Redtail CEO Brian McLaughlin recently joined Nicole Casperson at InvestmentNews for a 3Questions segment. In their short conversation Brian discusses how the pandemic has further underlined the value of CRM’s importance in financial services as well as discussing why Redtail so highly values education as a fintech provider. That episode is available here.

ABOUT this webinar
Topic: Practice Management Takeover with Neal Quon
Description: People, Process, and Technology

The shared experience of the past year has left some advisors comfortable with their situation, and others scrambling to find ways to stay ahead of the game, whether it’s through their staff, their services, or their procedures.

Join us on this webinar as we’ll explore technology and activities that have emerged for financial advisors during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Register now for this webinar on June 8 at 10 am Pacific.

“Will remote work, in some form, be the “new normal”? If so, how can we help employees remain productive while supporting a healthy work-life balance? How can we maintain our company culture while physically separated?” Brian McLaughlin, CEO of Redtail, recently shared some of his ideas on how the technology you already have may offer features you could be using to help remote workers stay connected.

You can read “4 Ways to Build Company Culture While Working Remotely” at ThinkAdvisor here.

“Think of the threads of your communication with your clients as ongoing conversations, meant to build rapport and trust. Take advantage of the different communication channels available to you to broaden those conversations.” David Mehlhorn, Director of Sales at Redtail, recently shared his thoughts on how essential it is that you arm yourself with data in order that you might better meet the challenge of customizing your communication efforts with clients.

You can read “3 tips for customizing client communication” at InvestmentNews here.

Despite rarely working from home in 2019, technology advancements set advisors up for success as COVID-19 stay-at-home orders were enacted earlier this year

SACRAMENTO, Calif., Nov. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ (original press release here) — Redtail Technology (“Redtail”), a leading provider of client relationship management (CRM) solutions for financial services firms, published the results from their 2020 “Working Remotely” survey, which set out to uncover how advisors adapted during COVID-19.

Redtail surveyed more than 1,750 financial advisory employees and discovered that the large majority of respondents (86%) were prepared with the appropriate technology for a seamless transition to work from home. However, working remotely brought on new challenges, one of which was how to continue to build and maintain client relationships. Respondents noted that using existing modes of communication, such as phone (97.4%), email (96.3%), and video (80%) were the most effective ways to communicate with clients.

“2020 has been the year of adaptation for the financial services industry. The technology enabling remote work has been available for years, and advisory firms were able to quickly transition to work from home during these uncertain times,” said Redtail Technology CEO Brian McLaughlin. “While the industry has historically been an in-person business, I think we all discovered that clients can still be serviced effectively, regardless of where their advisor is located.”

In 2019, two-thirds of respondents (66.7%) never or rarely worked from home, however, 64.7% of respondents now believe they will work from home at least one day of the week moving forward. The majority of financial advisory employees (74.3%) did not experience an interruption of their revenue stream due to working from home, and nearly 5% were even able to grow their revenue as a result of the transition, despite the economic uncertainty!

Additional findings from the survey reveal:

• More than half of the respondents (60.3%) reported that increasing engagement with existing clients was the number one priority, and reaching new prospects was the second (17.8%).
• A quarter (25.9%) said that even though they are not on social media, they will consider using it to reach clients.
• As expected, respondents dealt with various challenges while working remotely:
  — 43.5% experienced social isolation or disconnect from co-workers
  — 41.7% dealt with family distractions
  — 35.2% reported a lack of office supplies
• 73.3% of respondents plan to return to their office in some capacity once they can, while 6.9% of respondents are giving up their office entirely.

“The most surprising thing to me was the complete flip in advisors’ mindset related to work from home from 2019 to 2020. It seems the workforce has changed entirely, and advisors will continue to work remotely in some capacity or another for the foreseeable future,” McLaughlin concludes. “While this hasn’t been an easy year for anyone, I commend advisors for how quickly they adapted. Financial advisors are in this business to help their clients, and it has been refreshing to see them continue to leverage the technology to do so, without skipping a beat.”

The majority of firms surveyed range from under $500M AUM to $1B+ and primarily have 2-10 employees. 60% of respondents were female, with most respondents between the ages of 35-59 years old. Redtail donated $1 for every survey response to National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering, Inc (NACME) or No Kid Hungry, based on the respondent’s preference.

For more information about the survey findings, please visit: https://corporate.redtailtechnology.com/category/survey/

About Redtail Technology Founded in 2003, Redtail Technology is a leading provider of web-based Client Relationship Management (CRM), compliant text messaging solutions (Redtail Speak), paperless office, and email archiving solutions in the financial services industry. The company is dedicated to helping advisors efficiently grow their firms by providing them with the core technologies that drive their day-to-day operations, offering low cost and easy to implement applications and integrating with many of the industry’s most widely used applications. As a pioneer in the financial technology industry, Redtail is committed to providing advisors exceptional customer service and strives to contribute in meaningful ways to its local communities in California, Arizona and Georgia. For more information, visit www.redtailtechnology.com.

ABOUT THE SURVEY:

In July of 2020, Redtail Technology conducted the “Working Remotely” survey to learn more about how financial advisors and their staffs adapted to remote work environments, how this affected their client engagement strategies, and which communication channels proved most effective when working in virtual environments.

Based on data collected from the survey, Redtail set out to understand:

• How effectively wealth management professionals were able to transition to remote-only work environments and avoid or minimize business disruption
• What this might mean for the future in terms of remote work vs. office-only practices (or some hybrid of the two)
• Which technologies helped offices maintain regular client communication/engagement and which may now be considered more seriously for future adoption

METHODOLOGY:

Redtail surveyed more than 1,750 wealth management employees across the United States, whose firms’ managed client assets ranged from under $500 million to more than $1 billion. Among the respondents, the breakdown of roles was as follows:

•  40.8% financial advisors
•  18.7% client services
•  17.9% administrative employees
•  9.2% executive management
•  8.8% operations

To compare and contrast advisor work from home patterns before and after COVID-19, respondents were asked how frequently they worked remotely in 2019:

•  Never or very rarely: 50.4%
•  1-2 times per month: 16.3%
•  Full-time (more than 4 days a week): 13.3%
•  2-3 days per week: 10.4%
•  Once per week: 9.6%

KEY FINDINGS:

While much of the world was required to work from home, financial services proved to be particularly resilient in terms of adapting and continuing to meet client expectations and business needs:

“While our industry has historically been an in-person business, we have all seen that technology has enabled us to work from home while staying connected with clients and to continue business as usual, though there were challenges associated with the transition.” – Survey respondent

• COVID-19 has shifted the work from home mindset of advisory firm employees across the country. In 2019, two-thirds (66.7%) of respondents never or rarely worked from home, and in 2020 respondents did a complete flip – 64.7% believe they will work from home at least one day a week in the future.

• The majority of respondents (62.3%) appreciated the zero-commute time, and nearly half enjoyed the flexible schedule (47.9%); still, the overwhelming majority (73.3%) anticipate keeping their office space.
• Many respondents experienced challenges while working from home. 43.5% experienced social isolation or disconnect from co-workers, and 41.7% dealt with family distractions. And, while the majority of respondents were prepared for the shift to work remotely, 35.2% cited a lack of office supplies as a challenge.

Working from home was not a big disruption to the success of their businesses.

• Despite the fact that in 2019 half of respondents surveyed never or rarely worked from home, 86% of respondents said that in 2020 they ranged from somewhat to very prepared with the proper technology for a seamless transition. However, there was one technology where firms were less prepared to transition to work from home: 61.5% currently have no internal communication platform geared toward staying connected with their colleagues.
• A vast majority of respondents (74.3%) did not experience an interruption of their revenue stream by working from home, and nearly 5% of respondents actually grew their revenue!

While traditional modes of client engagement and communication retained their importance, advisors did express a willingness to further explore new communication channels moving forward:

“In-person” connection continues to be the preferred choice for client engagement, as well as for onboarding and training new employees. To offset the limitations of virtual relationship building, advisors recognize the increased need for customized communications for clients. They are exploring new ways to reach them (video, webinar, social media, podcast/radio, blog):

• Wealth management employees value in-person meetings the most to generate client engagement. Given the restrictions due to COVID-19, they have heavily relied on phone and email to connect and are focused on producing customized communications to reach different clients.
• This year’s top communication challenges have not shifted since last year, despite the pandemic:
  1. Customizing content for different audiences (50.8% in 2020; 45% in 2019)
  2. Engaging with clients outside of meetings (45.6% in 2020; 40% in 2019)
  3. Producing unique content (29.8% in 2020; 30% in 2019)
• 80% of respondents are using video/remote conference as a method of client communication in 2020. Respondents also agree that it is one of the channels with the highest client engagement (38.2%) – third only to phone calls (67.9%) and in-person meetings, when they are an option (86.7%).
  —  This is a vast increase from 2019, where only 7% of respondents were using video to connect with clients on a regular basis.

• Advisors plan to prioritize more effective communication moving forward, with 60.3% focusing on existing clients and 17.8% targeting new prospects. Additionally, significant percentages plan on adding communication channels they haven’t prioritized in the past:
  ⁃ Pre-recorded video (36.8%)
  ⁃ Webinar (26.2%)
  ⁃ Social Media (25.9%)
  ⁃ Podcast/radio (23.9%)
  ⁃ Blog (22.4%)
  ⁃ SMS/Text (22.2%)
  ⁃ Newsletter (18.7%)

FURTHER ANALYSIS:

Technology for work-from-home generally allowed for business as usual for most respondents.

2020 was a pivotal year for the financial advice industry. While the technologies that enable remote work have been around for years, 2020 has proven to be, by necessity, the year when these technologies were first truly put to the test in that regard in any widespread way.

While working from home posed its own set of challenges for many respondents in terms of client engagement, culture, and distractions, the vast majority were at the very least somewhat prepared to make the transition because of their existing technologies and infrastructure, as evidenced by the below survey question and responses:

Before COVID-19, how prepared were you with the technology/infrastructure in place to enable a seamless work from home experience?
• Very prepared – 32.3%
• Adequately prepared – 27.8%
• Somewhat prepared – 26%
• Not prepared at all – 7.6%
• N/A: I continued to work in the office as normal – 4.9%

The 86% of respondents indicating they were somewhat, adequately, or very prepared for a seamless work from home experience tracks closely with respondents’ answers on whether or not their revenue stream was affected by working from home, with 74.3% indicating their revenue stream was not impacted, and nearly 5% indicating growth in revenue during this period.

Communication preferences (and challenges) have remained largely the same, but preferences gave way to necessity.

As mentioned above, nearly 87% of respondents believe an in-person meeting generates the most engagement with their clients. No surprises there, and it’s likely in-person meetings will remain the most valued communication channel for the foreseeable future.

Still, the jump in usage of video conferences to connect with clients between our 2019 and 2020 studies (from 7% to 80%) was dramatic.

Considering the massive shift in communication channels that respondents were largely forced into this year, one of our survey’s more surprising findings was that their top communication challenges remained largely unchanged. In other words, they may still prefer face-to-face meetings over virtual meetings, but the fact that a huge number of their client meetings were held virtually this year didn’t dislodge or change what they viewed as their biggest communication hurdles, i.e., customizing content for different audiences, engaging with clients outside of meetings, and producing unique content. This likely accounts for the survey’s findings of an increased willingness on the part of firms to explore new channels of client engagement such as pre-recorded videos, webinars, social media, podcasting, etc.

CONCLUSION:

If there was one stat that jumped out perhaps more than any other, it was the shift in perceptions about working from home. In 2019, two-thirds of respondents never or very rarely worked from home, compared with the two-thirds in 2020, who expect that they will work from home at least one day a week moving forward. They loved work from home benefits such as zero commute time, greater flexibility, and more time with family.

On the other hand, social isolation, family distractions, and a lack of office supplies were mentioned by many as challenges they experienced while working virtually.

In the end, technology made the transition to home environments possible, and survey respondents appeared to embrace the idea of shifting at least part of their work schedule to a virtual environment in the future, despite having challenges that they will have to navigate to do so.

“It’s hard to imagine a year with more disruption than what we’ve witnessed in 2020; this leads to a degree of caution when analyzing responses provided while the disruption is ongoing.

Still, there are some conclusions we can draw based both in relation to what our respondents told us and on our own lived experience during this pandemic. We all had to adapt without warning to working full-time in environments that we never envisioned as our primary workspace. To one degree or another, we all had to deal with technology issues that we weren’t used to dealing with. And, I believe that many of us will come out the other side of this with a deeper understanding than before that authenticity, rather than the ability to conduct a flawless Zoom meeting, will win the day in terms of forging stronger relationships with our clients and prospects. Hopefully, this will also lead to advisors moving beyond curiosity about some of the communication channels they aren’t currently using to an exploration of them to see which ones will help them meet the communication challenges that appear to remain constant from year to year.

As I mentioned above, I’m hesitant to make big predictions for the future, particularly about what we considered the most surprising finding in the survey: two-thirds of respondents expect to be working from home at least one day a week in the future. Still, if you’re the one responsible for making the decision about how often, if ever, your employees will be able to work from home after all this is over, you’ve certainly got to balance employee expectations against the pros and cons involved. Perhaps one potential positive to come out of all of this will be forward-thinking advisors and vendors becoming even more nimble in the face of future challenges; 2020 has certainly shown us all that we can adapt in big ways when the situation requires it.”

Brian McLaughlin, CEO of Redtail Technology

——————————-

For more information on the survey findings or if you have any questions about Redtail Technology, please contact Kimberly Beck | kimberly.beck@redtailtechnology.com.

“You have to have a huge amount of collaboration between companies to make it work and to really tweak it and get it all set up. And when you have that great partnership, you know, miracles happen and great innovation happens.”

Redtail CEO Brian McLaughlin joined co-hosts Ryan Donovan and George Svagera of Orion Advisor Technology to talk about building a successful fintech partnership. Their wide-ranging conversation also touched on how FinTechs are adapting to work during the pandemic, how the California wildfires have affected Redtail employees in our Sacramento location, conference swag, and pajamas for men! That episode is available here.

For some a crisis may result in incredibly busy periods; for others it may mean they actually have more time than usual. If you are currently working from home due to COVID-19, you may find yourself in both of these positions throughout the course of a week. Your clients may be more in need of your time than usual; at the same time, you’re likely engaged in fewer extracurricular activities and spending little to no time commuting.

If you do find that you currently have extra time that you would like to spend in an effort to improve the quality of your work life, your processes, etc., we’re offering this as the fourth in a series of posts we hope you’ll find useful (the first is available here, the second here, and the third here). Maybe all of these ideas won’t apply to you; maybe you already practice some of them. Either way, if we can help you bolster any area of your business through any of these suggestions, that will be pandemic downtime well spent.

In our fourth and final post in this series, we’ll turn our attention to a project that can help you not only with all of the other projects in this series, but also with everything you do moving forward: recalibrating your focus.

It’s more important than ever to focus on the essentials

Steve Jobs once said:

People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.

What does this mean for you as an advisor? Are you actively determining what you focus upon each day or is your focus easily swayed by your email inbox or staff members who may have different priorities for their day? What tasks are you performing that can easily be delegated and performed as well by others in your office that free you up to spend more time on relationship maintenance/building and new client acquisition?

If you have support staff, including administrative staff, associate advisors, and/or paraplanners, you should prioritize logging everything you do in a given week and then determining which of your tasks might be delegated across some combination of those roles.

If, on the other hand, you are a solo advisor, with no support staff, the question of focus might revolve around your clients themselves. Are you properly allocating the time you spend with your clients based upon the value each of them bring to your business? Are you spending an inordinate amount of time with difficult clients who bring little in value? Are you spending enough time with those you enjoy working with who do bring value? These, of course, are questions based upon the Pareto Principle, aka the 80/20 Rule, and, while they aren’t necessarily easy to resolve (all of your clients must be serviced), allocating your client focus based upon the value they bring to your business may sharpen, over time, your ability to bring in more of the types of clients that have proven to be a great match for your firm.

Three places to start

Map out how you are spending your time.
Spend a week logging your work activities every day. When the week is up, really take a close look at how you spent your time to determine if there are tasks you can 1) delegate if they are important or 2) eliminate if they are not. You might also pay attention to how scattershot your approach to work is – are you constantly jumping from one project or activity to the next, without doing any substantive deep work or research or client engagement activities? If so, it may be time to consider time blocking.

Begin using a time blocking (or chunking) system.
It’s always good to have a to-do list, broken down by day, ready to go before you start each week, along with the understanding that less important items for a given day may get pushed to the next (though if items keep getting pushed they may be candidates for delegation). It’s also helpful to set aside specific chunks of time for specific tasks that you have to do each day. Assigning a specific time for something attaches importance to it in your mind – you’re much less likely to let the 2:00-3:00 hour slip by as you engage in other less important tasks if that’s the time you reserved for its completion.

Get emails and meetings under control.
One of the best ways to give yourself permission to begin using a time blocking system for work is by getting emails and meetings under control.

Emails come in constantly; that isn’t going to change. What you can change is your pattern of checking emails. If it’s possible, authorize someone on the administrative side of things in your office to screen your emails and flag the ones you need to deal with. Regardless of whether or not this is feasible in your situation, at the very least you should time block specific periods for dealing with email, and stick to them. If you can avoid even looking at your email until you’ve accomplished one major item on your daily list, you’ll be ahead of much of the game.

Meetings as well should be reexamined to ensure that they are the best use of your time. If meetings have been haphazard in your office in the past, it may be time to institute a policy moving forward that all meetings must have a clearly defined purpose, explicit start and end times, and an employee authorized to halt sideline conversations that don’t support the meeting’s purpose. Important work can be accomplished in meetings, but that certainly isn’t always the case; you should carefully consider what is happening in your office’s meetings to determine the types that might be shortened, the types that don’t necessarily need everyone present, and the ones that might be eliminated altogether.

Focus is an everyday choice

”You have to pick carefully” where you put your focus, Jobs said. We read that as an emphatic endorsement of the idea that focus is an ongoing act of agency, i.e., you will always have to choose where you place your focus (or others will choose where you place it for you). Misplaced focus at times may not necessarily cause your business to fail, but it certainly won’t contribute to your successes. A new emphasis on focus, however, can lead to a more streamlined approach to your practice where the tasks and projects you say “yes” to drive new successes moving forward.

For some a crisis may result in incredibly busy periods; for others it may mean they actually have more time than usual. If you are currently working from home due to COVID-19, you may find yourself in both of these positions throughout the course of a week. Your clients may be more in need of your time than usual; at the same time, you’re likely engaged in fewer extracurricular activities and spending little to no time commuting.

If you do find that you currently have extra time that you would like to spend in an effort to improve the quality of your work life, your processes, etc., we’re offering this as the third in a series of posts we hope you’ll find useful (the first is available here, and the second here). Maybe all of these ideas won’t apply to you; maybe you already practice some of them. Either way, if we can help you bolster any area of your business through any of these suggestions, that will be pandemic downtime well spent.

In this third post, we’ll consider some smaller projects you might take on that could potentially yield huge efficiencies once in place.

Fix the little things

When you’re running a successful practice, you generally have a good idea about which of your initiatives, processes, etc. are contributing to your successes. What is sometimes harder to recognize are those things that you or your office are doing (or not doing) that you are succeeding in spite of. Or, it may simply be that you are aware of those areas that need to be fixed, but you just haven’t taken the time to address them because things have seemingly been humming along for your office.

While that list of “things we really probably should address at some point” is likely to be different for each office, we thought we’d share here some common “fixable” areas of an advisory practice that, should you have some extra time due to current conditions, you might want to begin addressing today.

Adding a password manager is a two birds, one stone project

The need for information security is paramount in our industry (as well as in our personal lives). And, creating strong passwords that will be difficult to hack is an integral part of information security efforts.

Most of the software you use within your practice likely requires both strong passwords and that you change those strong passwords on a regular basis. There is a simple best practice that will help you improve the quality of your passwords (and hence your information security), while at the same time removing all the frustration (and time lost) dealing with forgotten passwords and/or password updates. That simple solution is adding a password manager to your tech stack to do all your password work for you.

So, what is a password manager and which one should you use? At their most basic, password managers generate and store unique and strong passwords for each and every website or piece of software you use that requires a password. While there will likely be some front-end work on your part as you learn the basics of your password manager software and initiate password changes for your existing accounts, once you’re up and running the only password you’ll have to remember is the one you create as a master password for the password manager software itself. And, since it’s the only one you’ll need to commit to memory, it shouldn’t be difficult to ensure that it’s very difficult to crack. You won’t have to spend any time trying to create or remember passwords for anything else, as the password manager can generate, store, and retrieve those when you need to use them.

In terms of which password manager might be right for you, Wired ran a story in February of this year in which they highlighted some of their favorites. CNET also ran a recent story with Password Manager recommendations.

Integrations bring everything together

The word “integration” has its roots in Latin and essentially means to make into a whole by bringing all parts together. Redtail CRM serves well as a foundational system from which everything else can flow within your organization, but it can’t handle all aspects of your business. This is why we offer integration with FinTech providers across every category in the industry (as well as a ton of other advisor tools that don’t fit neatly in any of these categories – full list here):

• Document Storage
• Email Compliance
• Financial Planning
• Form-filling software
• Investment Research
• Marketing Tools
• Portfolio Management and Custodians
• Risk Analysis
• Voice Dictation
• VoIP

Integrations create efficiencies that are otherwise impossible. If you are succeeding despite not taking advantage of the integrations available between your chosen technologies, imagine the successes you might spur through taking the time to get those integrations up and running. We provide setup instructions for each of our integration partners that you can find by visiting those links above; that said, our support team always stands ready to assist you with any questions on integration setup or usage as well.

Smaller projects, big rewards

None of the projects above should place huge demands on your time, as each of them can be approached incrementally. In regard to initial password updates when adding a password manager, you can do those one or a handful at a time if you’d like – just prioritize updating those for your most sensitive accounts first.

In regard to taking advantage of available integrations, each of those can also be approached individually as you have time, perhaps prioritized based upon those you expect will yield the greatest returns. But, following through on any or all of these can certainly improve the quality of your work life and help contribute to your successes.