Supernova Consulting Group

Original Eight Steps to Success

Supernova originated with The Eight Steps to Success. During the early 90's Merrill Lynch was in the midst of a major focus on asset gathering and it was working. I sat with Jon Spafford in Indianapolis,IN talking about a creative strategy that was revolutionary at the time. He called it Automate, Elevate and Annuitize. As he explained his plan, the firms strategy became clear and doable. He believed heartily in asset gathering, but he knew it had a downside risk. Too many accounts and a reduction in service. His strategy seemed to solve the problem. What was this strategy? Automate= use of technology to assist the Financial Advisors to automate their contact process. All customer contact for Jon became appointments, even the phone calls. He called the phone appointments AT&Ters. He had regularly scheduled appointments with every client every quarter. Ten years later this is more relevant than ever. As your clients time and attention have become shorter, playing phone tag seems even crazier. Arrange all important calls as AT&Ters. Respect your clients and their time and make your life simpler. Be like other professionals and do all important work by appointment.

Stan O'Neal, Right guy at the right time at Merrill Lynch

  Now that everyone has thrown Merrill Lynch's former CEO Stan O'Neal down the stairs and under the bus for not better managing the risk at Merrill Lynch, lets give Caesar his due. Stan came along at a time of crisis for Merrill Lynch and put the company back on the road to success. Coming out of the roaring 90's Merrill was bloated and unprepared for the recession pre and post 9/11. Stan taught us to do more with less. He said " Cut costs across the board. Do more with less". We could not even replace employees when one left. We were forced to figure it out. We really had to do everything possible to maintain and grow our best Financial Advisors and our most valuable clients. The 80/20 rule became critical to our future so everyone was paying attention. We put together a process to better serve the top 20%.  We shed many of those that were not paying the bills to the Client Services Department which Stan supported. We had breakthrough moments as FA's realized with more time and attention, their clients were giving them more business and more referrals. The business model we called Supernova took shape in that crisis environment, honed by the heat of necessity. A Supernova is a New Star which shrinks down to it's core and then with a burst of energy grows to 10 times it's original size and heat. A true Super Star. Our Fa's were shrinking their businesses down to their core and then exploding to 2 or 3 times their original size with no more support. This was a true productivity breakthrough. Stan loved it. Merrill Lynch's story of this breakthrough is told in the new book by Rob Knapp, called "The Supernova Advisor ", John Wiley & Sons