Beginning Of The FY: Very Right Time To Plan Business With Smart Tools

You must have heard the famous quote “failing to plan is planning to fail” by Alan Lakein. This stands very true for our financial advisory business where planning is key to achieve great heights of business in days to come. But we already know all this and have often been told to plan. But do we plan? The answer for a majority of IFAs in the industry will be a big NO.

Why we do not plan?
So what stops us from planning our business? The most apparent excuses for not planning or challenges in planning can be as below...

• I do not know how to plan / what format to use.

• Recording different plans over time is cumbersome

• Tracking achievement on ongoing basis is very difficult

• The entire exercise is time consuming

• I am not serious about my business!

Planning Advantages:
The importance of formal planning can never be underestimated. A vigorous and detailed planning programme helps managers to be future oriented. It gives the managers some purpose and direction. A sound blueprint for plans with specific objective and action statements has numerous advantages for any advisory practice. Given below are few advantages that can be highlighted in favour of planning:

• Enables you to work towards your vision and objectives of business

• Helps you build a road-map for activities, infrastructure, processes, etc.

• Helps you minimise uncertainty in your business and clients Facilities better coordination, time management and controlling business

• Helps keep you and your team motivated in the right direction

• Pushes you to improvise, innovate, be competitive and perform better

• Helps save time, energy and expenses by avoiding mistakes & idleness

• Helps identify strengths and weaknesses over time

Partner Business Planning :
Considering the Importance of Business Planning - an unique utility is developed by Team NJ which is available to use for all partners and can be accessible from CRM.
Partner Desk > Client Services > CRM >Partner Business Planning
Hereby we recommend our partners to use this utility extensively.

Key features:

1. Past Business MIS: You can get ready business MIS at one page for a period of last 5 years. Data points include AUM, Gross & Net Sales, SIP figures, Client details. Very interestingly, it also gives details of your total earnings in Upfront/Trail/Rap.

2. Partner/P-Emp Level / Group Level / Lead Level: The beauty of the planning tool is that you can use to plan not only at a global level for your business but also at each individual group level by using different parameters for any custom period. Recently added Lead level Planning Module helps you to keep track of the Client Acquisition / E-Wealth Account Opening for NJ CRM Leads.

3. Custom Periods: Planning can be done for different time periods (non overlapping) as preferred by you by selecting a starting month and an ending month. Thus you can plan say on a monthly basis or quarterly or as you may feel comfortable.

4. Client filtering: While planning at Group level, you may filter clients using multiple parameters. This will enable you to better understand your customers and find right opportunities.

5. Lead Filter : Leads can be filtered by selecting “Source On Lead” or “Tag On lead”.

6. Custom Parameters: The planning tool offers multiple parameters both at the Partner level planning and Group level planning for you to choose from. To maintain simplicity and practicality, we have kept common parameters across both levels so that you may extend Partner level planning to the Group level. Currently the parameters available are as follows: Equity & Total, Equity & Total Net Sales, Fresh SIPs, Client & TADA Acquisition and MARS amount. In Lead Level only one Business Parameter : “E-Wealth Acquisition” available for which planning can be done.

7. Auto Achievement: The planning tool will automatically calculate achievement against the defined targets both at the Partner level & Group level. This will enable you to measure your progress and your performance against your targets on an ongoing basis. In lead planning, achievement is counted if E-wealth account is open for any planned lead (By matching the registered mobile number). Here, user also have flexibility to manage the achievement manually mapping the EW against planned lead. Mapped EWA will be calculated in achievement.

8. Lead-EWA MIS : A Lead-EW MIS keeps you updated on how many leads, E-Wealth Account are mapped by system or user.

Planning Tips:

1. Better to select shorter periods such as monthly or quarterly for planning. If you have a long term plan, you can break the same into multiple smaller plans.

2. Use Group level planning to support your Partner lever targets. To make your plans fool-proof, ensure that you take into consideration success ratio /conversion ratio for Group level planning meaning that your Group level targets would naturally be higher.

3. Use smart /intelligent Group filtering conditions for identifying clients for planning targets. For example, you may select Groups with AUM of over Rs.25 lakhs and with SIP book of less than 10,000 to plan new SIPs.

4. Get the help /guidance from your NJ Team to planner practical, achievable and also challenging targets for your business backed by proper activity level planning. All minutes of the meeting can be recorded for future reference.

Now with the Partner Business Planning tool, planning can be a simple, easy, manageable and methodological. The tool is dynamic enough to plan either for a bigger picture at year end or for a very detailed level for every month. It is good enough for those who want to get into detail of each family to plan for smaller periods while being easy and fun enough for those who do not want to go into any detail at the same time.

It is now up to you how you want to shape your business and where you want to see yourself. So let's now take the first steps to Aim Higher, Plan Better and Execute Decisively. The results will follow undoubtedly.

Find Tool related screenshots here.