners hear about.
People go to conferences, take all kinds of notes, get enthusiastic and then go home and are immediately distracted. Then all those great ideas--which you had the best intentions of using--are shelved until six months later, or forgotten altogether. Fixing the problem starts with just three simple features in Microsoft Word.
Really? With all the new technology available today, your idea starts with Microsoft Word?
The power of Word is its simplicity. As long as you know how to do three things, you can be a total Luddite and still know your way around Word. It doesn't require anything new.
Great. Walk me through the process.
The basic notion is that you put everything in a single file. Not contacts or working files, but important notes, product information, frequently used text for emails or presentations--basically, the kinds of things you'd like to have right in front of you at any given time.
First, you have to create chapters for the various resources and ideas by quickly writing titles and formatting them as a "headline" in word. It does not take more than a few minutes.
The second step, then, is to create a blank page for a table of contents at the top of the document. Then hit Insert>Reference to create a table of contents. It's the closest you'll feel to performing magic, because it automatically lists and links everything in the document. No more hunting around or scrolling down. All you have to do is click on a heading in the table of contents and the program takes you right to that section.
Can the document be dynamic and allow for adding and changing chapters as you pick up new and better information?
That's the third step: Use the update feature to reflect any changes, additions or deletions. And it's really easy to do. After you've created your new chapters and headlines, put your cursor in the table of contents and hit F9. Choose "update the entire table," and the program automatically accounts for all your changes.
How does your idea account for all the resources--PDFs and other crucial documents--that planners use every day?
If you already have these kinds of documents on your hard drive, you can incorporate them right into the document without copying and pasting the whole file. You can hyperlink a file or folder, which will save you the steps of looking it up every time you need it.
If you frequently find yourself sending the same attachments, hyperlink the documents' folder, where you can right-click on a file and use the "send to" feature to quickly send off the documents. These little tools can save you a lot of time.
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