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Hosted by Financial Advisor Coach, Ray Sclafani, "Building The Billion Dollar Business" is the ultimate podcast for financial advisors seeking to elevate their practice. Each episode features deep dives into actionable advice and exclusive interviews with top professionals in the financial services industry. Tune in to unlock your potential and build a successful, enduring financial advisory practice.
Ray Sclafani (00:00.366)
Welcome to Building the Billion Dollar Business, the podcast where we dive deep into the strategies, insights, and stories behind the world's most successful financial advisors and introduce content and actionable ideas to fuel your growth. Together, we'll unlock the methods, tactics, and mindset shifts that set the top 1 % apart from the rest. I'm Ray Schlaffani, and I'll be your host.
Believe it or not, research shows that companies with effective communication practices are four and a half times more likely to retain their best employees and achieve on average 21 % higher profitability than their counterparts who don't. For financial advisory teams, this directly translates into improved client experiences, higher retention rates, and increased referrals. In today's episode, we're gonna provide a simple four-step solution
to creating high-power communication that builds trust and a collaborative culture, let's get into it. As one of my good friends, Scott Underwood, who's the CEO of SoCium Advisor notes, when team members are happy, communicating effectively, and collaborating, clients enjoy a way better experience, make more referrals, and engage the team in a far more positive way. See, it's clear that effective communication
it benefits everybody clients, team members and the business as a whole. But as teams grow and add more layers of interaction, such as team huddles, one on ones, department meetings, professional development sessions, performance management conversations, all hands meetings, well, all of this ensures that communication remains productive and impactful, but at times can feel overwhelming. So to simplify the process of effective team communication,
I'm going to provide a very simple four step approach. use it client wise to analyze your team's communication, identify the right gaps, and then implement changes that strengthen the trust and collaboration within the team. Ultimately, you'll find these changes are designed to ripple outward, creating a culture where communication flows effortlessly and team members feel empowered and clients come to appreciate exceptional service. Okay, let's begin with step one. That is
Ray Sclafani (02:25.098)
analyzing your current communication channels. So before you undertake any changes, you want to first take a step back and assess what's the current state of your team's communication. After all, how are you going to fix what you don't fully understand? Research shows 74 % of employees feel they are missing out on important updates and 85 % report frustration due to ineffective communication tools. Sound familiar? You may even think well,
We're doing all right. We use all these tools and technology and we've got all of the schedule of team meetings and department meetings and quarterly off sites. Man, we're good, right? Communication's working just fine. But let me ask you three things. First, what tools are you using for communication? Is it email, Slack, Microsoft Teams, maybe all the above? Are your tools effective or are messages getting lost in the noise? Have you ever had any team members say, man, we've got too many emails around here?
Second question, how productive are your team meetings? At ClientWise, there's not a team meeting that goes by where we don't take literally 15 seconds at the end of the meeting and have everybody vote on a scale of one to 10 on the quality of the meeting and whether or not we achieved our objective. And by the way, if anybody's seven or below in their rating, they're to offer some suggestions on how to make it better next time. So do your meetings foster collaboration or are they just another item to check off the list?
Hey, it's Monday, we must be doing our team meeting day. Do team members, third question here, feel heard and understood? Are all the voices being included or do one or two people dominate and everybody else remains silent? So quick action plan, three things, gather feedback. You might send a survey, ask team members for their feedback, hold some small focus groups, understand how team members perceive the current communication practices.
and ask for candid input about clarity, timeliness, and any frustrations they might have. Second, audit your tools. How are they being used? Are there redundancies or maybe tools that nobody seems to use effectively? And third, look for the patterns. Sit in on a variety of team meetings and observe where communication breaks down or becomes inefficient. McKinsey research reveals that 56 % of meeting time is unproductive. That's half of meeting time.
Ray Sclafani (04:49.09)
So this step alone can uncover significant opportunities for improvement. Okay, the second step, start identifying some gaps and seeing where some opportunities for improvement can occur. First, think about information overload. Team members, do they feel bombarded by emails or messages and don't know what's truly important? You know, once you've assessed the current state of communication, then you got to dig into the gaps. Is there a lack of clarity?
instructions or updates may be vague or open to interpretation. Are there engagement issues, meaning some team members zone out during team meetings or hesitate to contribute? According to Gartner, 70 % of employees feel overwhelmed by the volume of communication they receive daily. And 28 % of the time, poor communication is the leading cause of project failure. So in other words, think about it. You may think, man, we're good on communication, our team, we like each other, we trust each other.
but they may feel overwhelmed that there's so much coming at them. What are the structures to improve communication? So here are three things for a simple action plan. Pinpoint the gaps. What are the recurring issues, silos between departments or inconsistent updates or unclear handoffs between team members? And then spot opportunities. Look for small but impactful changes like maybe consolidating a couple of tools or eliminating a tool.
sets a standard for excellence because you're using fewer tools but getting better impact. Maybe a simple setting standard response time for solving issues could be helpful. Hey, we'll have this done by Friday. With every opportunity to get a standard response, just adding a time-bound nature to it could be of value. The third thing is prioritize. Focus on addressing the gaps that will have the greatest impact on trust, collaboration,
and client outcomes. third step, you want to build a communication framework that's shared across your team. Now that you know what's working and what isn't, it's time to establish a framework for how your team will communicate moving forward. this is going to sound silly, but think of it as something like a set of quote, kindergarten rules for adults. If you've ever read the kindergarten rules, you know, respect, listen, say please and thank you, but elevated to meet the needs of the high performing successful team.
Ray Sclafani (07:12.898)
design your own agreements around communication. So here's how I like to think about it. The first would be in a simple action plan you could implement quickly would be look at your current core values and then define the values that are gonna guide your communication. Let me give you an example. There's a team we coach, they have three very simple core values that relate to communication. Transparency, timeliness, and respect.
On transparency, they all agree information is shared openly and proactively. Now that becomes a communication core value. Timeliness, responses are expected to be prompt, keeping projects on track. Third, respect, every voice is heard and valued. The second thing I would do after establishing these communication core values is to set clear expectations and define when and how specific tools or channels should be used.
For example, you might choose to use email for long form updates, instant messaging for quick questions and meetings for decision-making. And then agree as a team, we're using this instant messaging tool and not our personal text messaging for messages. So just think about the channels of communication, for example. The third thing is leverage each other's strengths. High performing teams, well, they know each other's strengths.
You want to equip your team to understand and lean on each other's communication styles. We're big fans at client wise and the disc assessment, understanding everybody's natural and adaptive style to communication. Gallup even shows that strengths based teams are 12 and a half percent more productive, which underscores the importance of knowing each other's strengths. Okay. Last step for strengthening communication through practice.
Organizations with strong communication cultures. Well, you've got 25 % higher engagement and 18 % higher client retention rates. So this is a muscle that just has to be regularly exercised. I would suggest if you're building an action plan, first and foremost, you want to provide some training, offer workshops or coaching on active listening, conflict resolution, or running effective team meetings. LinkedIn Learning found that
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companies investing in communication training see 24 % higher satisfaction among teams. Second, facilitate regular check-ins, either team huddles, one-on-ones. I'm a big fan of the state of the team meeting once a month that maintains alignment and clarity. I cannot emphasize the significance of the one-on-one meeting. The third thing is create some feedback loops. Ask team members to share what's working and what isn't.
You see this regular feedback loop oftentimes in the one-on-one and team huddles fosters trust and continuous improvement. Give the team members some space to think about what kind of feedback they could provide around communication improvements and continuous learning. And you'll find they'll come up with some great ideas, I'm sure. Now the fourth action plan here on this last step is publicly recognize excellent communication practices so that you're reinforcing positive habits. Seems really simple, but it works great.
These proven practices for enhancing communication draw from research, whether it's McKinsey, Schirm, or other experts. And we would suggest that you also want to consider the following three strategies, agendas and outcomes. Every meeting should have a clear agenda and define outcomes. This keeps conversations on track and productive. Number two, streamline the tools. Avoid overlooking your team with too many platform, consolidating tools and improving efficiency and reducing confusion. Everybody's in for that.
And then lastly, use some visual dashboards. Tools like Asana or Trello can be really helpful to track projects and tasks and keep everybody in alignment. Always remember that the ultimate goal of improving team communication is to deliver the best possible client experience. And when communication flows seamlessly, team members, well, they're aligned and empowered, and this creates a ripple effect. Clients notice the trust.
the confidence, the collaboration, and that in turn deepens their loyalty and inspires referrals. My friend Scott Underwood astutely pointed out again, clients notice when teams are aligned and collaborative, it builds trust and inspires confidence with translates into more referrals and deeper engagement. So improving team communication, it's not about fixing problems. It's about creating a culture where trust, collaboration, and alignment thrive. By analyzing your state,
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identifying your gaps, building a shared communication framework, and committing to ongoing improvement by checking in regularly on communication, you will strengthen your team's communication muscle. And when team communicates well, well, everybody benefits the business, your team, and most importantly, your clients. So it's time to strengthen that communication muscle and the results are gonna ripple outward in ways you may have never even imagined. With each podcast, we provide a few coaching questions for you
and your team members to ruminate on? The first is, how would you categorize the current level of engagement, communication, and collaboration with your team? What steps can you take to create measurable improvement, even if it's incremental improvement? Secondly, what communication enhancements can you implement to help team members feel more supported in taking risk and questioning decisions and exploring alternative approaches and methodologies? And third,
Think about the personality and behavioral styles of each member of your team. What motivates them and what causes stress? How can you and other team members most effectively communicate with each other to maximize each other's engagement and performance? Well, thanks for tuning in and that's a wrap. Until next time, this is Ray Sglafani. Keep building, growing and striving for greatness. Together, we'll redefine what's possible in the world of wealth management.
be sure to check back for our latest episode in order.
Ray Sclafani (13:28.526)
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