Power to Your Practice

Avoiding the dreaded "Good Idea Graveyard" while improving the productivity and efficiency of advisory practices tops the list of Practice Intelligence messages delivered at this year's Raymond James Financial Services (RJFS) Conference in Las Vegas.

Attendees are getting a close-up, hands-on look at new methods and means to strengthen their operations through Practice Intelligence workshops, coaching, demonstrations and an array of new resources available via the Practice Intelligence website (practice.rjf.com).

"The bottome line is Practice Intelligence is our quiver of arrows that all users can draw upon. It's our 'weapon of mass instruction' when it comes to helping advisors," says David Lee, Director of Practice Intelligence at RJFS.

The quiver includes a number of workshops and resources. For example, a practice assessment tool, Start Smart, is designed to analyze various areas of the advisor's practice and creates an interactive report card showing potential improvement areas. Clicking on the "Fix" button directs the advisor to specific resources that help fix the problem.

In addition, the Tool and Resource Center is a virtual shopping mall of practice improvement specialty stores to help locate specific best practice solutions once the user has developed a plan but needs resources to make it happen.

And, "Conference on Demand" records the content from workshops at the national conference, regional conferences and Practice Intelligence workshops and is available through its website as a YouTube-type video that can be viewed from home or office 24/7.

"Advisors are always looking for ways to improve efficiency, scalability, client deliverables and life quality," Lee explains. "Our job is to make it easier for them to implement changes through Practice Intelligence workshops, coaching and our website."

Lee's Practice Intelligence sessions (see the conference agenda for locations and times) are designed to give advisors the tools needed to implement those changes, and will include a deeper dive into Conference on Demand, one-on-one coaching, Practice Perfect models, action plan generators, plan resources and more.

The Practice Intelligence workshops, he notes, are vital to advisors and will be a key session discussion at the conference.

"We offer three workshops a year," says Lee. "They are by invitation only and are designed for advisors who are actively engaged with projects to improve their practices. We have advisors who have fundamentally changed their businesses, in part, because of attendance at these events."

The Practice Intelligence sessions are included in the professional development track at this year's national conference, and offer advisors an opportunity to identify valuable resources. "Best practice resources are shared in many ways, including coaching sessions, study groups, our Practice Networking Center and through our conferences," Lee notes. "We want to help our advisors navigate the constant challenges they deal with each year."