As the year slowly comes to a close, many IFAs are preparing their clients for what the new year may have in store. However, are you extending the service to your own business? Is your business preparing for the year with an actionable and measurable goal? Although you may be confident in reaching your objectives, as many as 90% of businesses fail to reach strategic goals. So, where is it all going wrong?
Setting actionable and measurable goals is the bedrock of an IFA’s day-to-day, but it’s often challenging to find the time and resources to introspectively analyse your own processes to see where you can improve.
5 ways financial advisers can reach their goals in 2023
To ensure a 2023 that’s set on action-driven results. Here are five ways IFAs can reach their business objectives in the new year by making small changes now.
1. Determine your current baseline
Before you can map out where you want to go, you need to establish where you are. Determining your current baseline means looking at your successes and failures of the past year. Focus on both daily tasks and overarching processes. Which are most resource-intensive? On the contrary, which brings in sustainable long-term revenue?
2. Be specific
What does business growth look like to you? In an increasingly demanding work environment, IFAs often struggle to find the time to focus on industry-leading growth opportunities. Schedule time to brainstorm what growth looks like for your specific business. The key to success is to make it as specific and measurable as possible. There’s no time or room for ambiguity regarding the future.
3. Create a framework
A goal framework enables businesses to take a structured approach to goal-setting. People are 42% more likely to reach their goals if they write them down. Don’t just think about your business objectives; create a framework that includes sustainable smaller steps you can implement that will help you reach your goal consistently. Your framework will become the true north of all business processes and a reference guide that aligns the team towards a mutual objective.
4. Utilise analytics
The key to goal-setting is ensuring that the goals are relevant and accurate. However, this goes beyond analysing internal processes. IFAs are well-familiar with the importance of including external factors and their impact whilst creating a strategy. The same applies to goal setting. Analytics can aid in precise business forecasting to help decision-making and strategy development. However, how do businesses obtain enough data to foster clear interpretations? Fortunately, automated analytics tools like Commspace provide integrated, interactive visual analytics that allows users to analyse trends easily, spot unusual spikes and discover exceptions in their revenue data.
5. Consider your capacity
When setting your goals and their timeline, it’s crucial to consider your capacity and how realistic working towards that specific goal would be during certain times of the year. Tailor your goal framework to be time-based and break them into more sustainable chunks. Then, reflect on your year and compare these steps to your capacity. Are you giving yourself enough time to give your goals and your other tasks their deserved attention?
Reach your 2023 financial goals: automate with Commspace
Ultimately, even if you’ve created goals and actionable steps for the year ahead, without time to implement them intentionally, they’ll easily roll over to the next year – unaccomplished. However, through a tool that manages, tracks, splits and analyses Financial Adviser revenue with the click of a button, IFAs can refocus their efforts on proactive leadership instead of repetitive manual administrative tasks.
Ready to create (and achieve) the goal strategy of the year? Book a demo here.
