Using the Force (of your CRM): How Advisors Can Master Their Data | Sue Cheema, Elite Consulting Partners

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Mark Wickersham: Alright. So I'm excited for this podcast. Really want to kind of dig into

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Mark Wickersham: Crm and front office technology. I hear there's a rumor out there that your your nickname is the is the Jedi of a Crm. So I'm I'm looking forward to digging into this. Can you explain? Give. Give a little bit of background about what you do and who you work for.

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Sue: Yes, so I work for a lead consulting partners. And I've been working with them for about 3 months. Now, though the consulting experience that I have is over a decade. Now. I've been working with crms and automation and essentially

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Sue: helping firms understand their bottlenecks, identify their bottlenecks and help them automate and improve tech first, st right? And, as we all know, like Fintech has been really immersing themselves in advancing in technology and improving their processes and systems, and even the M. And a market right like

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Sue: it's a huge add to your, you know, valuation when you have the right systems and processes in place. It's it could be 10 x right? If you can identify that it could be up to 10 x right? If you have everything else.

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Mark Wickersham: Or you'd have a negative effect, right? If you had lack of systems or poor processes in place. Right.

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Sue: Correct, correct, or if there are too many you know, dependencies or key people risk like this kind of mitigates all of that and is a huge value. Add to to any firm looking to exit, or even grow. You know, over the next 5 to 10 years.

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Mark Wickersham: So what are what are some of the common problems that clients come to you in regards to their their Crm, where? Where? Where are people getting sideways.

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Sue: So you know, I

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Sue: I often see with financial advisors a couple of common problems. One is inconsistency in

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Sue: inconsistency. In sorry I'm gonna pause.

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Sue: Alright. Inconsistency in data integrity. Right? So they don't have standardized processes in place to

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Sue: to really have clean data. So, as the old saying goes garbage in garbage out right? If you're not

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Sue: making an effort to update your system and keep it relevant, then it becomes not credible. So that has that starts this adverse cycle of okay, this system is not credible. We're not going to leverage it for our client information. We're going to go right to the custodial data, and hence begins. The cycle of

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Sue: the platforms becomes obsolete.

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Mark Wickersham: You don't trust the data. So then you don't trust the system, and you don't get the leverage out of it.

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Sue: Exactly right? Right? So it all starts with data. That's the foundation. I have this pyramid that I, Bill, like when I'm telling clients what's the most important baseline to any platform. And that's that's the data, right? Your foundation starts with the data. And only when you have the right and relevant data. Can you optimize and automate and integrate? Right? So the foundation has to be relevant and important. And a lot of people take that for granted. A lot of financial advisors. Take that for granted.

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Sue: The second problem that I see common is oftentimes when firms are small or, you know, are growing. Trying to scale is they'll attempt to solve a problem with a platform

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Sue: and over time as they scale. What happens is they now have a tech stack that's not integrated completely decentralized. And they're often inputting the same piece of data into multiple platforms. Right? So now you're hiring just to input information over and over again with multiple platforms. And it's just

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Sue: not a holistic overview of your clients. If you're looking for their performance data, you're going to. You know your performance platforms. You're looking for client relationship, their activity, your task, your projects, you're going into the Crm and so on and so forth. So I think that makes the processes

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Sue: even more inefficient. And you know, that's that's where we come in and say, Well, let's take a step back. Really. See where your data begins where it's incepted and over time, how we can automate the centralization of of your of your platforms like. So we take the silo like we take the ecosystem approach to the siloed platforms.

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Mark Wickersham: So best of breed approach with that Crm. Being at the heart of it.

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Sue: A 100%, a hundred percent. And if you have a Crm and like salesforce has natively integrations with a lot of platforms that financial advisors use. So with a little effort, you can integrate with your custodian, you can integrate with your performance platform. You can integrate with your alls platform and really like, I said, have that holistic view of your clients.

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Mark Wickersham: And that's where that advisor would live. They they don't have to go to these various systems and not going into the back office accounting system. And

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Mark Wickersham: okay.

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Mark Wickersham: figure out what the performance is. I get that that dashboard of that that client right there in the Crm.

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Sue: That's exactly right, like what happens is oftentimes we underestimate the amount of time it's taking us to do a task like all right, it's 2 min here, 3 min there. It takes me 30 seconds to log into this platform. Grab this report. If you add that all up you're spending hours.

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Sue: you know, during the course of a week, and just gathering information that would be so much more relevant if it produced from one system. And that's where the ecosystem or the concept of relevant data having an integrated platform really comes in handy.

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Mark Wickersham: So this is death by a thousand keystrokes. So.

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Sue: That's exactly right. It's 5,000 keystrokes.

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Mark Wickersham: They? They don't probably realize it, because it is probably 3 min here, 4 min there, and then the end of the day, like they're not as productive as they as they can be.

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Sue: I have a story to add to this, I was working. I was really trying to get this prospect. Huge enterprise firm.

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Sue: They did not have a Crm. And I'm trying to make a case for them to take salesforce. I mean, they have the budget for it. It was just like a no brainer.

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Sue: and the person I was working with, or one of the executive sponsors came back to me and said, Well, you know, it's working. We can gather it from here. Take it here, and I'm like, let's take a step back. Who's doing this?

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Sue: Who's doing the gathering of information? And how long would you say, on average, it's taking this person to do so.

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Mark Wickersham: Yeah.

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Sue: They're like, oh, it's this resource. We have. Director level spends 5 HA week. And I'm like.

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Sue: honestly, here's what I'm gonna say to you.

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Sue: if you take an hourly cost for this single resource over the course of the year.

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Sue: you will have spent more money

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Sue: on this person doing this job instead of investing in a Crm that can automate the process or give you that holistic view of a client.

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Sue: No brainer.

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Mark Wickersham: I mean, it's these aren't cheap resources we're talking about, either. We're talking about the.

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Sue: Director! What.

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Mark Wickersham: Client, facing right.

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Sue: Exactly. Exactly. Right. Yeah.

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Mark Wickersham: Then you get into the whole thing about the the lack of you know there's there's a talent, constraint out there, right that there's a

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Mark Wickersham: you have. These advisors are getting up there in age. That doesn't seem to be. The industry is replenishing the workforce that and that that these are are some of your most expensive people that they're not making them as productive as possible.

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Sue: A 100%. A 100%. Like, you know, everybody needs the right tools and techniques to do any task right like, even generally in life right like, if you if you're skiing with incorrect, incorrect.

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Sue: not tools right? Like you can.

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Mark Wickersham: Bad equipment, or you know something from the nineties or.

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Sue: Exactly. Then it's just it just doesn't work out. So

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Sue: I think the right tools and techniques and processes systems, right as as we say like are vital, are vital and often taken as like it's working. Let's not worry about it, and then

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Sue: you'll end up spending a lot more than if you just invested proactively instead of reactively over the course of of time.

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Mark Wickersham: Let's talk about the data management. I I've heard that with Crms that the data within a Crm Dk is about 3% a month. I don't know if you have any any stats on that. Obviously, I think, too, that

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Mark Wickersham: crms and salesforce in particular can be really flexible. But on the flip side. I think sometimes that that flexibility

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Mark Wickersham: can hinder like data governance. Or if the setup isn't right, so how confirms

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Mark Wickersham: nail the data component of it and make sure that they have good data governance. And they have good good inputs.

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Sue: So the way I work with clients, I solve it in 2 ways.

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Sue: Right? Ultimately it all comes down to processes, oftentimes the processes that you may have as a firm internally, are systematically created over time

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Sue: to automate them right? Like, if you have, if you are onboarding a client, and you're like. These are the 10 steps we need to do to onboard this client effectively and accurately, without, you know, without missing any items, jog those 10 items down.

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Sue: We could create a system over time. To for you not to have any gaps in that process. Right? That's the systemization of internal processes. And that's hugely important. So it all begins with, create a process that people follow jot those things down. And then we can systemize it for you using a Crm.

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Sue: And that's what you know. I have done with a lot of our clients right? As long as you understand what's needed to get the work done, we can improve on that process.

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Sue: The second thing this is really important to me is understanding where the data begins and where it's supposed to end. What's the output that you're needing from that data? Ultimately? Right? So if you're onboarding a client, let's stay on that process. If you're onboarding a client and

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Sue: you get their Kyc information, their birthday, their social security information. And you input that on the custodial application, once the custodian has the accounts open a lot of times. Financial Advisors will forget about the Crm.

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Sue: And not updated. If there, you know, if there is an address update or if there is net worth update the tiers state and it becomes obsolete.

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Sue: What we can do at that point based on that data flow is like, well, let's integrate it with your custodial. Get a batch update on a daily, weekly monthly level. So your Crm data is as relevant as your custodial data.

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Sue: And that's where that's the kind of processes. We do like create, create standardization internally. So we can systemize it. And then through integration. Let's keep the data in your Crm relevant over time. Those are the 2 steps that we have taken with clients, and it's worked out really well for them.

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Mark Wickersham: So you started instead of updating the custodian, you update the Crm, the Crm updates, the custodial system.

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Sue: Yes, and it could be bidirectional right if there is a if there is a requirement that and oftentimes financial, there is a requirement. If there's an address change they this, the custodian information needs to be updated. So fine. If you want to do it in one place, and that happens to be. Your preference is the custodial fine. We'll do a batch. Update from the custodian and get the Crm up to date for you.

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Sue: So that's that 1 point of update that then flows over all your other systems. And that's where that ecosystem comes in handy.

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Mark Wickersham: And the major custodians are all Crm integration tight and friendly. Right.

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Sue: Yes. So you know, I've worked with Pershing. I've worked with Schwab. I worked with fidelity. A lot of them happen to be technically advanced. Some are lagging, but still getting there, so I mean, listen. I was reading a report recently from Hbr, and it said, in the past decade

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Sue: the only way to grow a firm was through human resources. And essentially, it said, That's no longer the case

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Sue: implying that the investment in technology and systems are the way to go. Like

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Sue: now, firms can grow without having human resources, but having the right systems and processing in place to grow exponentially.

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Mark Wickersham: Yeah, I think you've seen that, especially with family offices. They they've been a historically anyways thrown human capital at it versus.

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Sue: Yes.

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Mark Wickersham: Technology at problems and and try to solve it via via bodies. That's, I mean, there's a couple issues with that. I mean, obviously, technology helps you

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Mark Wickersham: scale. And and you know, with advisors and multifamily offices are obviously they're looking to grow. But single family offices are also looking to do more with less. The other thing is, I think, that you know what we see pretty consistently. If you, if you haven't ranked their top 3 problems.

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Mark Wickersham: you know, maybe technology is 3, but number one or number 2 is, is is.

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Mark Wickersham: Cat is human cat

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Mark Wickersham: and attraction right? That they struggle to retain staff, they struggle to attract talent. Yeah, if you're making them type into, you know, same data in the 4 different systems, and especially the next Gen. That they're not. They don't want to sign up for that project. They want work that's a little bit more meaningful.

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Sue: Plus like, if you think about it right, there's an overhead cost to human resource, right? It's not like, even if someone, if even if you're lucky enough to find the right resources, there are a bunch of challenges or opportunities that come along with it right over time. That person would want to grow and do something beyond right. That that's the overhead is where system and processes tend to be consistent and can be improved at way less

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Sue: cost right? And the other problem with that is, there's a key person risk that person could leave like you could train them on everything that's working well for you, and 3 years 5 years down the road they're like, oh, well, you know, I got a better opportunity, and rightfully so.

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Sue: So to really mitigate all that. I think systems and processes are a better bet for for any growing firm.

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Mark Wickersham: You had to work, you had a chance to work on a new account set up project with with risk clarity. Can you just tell me a little bit about that project. What was the before like? Like, how long was it taking? What was like the Nago rate? And what was the

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Mark Wickersham: what was the after effect of once the process was fully automated.

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Sue: So here's what I'm going to say. I love risk clarity. Shout out to them, they're awesome.

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Sue: So yeah. So I work with this clarity years back, and the project. I'll kind of describe the prior state, and then, you know, the the post implementation state.

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Sue: The prior State was the firm was the operation department, was essentially copy pasting Kyc. Information pertaining to the account holder into the custodial application. So copy, paste, copy, paste, copy, paste

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Sue: each single line.

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Sue: They were then creating a docusign envelope with all the relevant account types right to send to the client to sign. Now remember, for each of the application that the department was inputting the information on. They were then taking the time to mark where the client had to sign to make it easier.

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Sue: So this was depending on how many accounts this client was migrating over to this custodian could take anywhere from 15 to 45 min, and that's without interruption.

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Sue: Right? So we kinda risk clarity and I back. Then we worked we worked together to kind of really define the process as it was, and what would be the ideal state to be in. So we integrated Crm. We had salesforce back. Then fse integrated to their platform their provider platform. It was pulling the Kyc. Information pertaining to the account holder.

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Sue: so no copy pasting for 1520 min per application. It was then understanding the account applications that needed to be inputted was marking those applications where the signatures were needed.

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Sue: creating a doc, and through docusign integration, creating an envelope to be sent out to the client.

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Sue: So the overall state from, you know, min. 15 to 45, without interruption, went from 3 to 10.

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Sue: I mean, that was per client.

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Mark Wickersham: 3 to 10.

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Sue: Minutes.

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Mark Wickersham: Yeah.

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Mark Wickersham: And then how long was the number of days that it took, you know, to get the account set up at the custodian like? What was it before? And then what was what was it after?

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Sue: So you'll have to give me some grace on this. I don't remember the exact, the exact amount of days, but I would say from it went like just because the process was so efficient. We were not like missing. There wasn't, you know, because of the Kyc. And all the requirement. We had all the information we needed. We made those field required in the Crm. As we were getting this information from the client, so that reduced that nigo and so

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Sue: I would say, the average days went down from 45 to 25 days, if I understand that if I remember that correctly,

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Mark Wickersham: It's almost half.

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Sue: Almost half almost half.

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Mark Wickersham: And then, you know, the the advisor can't bill on those accounts until they're funded right? So there's a.

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Sue: Bottom line. That's the bottom line, right? Like, there's some. There's some processes that really directly impact your bottom line. And this is one of them right? The quicker you get this account open, the quicker you start billing your clients, the quicker you get the revenue in in House.

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Mark Wickersham: Yeah. And these clients aren't coming with it's it's not just a simple brokerage or a.

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Sue: No.

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Mark Wickersham: Typically an ultra high net worth client is coming with a with a handful of clients, and or, I should say, accounts, and of various different types and tech statuses and domicile. And it's it's a fairly complex problem that

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Mark Wickersham: you can apply, you know, workflow and and predefined logic to right.

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Sue: That's exactly right. And I'm smiling. Not because this problem is hilarious. I'm smiling because I just. I'm so passionate about just the entire, you know, elevation of efficiency, and some of these processes. It gets me excited. But yeah, I mean, absolutely absolutely.

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Mark Wickersham: What are what are the when you're you talked about data in the pyramid on, on Crm, what are the 7 key categories when you evaluate a Crm.

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Sue: Yeah. So the 7 categories that I usually look at is and I'll I'll actually point those out. I came up with 10. But I'm gonna minimize it to. I'm gonna minimize it to 7. I think the most important thing is adaptability. If you're investing in a platform and the user interface is not friendly enough. It's not user friendly. It takes longer, harder for the end users to want to use it

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Sue: right. If it's intuitive enough. Then it's easier for them to start using it over time. They create those, you know habits. And it's easier adoption than than something like you know

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Sue: Microsoft dynamics just saying ability to integrate right? I think that's super relevant, especially in today's landscape right? Whereby if you're solving, if you have, you know, a huge tech stack, and they're all siloed. The ability to integrate with other platforms will come in handy to create that ecosystem

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Sue: security. Obviously the platform has to be secure, especially when you're storing clients. Social security number their account numbers like there's a lot that goes in there, and we want to make sure that it's it's encrypted, and, you know, has 2 factor, authentication and all that stuff to make it harder for anyone to to, you know.

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Sue: Hack automation. I see a lot of financial advisors taking the the short sided route sometimes, and I'm calling it shortsighted, relatively speaking, in the sense that hey, this platform is less expensive. I'm just going to go this route, Redtail wealthbox, right? So I sometimes think, like, if you are able to take the long term vision.

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Sue: and invest slightly more in a crm like salesforce sales cloud, where we could then create a bunch of custom objects for you customize it to the sense, and it comes with such flexibility and automation

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Sue: that you could get a lot more

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Sue: with a little bit more investment. So the Roi is exponentially increased by a little bit more investment.

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Sue: right? And that's where we get the cost in. So it's very relative. I don't think you could look at it in in a vacuum like, okay, this is the cost. This, you know, based on the gratification that comes from it. Future investment of the platform salesforce has right huge

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Mark Wickersham: Huge R&D right, and a huge app network and connections right.

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Sue: Exactly so. I think that helps them build. And they're one of the crms that is invested in AI as an example, right? And mobile access is important to me, especially when you know you're on a golf course, and you're meeting, you know, a new prospect or a lead. And you're like, wait, let me put it in my phone. Open up your app, input the lead right there.

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Sue: And your system is updated. And you know the client service team can take it from there. The marketing automation can take it from there as soon as the lead is generated in your Crm. App.

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Sue: As an example.

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Mark Wickersham: I mean these these categories sound like any great categories to evaluate any system on. To be be honest with you.

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Mark Wickersham: What do you. How do you feel about some of the salesforce overlays? I know salesforce kind of out of the box isn't the most

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Mark Wickersham: designed specifically for advisors. Things like practify, or some of these other.

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Mark Wickersham: You know, Vars, how do you? How do you feel about those.

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Sue: You know, it's interesting, because, like, you know, from where I sit, because, you know, clients will come to me and they'll say we have practifi. I'm like to me. It's all the same, because I'm working in the back end of the platform.

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Mark Wickersham: Yeah, you work with salesforce basically.

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Sue: Exactly, and the back end is the same.

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Sue: But I do love platforms like cylintica like when you talk about overlays. I think practice pretty good. And you know, Salesforce is really trying to integrate themselves as their as their core platform with Fsc, financial service cloud, right? And they're actually doing Ria accelerator, which is a lower cost from fsc, so yeah, I mean.

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Sue: some of them are really good. Some, I mean like I said. Cylintica overlay is my favorite. To be honest. Besides, fsc, when it comes to financial services, industry.

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Mark Wickersham: Yeah, I mean, there's like an additional layer of IP that's that's been poured into, you know, a great platform.

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Mark Wickersham: talk to me about AI, how is AI impacting the front office and and Crm, and how is that? Kinda how is that capability being integrated within within a Crm.

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Sue: So with salesforce I'll I'll take a step back. Right? So let me just say there are 2 different kinds of ais, one is where you're building all the prompts.

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Sue: the other is natural. Language prompts right? You can actually speak with just like Chat gpt, you can actually ask questions, and it'll just there aren't predefined prompts that are coming back. It's actually analyzing, you know, world Wide Web and giving you the answers. So let's do the prompt builder 1st with with salesforce.

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Sue: There are things like chat bots, or, you know, virtual assistants that you could create and there are service. They're self service capabilities that are built in within them.

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Sue: So one of my clients, what we had done for them is they created an experience site using salesforce

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Sue: and created a chat. Bot. So once a user has a question like I can't log in, I have a problem logging into my my site as an example like client portal.

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Sue: We can, based on that prompt and certain keywords will say, Hey, have you tried this? Which is knowledge base like you leverage, the knowledge base and the client can click on it as an example. Do some of simple steps. It doesn't work out. Then you target them to an a live agent, which is tier 2

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Sue: pretty cool. You know. It mitigates some of the tier tier, one level resource allocation. It makes it more efficient as a process. You could also do predictive analysis and forecasting salesforce has this thing called lead score, which

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Sue: over time kind of toning down the noise that comes in with a prospect or a lead. You kind of really create a lead score on the probability of them being your client

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Sue: right again. Kind of build it out. A little bit of configuration is needed. And a little bit of effort is needed. But then you have that predictive analysis, you know, over the course of 5 to 10 years. So

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Sue: and then there is agent force, which is, you know, the layer of Chat Gpt. You could with the Crm and all the data within the Crm. It combines the 2 and gives you an output based on the question. So I could say, Hey, you know, let's call Joe Schmo as my client, you know, summarize all the activities. And what are the action items that I need to discuss with this client

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Sue: in my for my meeting. That's happening 20 min from now. So then, you can create that content. It summarizes the content. You have your bullet you could, you know, say elaborate on this, you know. Condense this and you have that tier sheet when you're meeting that client.

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Mark Wickersham: Create that narrative, summarizing a bunch of information.

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Sue: Exactly which is the value. Right your value. Prop to your client. At the end of the day.

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Mark Wickersham: I love that. So there's been a lot of turmoil in in the markets lately, for, for sure.

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Mark Wickersham: how can advisors better communicate with their clients.

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Mark Wickersham: leveraging Crm and leveraging some of these capabilities and try to leverage, like, you know, communication preferences, for example.

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Sue: I love that question, and I will tell you a story that I did with our Ria. Years back. It was such a cool use case and back. Then, you know, markets were volatile as they are at the moment, and what was happening was there was an impact on mortgages. They were going up.

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Sue: So within the Crm. They had all investment properties pertaining to all their clients.

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Sue: We ran a report every day. It was subscribed to the management team, and we said, Hey, this client has, you know.

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Sue: too high a mortgage rate. Let's request them. Let's request them to refi. Right. Let's send an outreach to these group of clients where they have a potential of exponential savings. And that's where you know, the financial advisors can become really sticky because the approach isn't reactive, that they're reaching out to you, hey? By the way, I read this in Wall Street Journal, that Xyz like, maybe I should be refinancing. What do you guys think? No.

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Mark Wickersham: Right, right.

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Sue: Yeah, right.

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Mark Wickersham: No, we've analyzed your portfolio. It's gone down 200 basis points. And you would save X, and you're proactively doing this across, you know potentially hundreds of clients.

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Sue: So to the performance, reporting aspect of it. I have integrated. You know, systems like at a par as an example which is a performance reporting tool with the Crm. And then based on that data that's coming into the Crm, you could create notifications to the client service team, which is a more personalized approach

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Sue: like, Hey, by the way, I see that this has happened to your portfolio. These are the steps we're taking to mitigate any further risk, right? And again, that's where the financial advisors become more credible and sticky over time, because that's a proactive approach versus reactive approach.

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Mark Wickersham: Right, and then you could even take it further right and track the communication preferences that maybe this this person wants the the summary bullet notes. This person likes to dive into the details. This person likes a call and be able to really kind of tailor that customized, you know.

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Mark Wickersham: client experience, audience at scale, right.

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Sue: Yeah, a hundred percent curate that approach and store and track. How this person has a preference of reaching being called or reached out to like.

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Mark Wickersham: Right.

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Sue: We did a client. We did a a survey years back when we had done a client portal for some of for some of our clients. Clients. Right? So what we found was a lot of the younger generation.

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Sue: Had a preference of using the app or logging into a portal and just updating information based on what they saw was happening in the market. Whereas a lot of the demographically older generation preferred a phone call not even an email, not a text, but actually a phone call, and that information was then stored, because then again, it raises that satisfaction level with with the client.

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Mark Wickersham: Yeah, I think that's a great example. How the Crm can really be leveraged to to enhance the customer experience like you need personalization at scale. Right? It's it's important to personalize that experience versus just a

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Mark Wickersham: a blanket, you know, generic experience for all your clients, because they're all different. They have different.

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Mark Wickersham: you know, like generational differences, communication, differences.

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Sue: That's right.

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Mark Wickersham: It may be so.

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Sue: Right.

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Mark Wickersham: Let's talk about Martech a little bit. Obviously, that's another key component within the the Crm. In terms of there's not only just the client and tracking the key attributes and the and and enhancing the client experience, but also

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Mark Wickersham: prospecting. You talked about the the lead, scoring.

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Sue: Right.

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Mark Wickersham: How should firms be thinking about their martek stack in particular? And what information? Where does that intersect, you know? Where does the martek stack, integrate with the Crm, and and vice versa.

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Sue: So I actually sat down with Elite's chief marketing officer yesterday because I wanted to get his insights on this Brian Lutz shout out to him, he's great creative.

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Sue: So and you know, elite has a marketing concepts managed service. So clients can actually reach out and we manage their marketing tech for them. So the insights. What I have seen and was reinforced by Brian is essentially what are you looking

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Sue: based on financial advisors? Understanding of where the clients are as an example. If

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Sue: some of their clients are on Linkedin More, you market on Linkedin, if they are on Instagram, you market on Instagram more if they prefer to your point earlier emails, you market, you know, through email blasts as an example so based on the vision of based on the understanding of

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Sue: where the clients are mostly spending their time, which goes back to the data in your crm integrate that with your marketing initiatives.

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Sue: I have. I know a lead is heavily invested in Vsls, which is like these 3 min clips within an within an email that we're sending to leads and prospects. Right? That.

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Sue: you know, even like after our intro call, we're just sending them Vsls and educating them on how we can bring value to the table. So I know those are prominent. And integration with Crm really gives you that engagement, engagement, stat per prospect or lead. So, as an example, what I've seen is

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Sue: if a client hasn't opened an email or outreach, and all of a sudden your 10th outreach to them, based on a certain sequence. They're all of a sudden interested. They opened it, closed it, opened it again, really clicked on it. Scroll spent 5 min reading through.

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Mark Wickersham: Yeah.

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Sue: You know that this is this is a sticking point for them, and there you have it.

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Sue: you know. There you have it. Now you have the topic that they're most interested in. You pick up the phone, you call and say, Hey, by the way, you know, saw Xyz, and we can elaborate, we can help you. So you have. You have the conversation or the topic point to really engage the client thereafter.

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Mark Wickersham: Yeah, I think you know, organic growth is really important to advisors these days. They can't rely on the the passive referral. I think there's so much information that you can get from marketing automation systems like, you know, a Hubspot or marketo

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Mark Wickersham: that you know. You can see. You can track, you know the engagement like that? They never enter my, they never open the emails or they open the email. What was the subject line that that did that, or you know E, even to the point where you can see where they're scrolling, you know. Where are they spending time on my website? What pages? What's the engagement on those pages?

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Mark Wickersham: There's a ton of information that you can get that you can harness to kinda continuously sharpen the pencil or sharpen the saw on that, to get better and better at at your messaging, and to be able to refine your your value. Prop, for you know specific types of of prospects. So

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Mark Wickersham: you just did. You just can't. Just do, you know, send an email and be like I'm done. It's you know, it's.

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Sue: There's so much follow up, there's so much follow up. And there's so much sequences that I mean, listen like talking about data at the end of the day like it even gives you an understanding of a benchmark right? Which is, what is your acquisition process of a client? Look like? How long is it taking? Where are the bottlenecks? How do we improve it? How do we shorten it? Right? So data is powerful. And if you're using relevant and tracking all important

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Sue: data points. Then you can really create business intelligence around it. And, you know, really drive your decisions faster, quicker, better.

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Mark Wickersham: Let's just talk about Crm tech trends. I normally ask people to kind of participate on on just kind of broader tech trends. But let's let's keep it focused to the

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Mark Wickersham: got a Crm university. What what tech trends are are you seeing that that are are gonna benefit advisors?

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Sue: I mean, AI is a big one.

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Sue: and I think that's here to it's here to stay. I think it's going to compoundly get better over the next 5 to 10 years to the point where I think we're going to be able to automate just through just through speaking to some of these crms. Right? You could. The way I see. And this is my vision. Right in the next 5 years is you can use your mic and say, Hey, by the way, create this lead for me.

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Sue: send this email out for me, you know. Create an activity summary for me, I think.

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Sue: to the point where it could even say, Create this report for me, based on where this client is engaged. You know what is in their portfolio. How do I create a strategy that's really relevant to them, based on their time horizon, their risk tolerance. So I think that financial services industry has a really lot of benefit ahead of them through AI

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Sue: and the.

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Mark Wickersham: Yeah, I mean, AI, AI, AI, right? But it's true. It's it's it's it's evolving so quickly. I mean to your point that the natural language like

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Mark Wickersham: to to have a conversation with your data. You don't necessarily need to know how to use a business intelligence tool. You can just, you know what you want, and you just ask it. And you're able to. Kinda

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Mark Wickersham: it's it's a different user experience that that AI is now able to provide the ability to summar, summarize. You know vast amounts of of information from disparate systems. And then I think you're seeing a genic. AI. Come on where you can have it independently run task. That it's gonna be the next kind of big wave of of automation that that advisors gonna be able to take advantage of. I think the important thing to note is like.

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Mark Wickersham: when is a AI is here today, like these capabilities are are today not like what? Which what should I be doing about my future roadmap like they? The advisors, should have a strategy and a policy about how they're leveraging that capability, because there, there's a lot of capabilities that are that are just native to some of these platforms today that they can take advantage of.

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Sue: I recently read this book called Cointelligence, and I find that an integrated approach is amazing. Right? Like there is benefits to human cognition like we just do a lot of things better. And there are certain benefits to just validating and reinforcing some of the data from everything that's out there. Now, of course, keeping in keeping in mind all the hallucinations that could.

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Mark Wickersham: Right.

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Sue: Right. So there's risk. But as long as you're aware, and integrating your own intelligence to what you know, what the artificial intelligence is generating. I think that's a powerful combination.

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Mark Wickersham: Yeah, I don't think decision making is there for AI yet?

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Sue: No.

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Mark Wickersham: A while like, I think that rate still around 3% or something which is still too high.

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Sue: It's low. Yeah.

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Mark Wickersham: But the the ability to, you know, there's so much going on especially lately. But I unfortunately, or fortunately, I think that that's the the pace of changes

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Mark Wickersham: here to stay, and that to be able to kind of summarize everything that happened with a client very quickly to be like, Oh, yeah, that's right. They did have a big cash infusion, or or whatever it may be, it's it's

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Mark Wickersham: you know. It's it's taking the the 10 x advisor. Right? It's not replacing the advisor. It's it's it's the advisor being able to leverage that to be able to better serve their clients.

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Mark Wickersham: I like to end these podcasts on a personal note with 3 questions, 3 questions have nothing to do with Crm.

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Mark Wickersham: you're, you're in the New York City area. What's your favorite? What's your favorite thing about New York City? What's your favorite spot.

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Sue: So I love going to museums. That's I mean, I would say my favorite spot is probably Central Park. I love walking around it.

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Mark Wickersham: Not your favorite museum. I'm going next weekend, so what's where should I go?

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Sue: Natural History Museum. I know it's cliche, but it's just cool. Or metropolitan is awesome. It's huge. So yeah, I think both of I mean, all of them are amazing. They're just yeah. A walk in the past is awesome.

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Sue: Yeah. My daughter goes to Ford and we're gonna go down.

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Mark Wickersham: So she loves it. What's a hobby or skill that that you have, that people might not know about.

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Sue: Oh, God! I don't know if I want them to know, but I love poetry. I love writing it. I love reading it so. Yes.

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Mark Wickersham: Got a poet here. Okay.

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Sue: Yes, how does that combine with crms? I have no idea.

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Mark Wickersham: Yeah, that's the other side of the brain.

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Mark Wickersham: you know. And then you got a show. You're streaming that you you like.

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Sue: You know. I we I've been watching Severance. I haven't love it, love it haven't finished it. So that's that's really where I'm at.

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Mark Wickersham: Okay, yeah, it's I haven't gotten. I got like, I started it. And then I was like, Wow.

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Sue: Wait. Did you? Are you watching the second season, or the 1st one?

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Mark Wickersham: I haven't got to the second season.

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Mark Wickersham: I I started. I started it, and I I enjoyed it. Don't get me wrong, but I was like, it's it's different, it's and then I started I watched and again finished up slow horses.

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Sue: Oh, I love that show, too.

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Sue: Anything on Apple.

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Mark Wickersham: I need more more content, please. Yeah, that that's probably my favorite these days is.

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Mark Wickersham: I thought the writing on that was fantastic and.

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Sue: Good. Choice. Yeah.

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Mark Wickersham: Doesn't like a good spy. You know.

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Sue: Oh, my God! And is it Gary Oldman? I mean he's just.

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Sue: He's brilliant like.

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Mark Wickersham: He's awesome. He's let he lets himself go in that show. I mean he must. I don't think it's particularly good for his health, but yeah, he's awesome.

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Sue: He's awesome. He's the best actor.

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Mark Wickersham: Yeah, yeah, alright. So this has been great. I really appreciate you being on the show, and thank you for your insights.

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Sue: Pleasure, Mark. Thank you for having me.

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Mark Wickersham: Yeah. Alright.

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Sue: Talk to you later. Bye.