You measure everything else – results, profits, numbers, leads, sales and so on. We really ought to measure our learning.
Learning comes in two segments:
- Learning you do yourself – reading, podcasts, YouTube, attending online classes, webinars. This is the lower-cost option
- Learning facilitated by your manager or coach. This is expensive.
Measuring the first one is pretty straight forward but challenging to gauge effectiveness. We can count the numbers, i.e. the number of books read per month, magazines and blogs consumed in a month, courses attended. People try to test the efficacy, but that’s as useful as a chocolate teapot. How many of you have done a multi-choice test at the end of eLearning and learnt diddly squat?
That’s all well and good since you’re investing your own time and keeping up to date with your learning. If it doesn’t work or didn’t give much value, you’ve just wasted your time and a bit of money.
But the problem becomes acute when someone else gets involved, such as your manager or coach. They cost money and don’t want to waste their or your time. Now it becomes essential to measure usefulness.
A regulated adviser will be supervised, monitored, and coached by their business or network, so here’s how you can measure your advisory skills KPIs.
Adviser Skills KPIs
- Training time needs to be measured and logged. Many advisers have a minimum number of hours CPD they need to achieve to maintain their status – 50 hours, 36 hours, 15 hours – they’re all different. Choose a number and work towards it. Easy to measure, but it only shows quantity, not quality.
- On quantity, see if you can let your recording systems log “training” time in addition to advising time, break times etc. That way, the adviser values the time spent learning a tad more. This also allows you to measure CPD, which comes next.
- Setting and monitoring your CPD goals can be a measure. Do you establish them each year or each month? Do the monthly goals feed on the annual goals and so on? For example, one of my CPD goals this year is to master a new gadget that plugs into my PCs and controls complex functions with one click. Say you want to switch cameras on Zoom? Usually, this process is very cumbersome, especially in front of a live audience. With one press of the button, the process occurs without losing eye contact with the group online. But the Elgato device needs learning, so I set a goal to do so. The success is if I can use it or not, live in front of real people.
- The number of coaching sessions is easily monitored. One hour or half-hour online sessions can be kept logged and possibly targeted. Say, once a week for a new adviser, two a week for a pre-competent adviser. One a month for an experienced adviser.
- Skills score. A coach can observe all skill processes. For example, factfinding with a customer, obtaining a referral, selling the need for protection can all be observed. Draw up a skills observation aid, and anyone suitably skilled can monitor and assess whether the steps are carried out and what degree of expertise. This can create a skills score. Put a target on this, such as 80%, observe the process and score them. Not too tricky but very subjective unless you tighten up the assessment criteria. This is dangerous as it can produce a compliance document, and we don’t want that here, just something that shows the adviser is becoming highly skilled, not compliant. Compliance checking is another focus.
- Time to achieve this benchmark is another helpful measure. This shows how good the coaching is and how receptive the adviser is and how competent they are. Again, this can have a target; particularly useful if you’re scaling your advisor team and bringing as many people to the benchmark standard as quickly as possible.
- Finally, technical capability can be assessed and given a score. Naturally, a multi-choice test works and is not problematic to administer. Better still, do quarterly “tests” in the form of presentations at the online sales meeting, case studies to produce a readable suitability letter, role-plays of technical demonstrations, overcoming objection role-plays.
Summary
- CPD time
- CPD Goals
- Number of Coaching Sessions
- Adviser Observation Score
- Time to reach Benchmark
- Technical Capability
- Training time categorised and logged onto dashboard/Adviser Diary
What gets measured, gets done, goes the narrative. If your adviser or coach measures the success in this way, you can easily upscale your team and automate this extremely subjective area and bring value to your investment.
