Virtual Office Tools for a High Margin Practice: How Client-Centered Financial Advisors Can Cut Paperwork, Overhead, and Wasted Hours (Paperback)

by David J. Drucker (Author), Joel P. Bruckenstein (Author) "IN THIS BOOK, many of our examples come from the story of how Dave transformed his fairly normal, mid-sized financial planning firm into an extreme..." (more)
Key Phrases: virtual work partners, workgroup scanners, virtual trader, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Outlook (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
"A gold mine of strategies for working faster, smarter, and better!" -- John E. Sestina

"A perfect mixture of practical tips and high-tech solutions... an invaluable tool--one that every planner should own and use!" -- Bud Elsea, FPA Director of Education

"Get this book. Then, control, simplify, and profit." -- Deena Katz, author of Deena Katz's Tools and Templates for Your Practice

Product Description
Tired of spending more time with your filing cabinets than with your clients? Is overhead eating up your margins? Now, two leading financial planners and columnists deliver the help advisers have been begging for.

Virtual-Office Tools for a High-Margin Practice is a non-technical trove of technology, clever workarounds, and procedural efficiencies tailored to help you move toward a paperless office, while still complying with SEC record-keeping requirements. The authors show planners how to reduce the amount of paperwork in their office by 99%, slash overhead, and find anything they need in one minute or less by adapting innovative software tools and shifting from on-site employees to remote assistants and virtual work partners.

Until now, creative ways of working this smart were hard to come by. With this book, they are available, ready to go, and easy to implement.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 250 pages
• Publisher: Bloomberg Press; 1 edition (October 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1576601234
• ISBN-13: 978-1576601235
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #440,863 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This Book is a MUST READ for All Advisors, October 22, 2002

By	"richard13371" (Danville, CA USA) - See all my reviews

I read this book from cover to cover in one night! There are so many great ideas in it that I had to reread the book to make sure I absorbed them all.

I have been a slave to the old model of adding more and more staff to handle the needs of a growing practice. The authors explain how to use technology to streamline our practices, stop drowning in paper, and how to outsource much or all the work currently being done by employees to contractors that work offsite.

If I implement all the ideas put forth by the authors, I could save many of thousands of dollars each month and increase my bottom line by the same amount.

I highly recommend this book for all practice owners that are interested in reducing their overhead AND increasing client satisfaction and retention.

27 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Get This Book!, November 7, 2002

By	Bob Vance (MiWuk Village, CA United States) - See all my reviews

Are you stuck in the rut of working more and enjoying it less? Have you found your profits dropping while overhead skyrockets? Looking for a way to live your life the way you want to live? If so, buy this book today. In today's difficult investment climate many of us financial advisors have been trapped into doing more service duties, administrative functions and are making less. The authors are living our dream of enjoying the lifestyle we deserve. They show and demonstrate step-by-step complete with specific recommendations of software, hardware and technologies to improve your practice and help you make more money. This well written and extremely interesting book will give you hope and vision to make changes in your practice to enhance your quality of life. I bought this book because I am planning to spend more time in my condo in Colorado and needed ideas on how to do it. The authors delivered exactly what I need to know. As an extra bonus, Joel has been terrific about responding to my questions and emails. Thanks gentlemen; when's the next book coming out?

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Virtual Office Tools review, April 10, 2005

By	Steven Wightman "Wightman Financial Network, LLC" (Lexington, MA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Dave Drucker and Joel Bruckenstein wrote a superb practical guide on running and growing a virtual office for financial planning practices. If you ever wondered about how to have more time for your family or personal life pursuits, asked how you could serve your clients better, or add increasingly higher profits in declining or flat markets, this practical guide, written by practicing financial advisors can do more for you than any professional designation after your name. For example, the ability of a virtual assistant a 1000 miles away to annote and populate a scanned document such as a brokerage application with only client specific information, obtain signatures, electronically copy and deliver forms to a brokerage within a few days saves financial planners like me time, money and frustration in dealing with paper document management. With the SEC stamp of approval, there is simply no better way to track and manage docuements. It is like moving from the automobile to the airplane. Leave the traffic jams behind and take your practice to a whole new level with this must-read guidebook.