Acquiring Clients in The New Age of Financial Advising
The financial services industry is in the midst of some incredible changes as the baby boomer generation heads into retirement and millennial become an important target market for flourishing financial advisory practices. For financial advisors who want to maximize on the opportunity presented with this change, we’ve provided some client acquisition tips below. The first three points are crucial in any era, but the last three will help you get the most out of the current climate.
1) There’s no secret sauce: A client acquisition model that works for someone at your firm, might not necessarily work for you, so avoid buying into a process that isn’t fit to your business. You’ll only create frustration for yourself and your teammates. Trust us, it’s harder to apply someone else’s method to your existing practice than it is to look at your current practice and come up with a process that works specifically for you!
2) Is what you’re currently doing scalable and repeatable? Start by having yourself or a team member track your day-to-day processes with clients and pull those pieces that relate to client acquisition. Every email, phone call, and piece of paperwork should be tracked. (Those things that don’t apply to acquisition you can set aside to create a scalable and repeatable client engagement process later). Now consider how you can apply these acquisition-related steps to a process that is documented, applied, tracked and regulated. When this process becomes habitual it will make client acquisition a lot easier. Moreover, the process will be your intellectual property and help in the succession of your business.
3) What about your current target market makes you unique? Every advisor has their sweet spot, it might just take a little thinking to hone in on it. One advisor we know is an activist and specialist for families dealing with dementia. Another networks with C-level executives and directors in a specific industry through annual shareholder meetings and trade conferences. Yet another only targets workers in the burgeoning oil fields of western North Dakota. A still different approach is the advisor who works with single mothers who are parents of special-needs children. Knowing your specialty gives you a clear starting point in the client acquisition process and, when you get super-specific, you’ll find clarity amidst the noise of your competition.
Finding new clients can be overwhelming. Simplifying your process and making it scalable and repeatable, while keeping the needs of your ideal clients and the current environment in mind, will take you a long way.
Coaching Questions from This Blog:
1. Are you reinventing the wheel every time you set out to obtain new clients? What parts of the process are you able to automate?
2. Is your staff being used to its fullest to help you in the process of attracting new clients? Similarly, are you using the rest of your team to their greatest capabilities in terms of their age, experience, and personality?
3. How strong is your understanding of your ideal client type in your efforts to bring in new clients? Are you effectively using your team, both in and outside of the office to its fullest capacity?
Topics: Client Acquisition