Let’s say your car is having troubles. So, you take it to the nearest mechanic to get it fixed.
They have no idea you’re coming, but they’re already equipped with a wide variety of tools, parts, and expertise to fix most common issues.
As an advisor, your methodology is like a mechanic’s garage.
It’s your toolkit and your reference manual. It’s your go-to suite of tactics, training, benchmarks, systems, ideas, processes, frameworks, templates, examples, and more—all things you’ve tried and found over many years.
Like a well-run car garage, you want everything to be documented, organized, and at your fingertips for each engagement. You develop it slowly over time.
You’ll probably organize it the way your brain works. That part is up to you, but you need some kind of structure.
You could organize it by phases in an engagement, or by category of idea (i.e. channel-specific marketing tactics), or as a framework (i.e. awareness, consideration, nurture, conversion).
Like artificial intelligence, your methodology improves and gets more detailed every time you apply it with a client.
I use Trello to isolate and organize my go-to ideas and processes. You can use what you want—a spreadsheet works. I like Trello for this because it allows you to add rich content to each card.
Some of the cards in my methodology simply have a single idea written on the title so I remember to consider them.
Other cards link to additional resources, training, or even the necessary sub-steps right within the card.
The point of all this is to give you a suite of options to consider at any point in your engagement.
You might show your board to clients, checking things off along the way (which is what I do), or you might keep it for yourself as a reference throughout your engagements.
I’ve even shown mine prospects during sales conversations and wow’ed them into hiring me. They knew I wasn’t going to wing it on their dime and I was bringing real ideas to the table.
Putting everything in a tool like Trello or a spreadsheet allows you to check things off as you complete them. You can look back and track progress, surprising you and your clients with just how much you accomplish.
If you don’t have your own playbook or methodology, I highly recommend you begin documenting it today. It’s a multi-year process that compounds if you work on it consistently.
Create one or get access to mind with AdvisorOS as a starting point to build on.
—k