Creative Writing: Advisors can get a lot more done-and maintain a higher standard of quality-by automating written client communications.

Organizing, writing and sending letters and other communications to clients is a chore, but many of the most powerful time-saving solutions can be relatively simple-and free. Creating standardized templates and reaching out to Centers of Influence to provide content for client newsletters can save you hours a week.

Consider this creative procedure developed by Elyse Foster, an advisor in Boulder, Colo. Foster noticed that she and her assistants were spending a lot of time composing letters or email messages for clients and local professionals on a variety of topics. "Financial planning is fundamentally a communication service," she says. But writing all those individualized messages from scratch is a highly inefficient task, and you're judged on the quality of the finished product. If the message is sloppy or leaves out something you intended to say, it can reflect poorly on the advisor and the bank. In addition to writing, you have proofreading and revision tasks.

How can you make this activity more efficient? Foster standardized all of her firm's planning letters by creating templates. Every time she or an assistant sends out a letter, they take a few extra minutes to create a template for the situation the letter is addressing. "When I send out the Investment Policy Statement (IPS), I now have a template that talks about it and a template for creating the IPS itself," she says. "When we talk about model portfolios or changes in model portfolios, there's now a template letter we can pull and customize with a list of the actual changes. When we first get a phone call from somebody, there's a response letter. There are letters for the whole process when people become clients, and our initial plan has its own original template."

QUALITY CONTROL

The most involved model letters are constructed for a client's annual meeting, on or around his or her first anniversary with the firm. This letter covers goals, progress toward those goals and the financial statement, plus analyses of the portfolio, insurance, estate and education plans.

Before the templates, when she was still creating these letters one at a time, Foster discovered that the quality varied. Sometimes information would be missing, and often the language of the letter sent in February might be superior to the language she sent in June, or vice versa. Now, the template letter prompts Foster to update each analysis with every annual review.

To ensure that clients never receive the same letter twice, every February the staff upgrades the past year's review message. The most significant change is deciding on a new issue for Foster to focus on during the year. When Colorado changed the no-fault law on auto insurance, for instance, Foster's staff researched it and sent out a letter with a brief description of the change and a promise to address the issue over the coming year. The year before, the letter discussed the need to review homeowners' insurance, since some insurers had changed the definition of replacement cost. More recently, the letter explained and discussed Sharpe Ratios and beta.