Who checks their email at night? On the weekend? On vacation?
How many e-mails do you receive in a 24-hour period? The average financial services professional in Canada in 2019 receives 84 emails in 24 hours. And of those 84, eight were critical for stakeholder value. The other 90 percent were what? CC, BCC, spam, junk. Is that getting better or worse?
As a financial professional, what is the scarcest resource you possess? Time, time, everyone says time. Nope, you're all wrong. The scarcest resource that we all possess is not time.
My watch right now says it is 9 a.m. Tomorrow at 9 a.m. I will have had 24 hours of time available to me guaranteed. And the next day the same as long as you stay healthy. We have tons of time. The scarcest resource you possess as a financial professional is not time, it’s attention. What do you give attention to?
Every single one of us in this room has control over what we choose to do in the next 24 hours. You decide how to prioritize your tasks, who will you call, who will you email, who will you have lunch with, who will you ignore.
So let’s figure out why optimizing our attention is so important.
INTERNET PENETRATION AND READING
According to Internet World, the internet penetration rate of Australia used to be 4% then it became a quarter and today it’s 91%. 9 out of 10 adult Australians are actively online. This means that 1 out of 10 Australians are happy.
Does Australia have the highest Internet penetration rate in the world? If not Australia, which countries are higher?
The top 10 countries in the world include Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland. Why are Scandinavians the highest? Scandinavian countries have something that no other countries in the world have: Scandinavians have 100% literacy rates. What must you be able to do to surf the web? You must be able to read.
It is very important to understand that as we interact with our clients we bombard them with too much information and we assume that they all read everything we send. No one reads a 20 MB, 100-page PDF prospectus attachment.
Never assume that everybody can read. There are just as many of you that are two standard deviations to the right, as there are some of you that are two standard deviations to the left.
Deliver information to your clients in a way they can digest it.
SMARTPHONE MANIA
The smartphone has changed our world as financial professionals. Our clients have access to us 24/7, and they expect a response right away. Even as a university professor, the demands are different now than when I started 22 years ago. When I first started, it was very difficult for a student to seek my attention. We invented this thing called office hours. My office hours were on Fridays at 9 p.m.! No one ever came.
Nowadays, students have unfettered access 24/7 whenever they want. They can send me an email of course. Here is one I received at 2:05 a.m.. It goes something like this:
“yo yo yo Nicky B can you give me a Control C Control V of that PowerPoint deck from today, it was dope. Peace out my man!”
Should I respond? Of course not. Well, I didn’t. Two minutes later I get an alert from another Web site ratemyprofessor.com “Bontis is an ass.”
So when it comes to our clients and each other, how do we establish service standards of expectations for response? If you promise, and deliver, instantaneous response, your clients will always expect it. The smartphone has changed our world as financial professionals.
INANIMATE IP-ENABLED OBJECTS
ICANN predicts that we will soon be moving to two to the power of 128 IP addresses issued in the next five years. Is that number bigger than 7.6 billion users?
So here's the crux of the story. It's not the people coming after us that will seek the scarcest resource we possess. NO. It’s every other inanimate object as well. I will give you an example of four emails that Judy will receive in the next five years:
- Judy, this is your car. You got 1/8 tank of gas left and 40 miles before you got to get home. I recommend you go to the gas station in the next 15 minutes and buy gas at 24.99 a liter. Are you coming?
- Judy, this is your refrigerator. You've got no more milk left. I heard a rumor you're going to the gas station. I recommend you go to the supermarket first and get some milk, then you come to the gas station, before you get home. CC: car.
- Judy, this is the Gucci store. Remember when you came into the store to purchase that beautiful blouse about a month ago, but we didn’t have it in your size? Guess what? I heard a rumor you are going to the supermarket, then the gas station. The Gucci store is en route. I will prepare the gift box, redeem the requisite points from your loyalty account and have it ready for you curbside. You coming?
- Judy, this is your weight scale. I just got a snapchat from the microwave? Are you sure you want to eat that? (Delete.)
INIMITABILITY
So what does this all mean for financial professionals that want to work smarter instead of harder? The only sustainable advantage for us is to develop inimitability. What can we do for our clients that no other person or thing can copy?
Our inimitability is the development of rapport. The relationship that we garner and the trust that we earn when we look into someone’s eyes face to face.
Because when we do that, we get something valuable in return. A smile with their eyes. That tells me to keep going, I am with you, and I trust you.
Robo-advisors and artificial intelligence cannot replicate this. So our job is to focus on solidifying a relationship with our clients that says I will take care of your money; don’t worry, leave it to me. Let the machines conduct our transactions for us. As financial professionals, we can focus on higher-order phenomena.
Dr. Nick Bontis is the world’s leading expert on intellectual capital and its impact on business performance. He is an award-winning professor of strategic management at McMaster University and was named as one of the top 30 management gurus worldwide. His dynamic, high-energy presentations provide recommendations for improving individual and organizational effectiveness and accelerating management performance. Bontis is the author of the best-selling book “Information Bombardment: Rising Above the Digital Onslaught.” His speaking services have been sought after by leading financial organizations such as RBC Insurance, Manulife, London Life, Great West Life, Hartford Insurance and Citibank.
