What CRM is right for my Financial Advisory business?

is there a recommended clientrelationship management software system

you need a CRM it’s obvious role is that

it’s you know keeps track of client

contact information but it’s got other

elements uh most all it should have a

notet taking capacity I like to make

sure if you’re kind of making a list of

things that I like about crms that I

always look for uh I look for something

that when you search it will search

through the notes as well as the client

Conta information so that if for example

let’s say you have a problem with a

client on a specific account that you’ve

been uh kind of following through on you

could put the last four digits of the

account number uh in each note related

to that

problem and then you could go into the

CRM uh search box and type those last

four numbers of of that account and then

all those notes would come up so many

crms don’t do that so I mention that to

you I I mean and there are also calendar

components comp task components so

assigning tasks to members of the team

maintaining your own task list uh most

crms do not do this very well uh most

crms allow you to create task lists that

um are have a deadline date so you have

a task of something that’s due on a

certain date and then it creates a task

list for you of all these things that

are due on certain dates uh that’s very

inefficient uh that’s that’s what

Stephen cvy talks a lot about in the the

tyranny of the Urgent where

you know you’re so

busy working on tasks that you know have

deadlines that the the things that don’t

have deadlines which are often the more

important things never make it onto your

task list but uh you you you’re looking

for the capability of being able to

prioritize your task list in ways other

than the due date so if you could just

you know be able to look at your task

list and maybe Drag and Drop Like drag

the most important thing to the top of

the list or somehow move it up there uh

that’s something that many CRM are

unable to do and uh and I don’t like

that but um you know so calendar

contacts task task requests and then

last but not least uh what I would call

Action sequences which is automating uh

processes so like uh you know Auto

automated autoresponders Auto automated

sequences of emails or just automated

task lists of things where you’re trying

to take a best way process and actually

automate it only look at cloud-based

systems at this point uh if you’re not

using a cloud-based system it’s really

going to you in the uh years

ahead and I would say right now uh but

what you’re really dealing with here is

a kind of a a tradeoff between

Simplicity and

capability so we use a CRM you know we

looked at like 110 crms and U we decided

we wanted one a a CRM with tremendous

capability and the trade-off for that is

it’s not simple uh so we use a CRM that

you may not hear often in our industry

but it’s called infusion soft and I

would say if you’re going to choose

infusion soft uh it’s got everything

that you want uh it’s it’s particularly

automating processes so the problem is

if you’re getting started with infusion

soft you’re going to need to hire a

consultant so this is a financial

decision uh this is I would not try to

implement infusion soft into your

business without hiring an infusion soft

certified consultant

which there are jillions of them all

over the place uh certified Consultants

many of them are also virtual assistants

uh so you know it’s not that they don’t

exist or you know that they can’t help

you and fusion soft itself has coaches

that you can hire to help through this

uh but the point is it’s not cheap

Salesforce is you know probably the most

commonly that’s the one that I hear most

commonly this day this these days it’s

was one of the very first cloud-based CR

RM and it has a lot of capability

specific to our industry you hear red

tail quite a bit um they right on their

loo logo I notice here it says

celebrating 10 10 years so they’ve been

around for a little while but that is

focused pretty much on on uh Financial

Services as is juncture so uh juncture

is you know kind of used to be the gold

standard uh but for the fact that they

weren’t in the cloud I I’m assuming

they’re in the cloud now they have a

product called juncture Cloud so I don’t

really have a horse in this race I just

tell you that it should be cloud-based

uh you got to decide on the state of

your team right now you’ve got to think

ahead a year or two you want to make

sure that your system is capable of you

know doing everything that needs to be

tracked outside of the meeting plans

because those are tracked on the

toolkit but the more complex and more

capable CRM you get uh the more the more

complex it is to implement and the more

likely it is is that you’ll need to hire

someone to to come in and help you

implement it I would tell you one thing

to avoid when it comes to CRM are these

um there are some

systems uh that are Holy Grail they hold

themselves out to be holy grail in the

US there’s one called IAS interactive uh

advisory systems I think and uh we we

used it at our firm for several years

put we sunk hundreds well over a 100 th

well over 150,000 I I think it was

closer to 200,000 we sunk in to that

trying to customize it to our system but

but it was it’s a system and and you’ll

come across these where it’s a client

relationship manager and financial

planning and uh you know performance

reporting and you know it claims to do

everything and what the what it ends

what you’ll find and in Australia you

have xpl my experience with these and

I’ve worked with xpl and I’ve worked

with IAS and I’m a I’m a familiar with

several of these other holy Gra software

programs is they do a lot which is

that’s the big benefit it integrates

everything but it doesn’t do any of them

at a very high level so or at the

highest levels necessary for what we’re

doing for our clients so I think if

you’re gonna if you if you’ve made a

huge investment in a Holy Grail Software

System and you want to continue using it

just lower your expectations and just

realize that a lot of advisers have sunk

hundreds of thousands of dollars into

these systems only to find out that that

you need to

you know do a lot of things just just

give it up in thinking that it’s going

to be all done in one place and get used

to the idea that you’re going to have to

have your subject matter experts create

reports and certain analysis and certain

things that they’re doing outside that

system uh even if you keep the the end

result the the document created as a

result of your subject matter experts

efforts uh even if you store that in

your Holy Grail software program your

CRM and so forth um just get used to the

idea that that system’s not going to do

everything