How to Delegate Tasks: Documenting processes and procedures in your CRM
Last week I covered Why I Hired a full-time Administrative Assistant (and not a VA).
This week I’m sharing Part 2 of the series, How to Delegate Tasks: Documenting processes and procedures in your CRM.
Remember how I said I was an operations nerd? I’m such a nerd that I got so fed up with the CRMs on the market that I created my own. I lead with this today as the CRM, Quivr, is a real piece of software with real users and it will be mentioned in various posts, including this one. I don’t mean for this to be a sales pitch but it’s simply hard to talk operations without talking about how I use my CRM, especially today when I share how we use our CRM to document all processes and procedures. There are other tools that have comparable features so my goal is to keep all posts informative regardless of whether you are a Quivr user, interested in Quivr, or love your current CRM.
But enough about that, let’s get into it…
We can’t read minds. Everything must be written down in a simple, clear format
If my wife asked you to grab her a pizza for dinner but provided zero clarity, what would you do? Most would either:
Wing it (or grab what you want and hope she likes it!)
Ask questions. What kind of crust? What kind of toppings? What about the sauce? So many options!
If my wife asks me to grab a pizza, I am going to Blacksheep (8.3/10 IYKYK) and getting the one with pineapple and Canadian bacon on it and she’s going to love it. Yes, pineapple does belong on pizza!
Being in a relationship for ten years you learn a few things about each other. Certain questions no longer need to be asked. It’s no different with your practice. Just as I know what pizza to bring home, you know how to open accounts at your custodian. You know how you want expenses categorized in QuickBooks. You know the verbiage to use when sending Meeting Summaries to clients.
But no matter how smart your admin is or how much experience they have, they will not know how you want things completed unless you provide them with simple and clear instructions.
If my wife told you to grab her a pizza but provided no further instruction, whose fault is it if you grabbed the wrong kind?
The foundation for documenting these items for your firm is building all workflows and task templates into your CRM to provide your team with repeatable, consistent steps for each item you wish to delegate.
How to Document Task Templates
A Task Template is something that can be completed by one person in one sitting. I bet there are a few dozen items you can delegate that fit this category. Common examples: sending a client money or updating an email address. Creating templated tasks in your CRM allows you, the advisor, to very quickly delegate items.
As an advisor, if a client calls and requests $5,000 on a phone call, you should be able to hop into your CRM and press a few buttons immediately after getting off the phone and launch that task that is automatically assigned to the correct person and contains all steps to complete the task. Sure, sending a client funds may be something your team completes frequently enough that they will memorize the steps, but what about running a beneficiary report? What about updating a phone number or email address? Many tasks are completed only a few times a year and there’s zero justification for using the mental capacity to remember minute details when technology can so easily be leveraged.
What’s your job here?
For each simple task you wish to delegate you must create an incredibly thorough and rules-based process that leaves zero doubt or room for confusion. For example, here is the task template for our firm to send money to a client from Charles Schwab:
Step 1: Log in to Charles Schwab (Link to Schwab)
Step 2: Click “Move Money” on the top banner from the Schwab home page
Step 3: In the search bar, search for the specific account
Step 4: Scroll down and select “ACH Out” on the right next to the bank we will send funds from
Step 5: If it is a qualified account, enter the Gross Amount, the Fed %, and the State %. If not, enter Gross Amount
Step 6: Press Confirm in Schwab, close the action
To build these templates into the system, I simply create them while doing the task. I open a word document and detail each and every step to complete the task at hand. Then when I am done, I create a new Task Template in Quivr and copy and paste the steps. Now, each time I want this task completed I just have to kick off the Task Template and the task is automatically assigned to my admin and the steps are right there for them to follow. We then update the instructions if my admin has any questions to prevent the same question from being asked twice.
Look at this as an investment in your time. Take a little longer to complete a task once and then delegate the task so you never have to do it again.
What is a Workflow?
A workflow is something that takes either more than one person or more than one day to complete. For example, opening an account involves drafting paperwork, sending the client paperwork for signature, monitoring the client signing the paperwork, and making sure the account opens at your custodian as intended.
The workflow to open an account is simply four different Tasks (or task templates). Each task has its own set of steps, just like sending money to a client. You simply write each and every step inside each and every task and get that workflow into your CRM. Quivr has a Workflow Engine that allows me to create multi-step, multi-person workflows that assign tasks to various users/roles.
In this example, it took me a little longer to open the account as I was documenting each and every step of each task, but once the Workflow is built and in your system, you can delegate the workflow and you never have to complete it yourself again.
Documenting Task Templates and Workflows for your firm isn’t fun. It sucks, to be honest; it takes time and effort. But it is the only way to repeatedly delegate tasks while ensuring accuracy.
Next week, we will explore the Learning Management System, or “giant database of how Drost Financial actually does everything” which serves as the resource library to provide additional guidance for all tasks and procedures. This is something that took us seven months to master and I hope will save you considerable time and energy by avoiding the pitfalls I made,
Until next week,
Steve
