LIVE FROM IMCA: Moving To Powerful Productivity

An advisor leaving a meeting with a new potential client wants to send a quick follow-up note. But how does he do it that in the quickest and most efficient way?
 
Kip Gregory, principal of Washington, D.C. based The Gregory Group, has the answer. Using text that is already set up, the advisor can send a customized follow-up, thank you letter from his Blackberry or iPhone to the client in a few seconds or minutes.
 
Gregory, in his presentation at the IMCA Practice Management Conference in Vail, Col., told a packed room of financial advisors to go to the options menu (usually the wrench icon) on the device, then go down to autotext. After that, create an autotext entry. Go to the menu key and select new. Follow the prompts and the advisor can put in the text for the letter and then put it to work via the send function.  “You can add notes you took in the meeting,” Gregory said. “This way you can make yourself instantly memorable.”
 
For advisors, it may translate into saving minutes or hours every day. For iPhones, users need to buy an app such as Easywriter Pro for 99 cents, Gregory said.
 
He also told advisors how to catalog their knowledge that they acquired, whether at conferences or from their day-to-day practice. Each advisor should create a “knowledge journal’ that will organize key aspects of his business such as sales ideas, industry commentary, business plans, marketing calendars, goals, talking points, product sheets and much more.
 
In three steps an advisor can create a knowledge journal, Gregory said. First create chapters by using “Alt+CTRL+1” on any computer. Then build a table of contents by using insert>reference>index&table. Finally, use F9 to make changes within the journal. Instead of returning from a conference with a pile of papers, the most salient aspects of that event can be kept on an advisor’s desktop.
 
Gregory, whose website www,winningclients.com, offers many more tips and documents to download, believes that the efficient use to technology, whether it’s a laptop or a mobile handheld device, can provide “an enormous opportunity.” It offers, he said, a way for an advisor to separate himself from the pack and become a true, trusted partner to his clients.