The ClientWise Blog

Recently, LinkedIn announced a new tool that provides successful financial advisors with even greater connectivity with clients, and potential clients. LinkedIn Contacts lets users collect ALL of their professional contacts in one handy place. Using this as a launching pad, savvy financial advisors can serve up timely marketing messages, more efficiently and effectively.

As business coaches who work with the very best of financial advisors, we do a lot of observing. One observation with respect to client acquisition. For successful financial advisors who excel at finding new clients, there is little gap between intention and action. Psychologists refer to this as the intention-action gap.

As a business coaching firm that works with leading financial advisors to create client acquisition structures that consistently raise $25-100 million in assets each year, we pay a lot of attention to the key elements that contribute to this success.

For financial advisors, referrals can be a surprisingly tricky business. On the one hand, everyone knows that referrals are good and something to strive for. On the other hand, despite this commonly understood fact, we have observed that few financial advisors have created a referrals process that they really like, and is effective in providing a recurring flow of interested, qualified clients.

Successful financial advisors are, most likely, very familiar with the Pareto Principle as it applies to their business. The Pareto Principle -- aka the 80:20 Rule -- is named after the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto [see pictured], who postulated that 80 percent of the results come from 20 percent of the causes.

Our recent focus in the blog has pinpointed how the successful financial advisor can excel at their client acquisition strategy and process: 

• The Client Acquisition Checklist for Successful Financial Advisors
• How to Raise $100 Million in New Client Assets
• Want More Growth? Take the Client Acquisition Assessment 

At ClientWise, we specialize in helping financial advisory practices grow. As such, we have observed the mindsets of the best-of-the-best financial advisors, and how they execute their client acquisition and business development strategies. Although every financial advisory practice is at least slightly different in scale and scope, we have studied some of the common characteristics for leading financial advisors as they pertain to client acquisition, and distilled these characteristics into a Client Acquisition Assessment™.

As business coaches who work with some of the most successful financial advisors, we frequently encounter financial advisors and advisory teams who consistently raise $25 million…$50 million…or $100 million in new client assets annually. Although every circumstance is different, we have also seen some common characteristics for the best-of-the-best. 

As a business-coaching firm that has worked with thousands of the most successful financial advisors and advisory firms, we have observed the habits and characteristics of the “best-of-the-best”.

As financial advisors build out their marketing plans and campaigns for 2013, it is important to be clear on the various stages within the business development pipeline.

At ClientWise, we identify three stages in the pipeline: leads, opportunities, and clients. When you are clear on the distinctions between these three stages, it becomes much easier to execute the corresponding marketing activities.