For top-performing financial advisors, introductions from centers of influence and other professionals are a key to client acquisition success. And client acquisition and net new assets are key identifiers to a wealth advisor’s growing business. In fact, our research suggests that the most effective financial advisors find more than 70% of their new assets come from two sources: referrals from clients, and introductions from other professionals. In the ClientWise customized coaching for financial advisors, we find this to be true as well.
However, in our view these prime sources for financial advisor referrals, especially from other professionals, are misunderstood, misused, and…untapped.
Having trained and coached top performing financial advisors in this area for more than nine years, here is what I’ve observed.
Most financial advisors have experienced mixed results when it comes to working with other centers of influence and other professionals. Many have become discouraged and given up entirely.We have observed that most financial advisors have made ineffective attempts to partner with these other professionals, have focused on working only with CPAs and attorneys and typically start and stop the approach, rather than maintain consistency in building a true partnership for the benefit of others. Since many of these referral outreaches have been weak and poorly-conceived, other professionals have become somewhat hardened towards working with financial advisors and see the approach as just another “solicitation.”
Before jumping into this topic much further, here are a few observations that help set the stage:
For those financial advisors who partner with other professionals to create a wide-ranging wealth management network for the mutual benefit of their clients, introductions between professionals become a powerful byproduct of the network… rather than the main objective.
That’s all for now. This entire topic, of building professional advisor networks, cannot be addressed in one blog post. We plan on coming back to this subject again in the near future.
As they say…watch this space!