Hi -

This month's tip highlights two current windows of opportunity worth capitalizing on: one, a great way to locate skilled help for your office, and two, a rare and inexpensive chance to do a small kindness for clients and others - one that can pay big dividends.

I'd also urge you to sign up for the live webinar I'll be doing next Tuesday on How to Put an Hour of Productive Time Back in Your Day. You'll learn an easy system for gaining greater control over both your day and the information you use to run your business, which can immediately improve your follow through, your ability to delegate, and your bottom line. There's more on it below.

If you work alone or with a small team, it's a safe bet one of your biggest challenges (and frustrations) is dealing with details, managing all the day-to-day administrivia that's essential to staying in business but that keeps you from getting in front of more clients and prospects.

Making more time for the things that only you can do (like bringing in more assets) means identifying how to eliminate, automate and delegate everything else. And right now is a perfect time to connect with people who can help you break away from the back office chores that are bogging you down: college interns.

By hiring a college student to handle routine office duties, you'll be drawing from a pool of well-educated, web-savvy workers eager to learn and gain experience – and who are available at a fraction of what you'd have to pay a "professional" worker.

You can usually post directly with the career centers of local schools at no charge. If you don't know who's near you, check out Braintrack to get a list of colleges and universities in your area. If you want to advertise at several schools simultaneously, try MonsterTRAK or Experience's eRecruiting – the two leaders in the undergraduate and graduate recruiting arena. Both offer do-it-yourself postings at their Web sites (MonsterTRAK starts at $30 per school and Experience at $45; discounted packages are available for multi-school listings at both sites).

Before deciding which service makes the most sense for you, make a quick call to the career centers of schools you're targeting to find out which service their students utilize more. While you're talking, ask how you can access their system to review a few current job listings; scanning them may trigger some ideas on packaging what you're offering more attractively.

Two final tips: direct responses to your ad to a secondary email so that your primary mailbox is not clogged with replies that distract you from clients' messages. And ask for emails only (no faxes or mailings); they'll save you having to scan or type the information into your computer later on.

If you want to break out of working IN the business to work ON the business, bringing on a skilled college intern is a step in the right direction. And now's the peak time for finding them so act fast!

Chapter 6 of Winning Clients in a Wired World ("Get the Help You Need to Succeed") contains a wealth of timesaving step-by-step guidance for streamlining the interview and selection process. To order the book, click here.

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Live Webinar: How to Put an Hour or More of Productive Time Back in Your Day

Imagine the sense of control and confidence you'd have if any time you needed it, you could instantly put your hands on materials, talking points, and other content for completing a sale, cultivating a prospect, nurturing a referral partner, and more. My latest webinar, How to Put an Hour or More of Productive Time Back in Your Day, is designed to show you exactly how to do just that.

You'll walk away from this 60-minute interactive session with a simple system you can implement immediately to save time and increase effectiveness. I call it knowledge journaling and even if you've heard me talk about journaling in person, you'll want to attend. I'll cover tips, tricks, and shortcuts for setting up and using a journal that I've never offered publicly before now.

And as a Tips subscriber, you automatically qualify for a special discount (25%) off the normal price. Just be sure to enter the coupon discount code KT0703 when prompted.

Click here to learn more about this exciting event and reserve your spot!

One-on-One and Team Coaching

Much of my coaching work centers on helping teams identify the key processes in their business and how to effectively streamline them through better delegation and automation. My clients share a common trait: they're all already successful to one degree or another... but they've plateaued and want to step up to their next level. If that describes you we should talk. I can help you implement solutions to a variety of challenges that routinely hold advisors back:

• Finding and fixing productivity leaks - minimizing the time you lose to email, you spend recreating information you already have, you forfeit locating what you need online, or burn delivering on follow-up commitments inefficiently are just a few examples
  
  
• Defining sales and service processes – from contact to contract to ongoing care and feeding of clients… understanding who does what when, and where technology fits (or could fit) into the picture
  
  
• Developing a marketing communication strategy and calendar – mapping out an annual plan for keeping in touch with and in front of clients, prospects, centers of influence, and the media
  
  
• Cultivating referrals from current clients – strategies and tactics for expanding your business with help from those who know it best
  
  
• Designing a step-by-step improvement plan for strengthening key aspects of your business - identifying opportunities and developing work flows in designated areas of the practice
  
  
• Team building and successful delegation – defining the vision, setting expectations, identifying desired results, managing the process, and the tools that make it easier

Please keep me in mind if you're involved in booking or recommending speakers for corporate sales or due diligence meetings, or national or chapter events for industry groups you're involved with. I deliver tangible, value-added content that participants can take back to the office and put to work immediately.

Here's a quick sampling of the presentations I can deliver.

Practical Strategies for Improving Productivity

It's no secret that excelling at time, information, and resource management is essential to becoming more productive. This presentation shows you how to develop and blend those three skills successfully to execute almost automatic business improvements. In it, you will learn how to: 1. permanently conquer information overload with a simple system for cataloging knowledge and content, 2. build a systematic, measurable, and repeatable roadmap to success, and, 3. put an hour of selling time back into every day by taming today's #1 productivity killer: email. All using technology you currently own.

Topics include:

• Understanding your productivity gap… and how to close it


• The 80/20 rule of information - how to keep what's critical at your fingertips


• A simple approach to creating your team's process playbook


• Developing a 30-day improvement game plan


• Eliminating email overload -- managing your message flow (optional)

Things You Should Know About

Got a tip you'd like to share? Or a topic you'd like to see covered in a future issue? Email me your ideas.

Until next time wishing you all the best,

Kip Gregory

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The Gregory Group:
Teaching Clients to Leverage Their Time, Talent, and Technology to Increase Productivity and Profit
202.364.6913

http://www.kipgregory.com

© 2007 Kip Gregory. All Rights Reserved. Reproducing or republishing this content either electronically or in print without prior permission is prohibited.