During the 2020 holiday season we put together a Redtail CRM Holiday Resources guide to provide you with an overview of the many ways you can use Redtail CRM to assist your office with your holiday season client outreach. That resource goes into some detail about Redtail CRM features as well as marketing integration partner tools that may prove valuable to you in these efforts. You’ll also find some sample templates and video/webinar recorded links on many of these same topics. We’ve updated the post for the 2021 holiday season.

Reason #7:

You need the technologies you use to integrate in meaningful ways so that you can eliminate redundant data entry and errors, streamline your processes, and improve client experience.

The word “integration” has its roots in Latin and means essentially 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. As your firm grows, other pieces of a working technology suite will include planning, form-filling, aggregation, risk analysis, and document storage software, just to name a few. While Redtail won’t perform the functions of these other applications, through all of the many integrations we make available you are able to sync data and streamline processes across these other essential tools.

Because Redtail CRM is tailored specifically to the financial services industry, the integrations we offer with other industry solutions don’t require customization and/or the need to bring in expensive consultants to make them work for your business; instead, these integrations were built out with advisors like you in mind. For proposed integrations to be meaningful, they should help you bring all the parts of your business together, and that is always our aim.

COMMITTED TO INTEGRATION FROM THE START

Redtail has been committed to integrating deeply and widely with other fintech firms since our founding back in 2003. It’s only through robust integration that you can bring all components of your business together in a way that allows you to ensure cross-platform data accuracy and real-time business data visibility unhindered by siloing. Further, the level of “data confidence” created in your employees as a result of integrations, when they know that they’ll find the same information regardless of the platform from which they access that information, empowers them to focus on their core jobs, while also supporting greater automation of processes.

There’s a lot of automation that can happen that isn’t a replacement of humans but of mind-numbing behavior. ~Stewart Butterfield

As a practical example, let’s consider an Imaging (or Electronic Document Storage) solution that is integrated with Redtail CRM. In addition to the efficiencies in terms of space, back-office, and compliance that paperless document storage creates for your office, integrating an Imaging system with Redtail creates further efficiencies that would be unavailable were Imaging used in a standalone situation. If you need to find a document relating to a client quickly (such as during an unexpected call from the client), your Redtail-Imaging integration will allow you to easily retrieve that document from within the client’s CRM record. No digging through file cabinets and no opening up a separate application to search first for the client and then for their documents. Additionally, multiple users of Redtail CRM across different locations can pull up the same document at the same time if and when that need arises.

BRING YOUR BUSINESS TOGETHER

Regardless of the type of tech tool you are looking for to assist with a particular business challenge, Redtail likely has an integration with multiple vendors who offer a solution that may meet your needs. Just click one of the links below to learn more about our current integrations for any of these categories of provider:

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

As you are seeking out tech solutions for your firm, always bear in mind that the better those solutions work together, the better it will be for your business. You’ll spend less time swapping between software, less time worrying about data integrity, and more time focused on your clients and the experience you can provide them. Integrations create efficiencies that are otherwise impossible; creating efficiencies, when time is often the scarcest of your resources, must be viewed not as a luxury, but rather as a necessity, and Redtail CRM has set itself apart in terms of industry integrations over nearly two decades now.

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Up next week, Reason #8: Many of your essential technologies feel disconnected from one another and require time consuming interactions with support from many different vendors.

As always, if you have any questions along the way as we address these, you can reach out to our team at sales@redtailtechnology.com or 800.206.5030. We can’t wait to get to know you and your business better and to show you why Redtail is an industry leader committed to your success!

Reason #6:

Your office has neither recorded client/prospect information consistently nor documented client/prospect interactions sufficiently. As a result, information retrieval is difficult and time-consuming (when it is even possible) and there are knowledge gaps due to variances in how staff members store or track data.

Redtail CRM provides your office with one centralized location to house your organization’s institutional memory. Institutional memory is generally defined as “a collective set of facts, concepts, experiences and know-how held by a group of people.” Contrary to this definition however, much of what makes up institutional memory in many offices is often housed at an individual level, and thus creates a dangerous state if the entire team doesn’t have access to it.

I don’t need to know everything, I just need to know where to find it, when I need it. ~Albert Einstein

With Redtail CRM in place, you and your staff can take detailed notes, document all interactions, and record all information learned about your clients and prospects. Much of this you’ll do for compliance purposes, but it is also invaluable in terms of remembering aspects of your clients’ lives in order that you might streamline your interaction preparation, engage in data-driven marketing, and strengthen your relationships and build trust through personalization. Whether these business-building activities come in the form of one-on-one interactions referencing back to a specific individualized piece of data or through marketing campaigns based upon client segmentation around shared data points, the more informed you are about your clients, the better.

STREAMLINE INTERACTION PREP

Redtail CRM can play a crucial role in helping you prepare for client meetings.  It’s important to remember that it’s not always about numbers – many of your clients are looking for someone they can talk to easily and openly about very private aspects of their lives.  When they meet with you to discuss financial matters, it’s not necessarily numbers that drive them to you – it’s what those numbers mean for the comfort and security of their families and futures.  How can Redtail assist you in prepping for these meetings?

Establishing and effectively maintaining a CRM system is one of the most important steps you can take toward putting your clients’ interests front and center for your firm. When you consider that multiple studies on client retention suggest that improving your retention rates by five percent can improve your profits by anywhere from 25-95 percent, the importance of putting your clients’ interests front and center comes into sharper focus.

When everyone in your office is using Redtail CRM to its potential, everyone can see exactly where other office members left off with a client. When your data is maintained and up-to-date, you always have immediate access to the client information you need at your fingertips. Redtail can be the first place you look when a client reaches out or when you are about to reach out to them; this will give you a quick overview of where you are with the client and whether or not anyone in your firm is waiting on anything specific from the client. This also allows you to personalize the call in a number of different ways when you have easy access to both immediate needs and historical interactions.

DATA-DRIVEN MARKETING

As the channels for client communication expand, the opportunity for you to carefully craft your message for specific audiences has grown as well. You may not be able to be all things to all people but you can certainly represent portfolio management expertise for some clients while serving as an estate or tax planning guru for others.  To know what each of your clients might need or be interested in though, you must have a system in place that allows you to both track everything you know about them and to easily segment and report on this data. This is one of the important capabilities that Redtail CRM provides.

Get closer than ever to your customers. So close that you tell them what they need well before they realize it themselves. ~Steve Jobs

Segmenting your clients based on any number of different factors allows you to easily tailor your marketing and service efforts in a manner that will help you to achieve the greatest return on your investment. As an example, you probably wouldn’t want to target single clients in their 20s or 30s when sending out a client communication about 529 plans. New parents or grandparents though? Smart, data-driven marketing means spending your money on marketing efforts that are likely to pay off, whether in the form of client upselling/retention and/or client acquisition.

Similarly, it’s important to remember the famous 80-20 rule, i.e., 80% of your sales come from 20% of your clients.  By segmenting your clients into Tag Groups or Quicklists based upon data that makes clear the value they bring to your firm, you can move toward processes that ensure you are spending more time with that 20% of your client base that is actually driving your business rather than the 80% that is not.  This, in turn, can give you some insight into which clients you should most actively be working for referrals as well as helping you to retain those A and B clients who might otherwise move their business elsewhere because so much of your office’s time is tied up by C and D clients.

An effective CRM doesn’t just store your data – it provides you with tools for effective, and profitable, time management and marketing efforts.

PERSONALIZATION AND TRUST-BUILDING

Redtail CRM allows you, at a glance, to pepper your client conversations with the things that are important to them as an individual (or to market to them based upon that information). Simultaneously, it helps eliminate much of the siloing w/i your office, as everyone has access to all of the same information (with the exception of those things permissioned to only specific teams or individuals, when needed). This is critical in terms of building institutional memory and keeping things flowing during employee vacations, departures, or deaths.

With Redtail, you can track all those little details that ultimately enhance your client service. You’ll be able to stand out from the crowd because you can offer a highly personalized experience for a larger number of clients.

Whether you are in a solo practice or you have multiple advisors and staff members across several geographic locations, everyone has one central location that provides an easy way to tap into previous conversations, important client information, and/or those little nuggets of personal information that can help an office personalize each and every interaction.

Your clients are individuals. You know this and that’s why you don’t approach each of them in the same way. Redtail CRM is the tool to help you maintain that personalized approach and strengthen your client and prospect relationships.

REDTAIL CRM DOESN’T FORGET

Redtail CRM is your memory when your memory falters. Building relationships is all about remembering who people are, what they love, what they hate, what they fear, what they anticipate. It’s about the entire picture of who they are, and recording that data in Redtail CRM makes it easy to reference, easy to remember, and easy to put to work.

Regardless of who is involved in a client meeting, who took a prospect’s phone call, or who is following up on outstanding requirements, Redtail CRM can put the relevant information that arises as a result of these interactions at each employee’s fingertips. When you adopt the mantra, “If it isn’t in Redtail, it didn’t happen,” which so many Redtail users swear by, you are establishing companywide open lines of communication and setting your office up for success!

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Up next week, Reason #7: You need the technologies you use to integrate in meaningful ways so that you can eliminate redundant data entry and errors, streamline your processes, and improve client experience.

As always, if you have any questions along the way as we address these, you can reach out to our team at sales@redtailtechnology.com or 800.206.5030. We can’t wait to get to know you and your business better and to show you why Redtail is an industry leader committed to your success!