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Phones
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Monitored An Employee Phone Call With An Advisor This Morning And Felt Compelled To Interrupt: VOIP For RIA Owners And OSJs |
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Monday, January 30, 2012 17:23
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Tags: business owners | client communications | client satisfaction | leadership | managing | phones | VOIP My company’s VOIP phone system gives me the ability to monitor employee calls without their knowledge. I was monitoring a sales call with a financial advisor this morning, when I felt compelled to interrupt.
If you're a private wealth advisor, please join Advisors4Advisors (A4A) to get its full benefits. Register now, and we will donate $20 of our $60 membership fee to Bubbles The Clown’s financial literacy program, and you can post an icon on your website saying you support Bubbles' 501(c)3 charitable organization. Plus, get other membership benefits, including: - Analysis daily of issues affecting advisors
- Aggregation of news from dozens of sites targeting wealth managers
- Reviews by advisors of practice management applications
- 30 independent experts blogging on advisor business issues
- 24/7 access to webinars with 50 hours of CFP® CE and 100 hours of IMCA CE
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This is one of the great features about VOIP. Here’s why.
The advisor was going back and forth with an Advisor Products salesperson.
“Doing everything we need — a new website, SEO copywriting, AdvisorVault for PortfolioCenter — will cost $7,000,” the said the advisor. "My partner and I need to figure out if we want to take a pay cut.”
My salesperson and the advisor were both missing the point.
I was losing it.
The VOIP system lets me instant message employees. So I IM’d the salesperson and asked him to patch me into the call.
Admittedly, I felt a little awkward.
I told the advisor that I was monitoring the call for quality control purposes and felt compelled to interrupt because he and my salesperson were missing a key point: If you’re on a tight budget, focus on pleasing existing clients before marketing.
The advisor could improve his firm’s client experience significantly using AdvisorVault for PortfolioCenter. That was the most bang for his buck. Forget about SEO and everything else if money is so tight. For $2,400 a year, he could get AdvisorVault for PortfolioCenter and offer a great client experience to clients using the system to store wills, deeds, tax returns, insurance policies, and medical emergency information, as well as portfolio reports and other personal documents. (Sorry for the plug, but this is exactly what happened.)
My salesperson was humbled but appreciated the point about focusing on existing clients, and so did the advisor. For a veteran advisor, your existing client relationships must come first. If you give them a great experience, they will bring you more clients through referrals.
The lesson for today is that being honest with the advisor and my salesperson was the right way to handle the situation. It was honest and professional.
In speaking at conferences about technology to advisors, I sometimes mention that my company’s VOIP phone system enables me to monitor employee calls and that I routinely use this feature every day. Some advisors are aghast. Don't your employees resent it?
In my experience, they do not. If you use this feature to help people, and if the staff understands that it's for the benefit of the company and its clients, your employees respect that and cooperate. That's been my experience.
Listening in on a conversation with no need to respond gives you an advantage. You don’t get involved in ego and personality. While it may feel like eavesdropping, it's about business. Employees should not be doing personal business on company time and it improves client service and sales, which is good for the staff as well as your clients.
For RIAs and OSJs, a VOIP system that lets you “barge calls” is a great tool. To run a service business, monitoring calls is necessary.
In the rare instance you feel compelled to interrupt a call and speak to whomever is on the other end, be honest about the fact that you were monitoring the call for quality control purposes and then talk about how you feel you can be helpful. People appreciate honesty.
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Use Windows On Your iPad; A Solution For Those Leading A Bi-Platform Lifestyle |
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Friday, January 27, 2012 19:07
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If you use a PC in your office and an iPad everywhere else, here’s a way to create Micosoft Office documents on your iPad that you can also use on your PCs. If you're a private wealth advisor, please join Advisors4Advisors (A4A) to get its full benefits. Register now, and we will donate $20 of our $60 membership fee to Bubbles The Clown’s financial literacy program, and you can post an icon on your website saying you support Bubbles' 501(c)3 charitable organization. Plus, get other membership benefits, including: - Analysis daily of issues affecting advisors
- Aggregation of news from dozens of sites targeting wealth managers
- Reviews by advisors of practice management applications
- 30 independent experts blogging on advisor business issues
- 24/7 access to webinars with 50 hours of CFP® CE and 100 hours of IMCA CE
Register Now | |
PC World, in looking at OnLive today, says the web-based system puts on your iPad a basic Windows desktop with Word, PowerPoint, Excel plus a few Microsoft touch apps. It uses a touch interface that Microsoft developed for its large, tabletop Surface system.
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10 Free iPhone Apps We Can't Live Without |
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Monday, January 23, 2012 13:44
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Among the favorites here is one that turns pictures you take of business cards into contacts on your iPhone and there are also fun suggestions for editing photos and watching sports scores. If you're a private wealth advisor, please join Advisors4Advisors (A4A) to get its full benefits. Register now, and we will donate $20 of our $60 membership fee to Bubbles The Clown’s financial literacy program, and you can post an icon on your website saying you support Bubbles' 501(c)3 charitable organization. Plus, get other membership benefits, including: - Analysis daily of issues affecting advisors
- Aggregation of news from dozens of sites targeting wealth managers
- Reviews by advisors of practice management applications
- 30 independent experts blogging on advisor business issues
- 24/7 access to webinars with 50 hours of CFP® CE and 100 hours of IMCA CE
Register Now | |
View all 10 apps at Silicon Alley Insider.
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Bowing to Critics and Market Forces, RIM’s Co-Chiefs Step Aside |
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Monday, January 23, 2012 05:01
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Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis, who made the BlackBerry a leading business tool but then presided over its precipitous decline, said they would step down on Monday as co-chairmen and co-chief executives of Research in Motion. If you're a private wealth advisor, please join Advisors4Advisors (A4A) to get its full benefits. Register now, and we will donate $20 of our $60 membership fee to Bubbles The Clown’s financial literacy program, and you can post an icon on your website saying you support Bubbles' 501(c)3 charitable organization. Plus, get other membership benefits, including: - Analysis daily of issues affecting advisors
- Aggregation of news from dozens of sites targeting wealth managers
- Reviews by advisors of practice management applications
- 30 independent experts blogging on advisor business issues
- 24/7 access to webinars with 50 hours of CFP® CE and 100 hours of IMCA CE
Register Now | |
The two men, in developing the innovative device that was the first to reliably deliver e-mail over airwaves, turned a tiny Canadian company into a global electronics giant, says The New York Times. But they are stepping aside after disappointing investors and leaving customers wondering whether RIM still has the ability to compete, and perhaps even survive, in the rapidly changing markets for smartphones and tablet computers.
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Windows Phone Predicted To Displace iPhone |
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Monday, January 23, 2012 04:53
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Windows Phone could represent nearly 17% of the smartphones shipped in 2015, edging out Apple's iPhone for the second-place ranking behind Android smartphones, says analysts at IHS.
If you're a private wealth advisor, please join Advisors4Advisors (A4A) to get its full benefits. Register now, and we will donate $20 of our $60 membership fee to Bubbles The Clown’s financial literacy program, and you can post an icon on your website saying you support Bubbles' 501(c)3 charitable organization. Plus, get other membership benefits, including: - Analysis daily of issues affecting advisors
- Aggregation of news from dozens of sites targeting wealth managers
- Reviews by advisors of practice management applications
- 30 independent experts blogging on advisor business issues
- 24/7 access to webinars with 50 hours of CFP® CE and 100 hours of IMCA CE
Register Now | |
IHS said the introduction of the Lumia 900 running Windows Phone 7.5 (Mango) at CES last week showed Microsoft's and Nokia's promise in smartphones, according to PC World. The Lumia 900 will be the first Nokia device to run over fast 4G LTE and will be sold by AT&T in the U.S. in the coming weeks. Pricing has not been announced.
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