Market Stress: 5 Ways to Prepare Your Support Staff

By Colleen O'Connor-Grant

June 30, 2008

The best route towards taking care of your clients involves supporting your own staff.

Whether it's around the time of quarterly statements being mailed or a turbulent day in the market, your clients and staff will interact, likely during moments of stress.

"Your support staff is the front line for your client base," says Robin Montgomery, founder, Support4Advisors. That means it's imperative you get your support staff on message and on point.

Fortunately there are many ways to do so and most are easy to implement:

Call a Weekly Team Meeting

The first step is to arrange a regular calendar of meetings, designed to address different items that affect clients and their portfolios. But make sure you provide an agenda, with key goals to discuss as well as static items.

Given how today's offices run on computers, technology should always be a standing agenda item, says Montgomery.

Also, take a few minutes to talk with your staff about what's going on in the markets. Perhaps it's proxy season, earnings season, or perhaps there is a local company that is of interest to the client base.

"I have clients in upstate New York, so news about Kodak would be relevant information during our staff meeting," Montgomery notes.

Profile Your Client Base With Your Staff

You know who your "A-B-C" clients are and so should your staff.

"At the very least they should be aware of who your key clients are," says Montgomery. "But before the calls come in, you should have profiled your clients for your staff."

For one thing, this is a useful exercise in helping your clients decide whose call will get put through to your phone, and who can go to voicemail (for the moment). This is especially helpful in stressful situations, such as the market tanking and the phone lines lighting up.

Encourage Staff to Be Proactive with You

Have proxy statements recently gone out? Has the volume of phone calls gone up within the last hour after a major corporate earning announcement? These are things you want your staff to inform you about so that you are aware of what's going on with your client base.

Also, use the time in your staff meeting to make sure each member of your support staff gets a chance to ask questions and is very much a part of the meeting.

"It's important this is not a situation where the advisor is dictating," Montgomery says.

Divvy up Phone Calls by Topic

The best route towards dealing with a volume of calls is to designate the go-to person for certain topics.

"Not everyone is skilled in the same topic. Also, not every member of your support staff is comfortable taking calls," says Montgomery. "So during your weekly meeting, inform your staff that 'Bill' is taking the calls on REITs, for example."

This way, even if you have a junior staff member taking calls, or even a new staff member, clients will be put through to the right person the first time they call.

Designate a Client Relationship Person

Not all inquiries to the office need to go to the advisor. Many client calls and questions can be handled by a client relationship manager.

If you don't already have such a person on staff, inquire as to who might be interested in transitioning to such a position. Then if not, consider hiring a new person to fill this position.

But remember, it is a key position in your office so make sure the person working on this assignment is able to dedicate the time to doing it correctly. Also, make sure you have designated someone who is skilled and comfortable at handling calls on a variety of topics.