May 31, 2023 • by Steve Garmhausen
One of the biggest barriers to growth for advisory businesses is a lack of time. Inefficient processes, outdated technology and clunky, inherited ways of doing things can eat up hours that could be spent developing new business or deepening existing client relationships. So for this week’s Barron’s Advisor Big Q column, we asked advisors and wealth management executives: “What is an effective timesaver that you’ve implemented in the past few years?”
Andree Mohr, Chief Implementation Officer, Integrated Partners: We use reMarkable digital notebooks to record notes from client meetings, making that process more efficient. Some of our advisors use an iPad, but it’s the same concept: the use of a digital notebook to streamline the process.
Advisors are sometimes better writers than they are typers. And you can use shorthand more easily when you’re writing versus typing and keep more eye contact with the client. So normally, an advisor types up notes or dictates them after a meeting and sends that to their team. Dictation software can sometimes be unreliable of course. And some advisors do all their meeting notes at the end of the week, which isn’t necessarily effective because you’re most likely forgetting things.
By leveraging a digital notebook, two things are happening. You’re taking client notes, and then you’re able to send them off to your team immediately after the meeting. Handwriting is converted into digital text, and you have the ability to include drawings that you’ve used to explain concepts to your clients. We tell our advisors to take their notes in a similar structure—to-do’s on one page, key points that you want to make for your team on another, and so on. So this really creates efficiencies in teams’ processes.
