What We've Learned
February 6, 2021
5
min. read
2020 was a wild year, but we made it through and head into the new year with gratitude and positivity. The Gleason Group made major investments in our resources that will continue to pay dividends for our clients and our team, and we're excited to share them with you.
As we look back on last year and begin looking forward, we'd like to share what we learned at Gg, how we evolved, and announce several initiatives for 2021.
We’ve come a long way in 5 years… and we're just getting started.
It’s been said crisis does not build character, it reveals it. in 2020 we faced an existential crisis. Out of nowhere the market tanked 40% in less than a month. We were faced with almost unimaginable fears.
We not only persevered, but through it all we learned a great deal and grew from it.
Our team gained crucial experience working with clients through the depths of this global pandemic. Every single member stepped up when we needed them most and went above and beyond during these trying times.
Our clients faced their biggest fears, held in, and resisted the overwhelming urge to “just do something” and are stronger for it. We’ve been through a lot but have evolved and come out of this a stronger, more experienced, and more cohesive team.
Working through this helped us to better structure our team and our processes to serve our clients. We created group emails for the Service Team and Advisory Team, making it easier and more efficient for our clients to get in touch with the team and for the team to respond quickly.
We’ve enhanced our annual reviews, financial plan updates as well as our service check-ins. Ensuring our meetings are more impactful, efficient, and effective.
The pandemic and working remotely highlighted a huge opportunity to work with clients virtually. in early June we made a substantial investment in our connectivity and technology.
We added high speed dedicated fiber internet access, upgraded our phones, and added HD web cams and a comprehensive virtual meeting platform (Zoom). We now have full virtual HD capability in every office and are conducting 50% of our client meetings virtually.
In addition, my office and our conference room are fully equipped as virtual huddle rooms or group meetings for clients and our team. These investments have greatly expanded our ability to serve our clients anywhere, anytime.
It’s no secret that our biggest strength and competitive advantage is our people. Over the past several months we have been interviewing a wide variety of quality candidates and will soon be announcing an expansion of our team.
These highly skilled professionals will allow us to improve the depth and breadth of our team as well as the quality of the service we provide.
With our technology investment, and the experience gained by our team over the past year, we aim to drastically enhance the client experience.
Our goal going forward is to utilize virtual meetings to provide real time advice.
We aim to have shorter and more frequent check-ins and meetings where we can help navigate action items and needs immediately and without the need for a formal review or delayed follow up.
These items can range from rebalancing workplace 401k plans, mortgage calculations, social security statement access and more. This will drastically improve how we communicate to be ready to assist in an instance as well as the actual client follow through on action items.
These are a few of the ways we aim to improve in 2021 and beyond.
Thank you for working with us. We're grateful for your trust in us.
