Last fall, I began contributing to Horsesmouth, the top American website for advisors on practice management issues.

At the end of the year, I was delighted to have three of my articles appear in their Top Ten for 2009, including the number one article overall!

Here are the three articles that ranked in Horsesmouth’s top ten for last year.

  #1  The end of prospecting as you know it http://www.strategicimperatives.ca/blog/?p=150
  #5 10 tips for maximum motivation http://www.strategicimperatives.ca/blog/?p=129
#10 Tapping into today’s #1 client concern http://www.clientinsights.ca/article/tapping-into-today-s-1-client-concern

Another of the top ten was by Steve Sanduski of consulting firm PEAK, on seven tips to make your day more productive. Below are the tips, reproduced with Steve’s permission. To see more articles and to sign up for their free newsletter, go to www.succeedwithpeak.com .

Tip one: Stop complaining about not having enough time

We all have the same number of hours to work with – what seperates top advisors is what they do with those hours.

Tip Two: Focus on outcomes you love

You need to love the outcome of what you're attempting to get through the pain that you might have to go through to actually accomplish it.

Take time blocking. You know that it's effective and can help you be more productive. But if you're not doing it, maybe you're saying, "Well, I just like to have the flexibility in my schedule so that if I need to go have lunch with a buddy, I can do that. I don't have to stick to this fixed time-block schedule that I have in front of me." 

So what are you really saying? Maybe you value flexibility more than the higher productivity from sticking to a structured schedule.

Tip Three: Know what you value.

Before you can be productive, you must discover the one goal that you value the most.

Once you figure out what you value you can align all your activities on a daily basis, weekly basis, and monthly basis around the objective of accomplishing what that one thing is

Tip four:  Spend time on the right activities.

Steve’s firm did a survey of financial advisors some time ago. They asked them to track their time over a one- or two-week period, to see if there was any difference between how $100,000 producers spent their time and how producers doing a million dollars or more spent their time.

They found a few activities accounted for about 75% of the typical day or week of a million-dollar-plus producer:

• Reviewing client goals and objectives
• Managing assets and research
• Communicating with A+ clients
• Staying physically fit
• Cultivating A+ referrals
• Deepening A+ and A relationships
• Developing centers of influence
• Delivering A+ and A client solutions
• Meeting with staff

These advisors didn’t spend time doing things that could easily be handled by someone else in the office or outsourced, nor did they spend time working with B and C level clients or B and C level prospects.

Instead, they had an associate wealth advisor in the office who was able to work with these less-complicated accounts. These top producers were very focused on A+ prospects and A or A+ clients.

Tip five: Reduce stress and workload.

Successful advisors reduce stress in their lives by focusing on the most important activities that drive their business. Most advisors have to do lists …. what many need are “not to do ” lists that help say no to the things that aren't important and yes to things that are important.

Part of reducing stress also involves not taking on more than you can handle. So if you add something to your life (a new routine or opportunity), you're going to have to drop something else out of your life.

Tip six:  Unitask, don’t multitask.

To achieve maximum productivity, you need to focus on one task at a time and give yourself a time limit to accomplish it.

It's so easy to get distracted, but you get the best result when you're focused. Time blocking is a powerful way to focus our attention on one thing at a time, whether that's checking e-mail, returning calls, making outbound calls or visiting with clients. We all love to multitask, but to operate at peak productivity we need to stop multitasking and start unitasking. When you're working on something important, you've got to focus on that

Tip seven: Identify six key things you need to do every day.

Each day before you leave the office, write down six things that you have to accomplish the next day.

At the very bottom of the page write, "The Vital One." This is a big thing you have to do this week, perhaps putting together a proposal for a prospect, or planning a prospecting event.

  When you get into the office, start on your No. 1 item, and finish it or get as far as you can go, scratch through it, and move on

  Finally, remember this quote from Peter Drucker: "Efficiency is doing things right, while effectiveness is doing the right things."