Having the freedom to be yourself is also about having the freedom of time as well as expression. To provide the time needed to focus on providing the right solutions for your clients which are that you:
- Offer impartial advice that is truly independent, unbiased and unrestricted
- Advice is well documented, simple to understand and unique to them
- Have their best interest at heart, at all times
- Will help them and work with them to achieve their goals
- Can provide quick online investment valuations and information
- Are available when they need you most, for more advice and financial reassurance
To enable the above, you need to embrace new technology, which will give you time to build the right client relationships, where together you can focus on goals.
It is important that you have the freedom to be yourself, to control your own time, your own space, your own dress code (within the boundary of expectations) and educate your clients in the way you work – your client relationship should be a working relationship. Rather than having a client/adviser relationship in the traditional way, you should consider your relationship with your clients as a collaboration with the aim of achieving their personal financial ambitions. Their financial goals and targets should be a joint responsibility.
Today, technology means you no longer need an office base and can work from home. Broadband provides such freedoms. You can meet your clients in their home, in cafes, restaurants, hotel reception areas, motorway services and even at the golf course. Fewer advisers use an established office.
Client details can be easily recorded on tablets or mobiles. Advisers can quickly record the meeting while fresh in the memory. Wi-fi and mobile communication technologies have created a modern, flexible working environment. This is a benefit to financial advisers who choose to embrace it. There is no longer a need to return to the office following a meeting to upload collected data. More time can be spent with clients allowing the discussion to flow more freely and focus on outcomes as well as the data details.
Technology is freedom, so I am amazed at how few financial advisers embrace it to help their business. Instead of engaging with the technology of freedom, they have instead become embroiled in the technology of complication. If technology is cheap it will be inadequate technology, familiar technology is outdated technology, and complex technology is unlikely to be simple! What is needed, is technology that matches your business structure and strategy and is simple, effective and unique.
