We’ve long been advocates of having beginning of the year formal, sit down, business planning meetings with our top 25 (30, 50) advisors to outline expectations for us and to get business commitments from them.
But what happens to the conscious, pragmatic follow up process to make sure that everyone is on track with their stated intentions?
If you work for a large company, with a formal HR process, then you are likely familiar with ‘Checkpoint Meetings’.
These are the quarterly, perhaps semi-annual occasions where employees have a sit down with their boss and review the goals that were outlined in the last annual review.
These meetings provide an opportunity, in a less formal setting, to discuss what’s going right and where improvements can be made.
Do you have these Checkpoint Meetings with your advisors?
These discussions should cover, at a minimum, these 6 issues:
- Contact frequency – are you and your internal offering enough, or too much, contact to the advisor and their team members?
- Product selection – is the advisor using the right products from your firm or are there changes that you’d recommend based on performance or upcoming product developments?
- Event planning – has the advisor planned the previously discussed client/prospect events that you committed to funding?
- Referrals – this is a great setting to ask for recommendations of like minded advisors that would be interested in your business consulting and product solutions.
- Threats – is the advisor being tempted by another suitor, aka another wholesaler?
- Production – often these Checkpoint Meetings, being more structured than your regular visits, provide the right opportunity to review where the advisor stands in production versus the commitments made at the beginning of the year.
It’s a mistake to wait until production starts to falter and then try to ascertain why.
It’s far more productive to schedule a Checkpoint Meeting to stay on track with your most valued producers.
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