Dig deep among staff members to help meet tech needs

By Dave Lindorff  October 11 2017, 11:47am EDT  Firms that are looking to boost their websites and social-media images might find that help isn’t far away. Most firms have employees who are savvy about technology, even if no one has bothered to ask them about their skills in this area. One obvious place to start is with younger team members, who may be more comfortable with technology, having grown up with it. Such employees need not even be advisors, says Stephen Boswell, president of the Oechsli Institute, an advisor coaching firm in Greensboro, North Carolina. But he says that once a firm identifies a younger tech whiz, that employee should be paired with a senior advisor, so that they can work on a technology project together. “You can’t just turn a young person with good tech skills loose on your website,” Boswell says. Drab advisory firm websites and social-media strategies aren’t uncommon in this industry, of course. “I look at advisor websites all day, and many of them are awful,” says Rick Rummage, founder and chief executive of The Rummage Group, another advisor training firm in Herndon, Virginia. “Yet people often don’t even know the tech talent they have right in their office,” he says. “It could be a young sales assistant, but nobody senior asks them to critique the website or to find a good CRM.” But don’t assume that the firm’s tech genius is a fresh-faced newbie. An older person could also offer tech expertise. “The marketing lady I have is 70, and she turns out to be as tech-savvy as any young person, says Steven Feys, branch manager at Seneca Wealth Strategies, a Raymond James advisory in Beallsville, Maryland. “But what’s different is she understands the needs of our clients, too, most of whom are older women,” he says. “She’s helped us really target our social media.” This story is part of a 30-30 series on savvy ideas on modernizing your practice.