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One of the most important positions in an advisory firm is one that's not out front selling or servicing clients: operations manager. But that key position goes a long way to helping grow a firm.
It's helpful to have an operations manager to overlook the employee and management side of the business, to know where the next resource is required — "so you can go out and service clients and do prospecting," said Kathleen Kelly, CRPS, AIFA, managing partner, Compass Financial Partners, a Marsh McLennan Agency company, speaking at a NAPA 401(k) Summit session.
And it's not just who you hire to join your advisory firm, whether it's dealing with clients or handling accounts — when you hire them can be crucial. "It's always better to hire early," Kelly said.
The hiring process not only takes longer than it used to, but having somebody on board ready to take on the workload can help in transitioning clients.
It can be hard to justify the time and money, especially if you don't have the excess revenue to afford it, but in the long run, it helps you to grow the business.
When hiring, you need to take diversity, equity and inclusion into consideration, not the least of which is to ensure a wide variety of perspectives and talents in your firm. "I am diverse!" said Janine Moore, AIF, CPFA, CFS, Senior Vice President/Retirement Practice Leader, HUB Retirement and Wealth Management.
Moore is Black, and her business partner is a white male. "One thing we committed to was we would work together on our hiring practice."
It's not easy in this time of the Great Resignation. Build a pipeline of candidates for hiring, whether you hire them now or stay in touch for years, both Kelly and Moore advised.
But how do you find candidates? Think outside the box, Moore said. She herself was working at Nationwide in an admin capacity before she entered the advising biz.
"If you have some type of insurance or mutual fund relationship, some of those folks are good candidates," she said. Her firm has also worked with the organization 100 Black Men, which has mentorship programs at historically black universities.
Creating relationships is important, but you should also look at the relationships you already have in the industry, Kelly said. Her firm was able to recruit people they knew from larger organizations — in part because her firm offered flexible hours, even before the pandemic, that larger, more rigid corporations couldn't do.
And how do you retain people? One way is to invest in them, both Moore and Kelly said. Some firms won't pay for professional development, but if your firm does, that can help in attracting new employees. Employees who know that you believe in them and that you're going to invest in them, will stay, they said.
Another is to pay performance bonuses. Rather than pay the more traditional way of rewarding individuals for their performance, Moore's firm puts the bonuses in one pot and divides it – one way of showing that people don't necessarily have to be stars but can support others and still be rewarded.
Moore and Kelly don't neglect the typical team building activities, however, such as spending time during meetings to talk about everyone's weekend or doing community service activities as a firm.
What advice for running a firm and employing people do Kelly and Moore wish they'd been told earlier?
"Don't be deterred by short term challenges," Kelly said. "Move forward. At the beginning, everything seemed insurmountable if one little hiccup occurred. But you have to roll with it, learn from it, and take that knowledge and apply it differently for the next time."
Don't put all your revenue eggs in one basket. "Diversity clients early," Janine said, recounting how the retirement plan that they had launched their business on — one that was paying the rent, utilities and salaries — was lost to a bigger firm. "Always look at the next opportunity, don't bank on one thing."
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