Four Surefire Signs You’re Dealing with a Potential Coaching Candidate

As a leader or manager in the financial services industry you manage hundreds of advisors each day. While coaching might be beneficial to them all, you’re not in a position to put a comprehensive coaching program in place.

Make it easier by narrowing the potential pool of financial advisors who are ready for coaching. Several aspects of coaching will be beneficial to any advisor who enrolls in a workshop or engages in one-on-one coaching, but when you accurately identify a group of candidates who are primed for coaching success, it’s a benefit for everyone involved. Here are some tips for discerning those candidates:

1. They are passionate about helping people: Advisors who are driven only by money are sometimes too distracted by that target to see the benefit of investing money in a coach. The incentive to build better relationships with clients and work on their practice management is lost on them. However, advisors invested in making a difference as a means to make money are sure to step up to the challenge and make the investment in improving their business for the benefit of their clients.

2. They have clear goals but are lacking the structure to achieve them: Consider those advisors who constantly seek educational opportunities or ask questions about improving their skills but seem a little lost in the process. They might benefit from the structure provided by a coaching relationship, and the additional benefits they’d receive from having consistent access to useful tools, resources, and content geared toward building their businesses.

3. They are primed for growth but need to transition in order to achieve it: Many advisors come to us at a point of transition. They have reached their potential for success at a given level, but need to make specific changes in their thinking and business practices in order to move to the next. This is common amongst advisors who are building a team or moving from a horizontal team to a vertical team, and ClientWise has programs built with these transitions in mind.

4. They understand the industry changes ahead: Many professionals still see the advisory business as a one-to-one relationship that gets passed down generation over generation. This can serve as a roadblock. Advisors who are aware of the shifts occurring in how investors understand and manage their money are much more likely to accommodate by making the corresponding shifts in how they do business.

At ClientWise, our industry experience and expertise puts us in an ideal position to keep advisors abreast of these changes, but only if they’re willing to acknowledge them.

These characteristics might not present as clearly from advisor to advisor, so it helps to keep them in mind during your conversations. Determine what might be indications of an advisor who is motivated but lacking structure, or else ready for a transition and in need of a coach to help them through this.