In the course of a typical week, all advisors and their support teams have lots of routine telephone interactions with clients.

At a recent roundtable for advisors in downtown Toronto, a top producing advisor talked about a simple step he'd implemented that had significantly increased the mileage from those calls.

Ranking number one in Ontario for a bank owned investment dealer, this advisor leads a team of twelve wealth advisors, investment associates and administrative staff - together they talk to hundreds of clients each week.

• Many of these calls are on routine matters and are initiated by clients. A while back, they launched a program called "ECHO", an acronym for "Every Call Holds Opportunity."

No matter how mundane the client's request, perhaps for a tax receipt or clarification of a transaction in their account, on each and every call all members of the team seek out opportunities that the client has not expressed and might not even be aware of, whether it be an RESP for their grandchildren or a TSFA account for adult children in the workforce.

At the end of the call, they finish by asking the client "What else can we help you with?"

I talk to hundredes of successful advisors each year. In my experience, it's not the big ambitious initiatives that make a difference in advisors' productivity, it's the little things like consistently looking for hidden opportunity in every client interaction. Consider adopting the "ECHO" principle for your own client calls - make it a priority to listen for them and you may be surprised by the things you hear.