Unlocking Hidden Opportunities: Three Actionable Tactics to Tackle Before Year-End

The industry's top performers are focused on growth and preparing for the year ahead—are you confident your strategy is built on a solid foundation to navigate the challenges and opportunities ahead?

Too often, firms treat growth as a catch-all term, lumping acquisitions, asset inflows, and mergers together. Even the industry's definitions are inconsistent—some, like Schwab and Fidelity, categorize M&A activity as 'organic' growth in their benchmarking studies, while others define it differently. This creates confusion about what growth really means.

The most sustainable growth comes from the compounding effect of developing your talent. Teams with more robust capabilities in relationship management, financial planning, and next-gen engagement are better positioned to increase wallet share, retain clients, and attract new referrals. The proper growth strategy is not just always about the numbers; it's about equipping your people to deliver greater value.

With so much conflicting guidance and various definitions of growth, it's no wonder advisors struggle to align their efforts with meaningful strategies and track tangible progress.

For this discussion, let's treat organic growth as all growth stemming from your existing client roster and inorganic growth as mergers and acquisitions, plus all external business development activities that might add new clients to your roster.

Sustainable growth isn't about client headcount or acquisitions alone—it's about identifying untapped opportunities within existing relationships, building deeper client connections, and creating a referral engine that drives your firm forward. As the new year approaches, it's time to move beyond vague definitions and focus on growth that genuinely moves the needle.

Here are three key tactics to set your priorities straight before the new year begins.

1. Build or Enhance your Tracking System to Capture More Existing Client Opportunities
   Let's face it: many of your clients might not realize the full range of services your firm offers. They probably think of you based on how your relationship started—whether that was investment management, retirement planning, or something else. But here's the thing: there's a good chance they have other assets parked with outside providers, or unmet financial needs you and your firm could address.
   

That's where tremendous growth lies—expanding wallet share. It's the zoo hunting. It's about finding new ways to add value to the clients already engaged with your firm. Maybe it's by adding tax planning, legacy planning, charitable giving, or even business succession support. Untapped opportunities might also include:

    Managing liabilities, including business loans or personal credit lines

    Offering advanced estate and trust planning services

    Implementing tax-saving strategies and charitable giving plans

    Facilitating family wealth planning (including next-gen education)

But here's the challenge—these kinds of opportunities can be complex. They often fall outside the usual AUM-based services, meaning they could be structured as separate, paid engagements. And yet, when I talk to advisors, I'm amazed at how often they say they only focus on opportunities for the next 12 months. You could be capturing so much more if you had the right systems in place and a more future-focused approach.

To accomplish this, do a few things well. First, you must implement a robust CRM system to document, track, and pursue every opportunity, whether it’s the year ahead or a few years out. This can be especially effective when paired with AI tools that allow you to analyze client behaviors and flag potential needs and opportunities (e.g., clients making a large deposit, those nearing retirement, or owners preparing to sell a business). Technology can also help automate follow-ups and assign tasks to specific advisors, ensuring every opportunity is acted upon.

You must also train your lead advisors to effectively explore potential future client needs and ensure every team member understands how to leverage your technology tools. Hence, no opportunity slips through the cracks.

Action Items:

• • Before year-end, ensure your CRM system is optimized to track opportunities across assets and liabilities.
  • Use AI-powered alerts to monitor key behaviors and assign team members responsibility for acting on these insights.
  • Outline the opportunities you see for the year ahead (and beyond) and confirm those timelines with your clients.

Growth isn't just about finding new clients—it's about serving the ones you already have, more deeply and meaningfully. That's how you unlock new opportunities while building even stronger relationships. Set an organic growth goal based upon the possibilities that exist within your client roster.

2. Update Your Referral and Loyal Client Advocate (LCA) Process

A well-designed, intentional, measurable referral system is essential for sustainable growth. The 2024 RIA Benchmarking Study by Schwab and the 2024 Fidelity RIA Benchmarking Study emphasize that referrals (no kidding!) are a primary driver of client acquisition. Schwab's data shows that 67% of new clients and assets come from referrals through existing clients and centers of influence (COIs). For smaller firms (AUM <$1B), referrals are even more critical, as they often lack the resources for extensive marketing or M&A efforts, making these networks essential for growth.

Larger firms (AUM >$1B) tend to focus more on inorganic strategies like acquisitions and recruiting, but referrals still play a meaningful role. Firms implementing intentional referral strategies achieve higher conversion rates and better client acquisition outcomes, proving that referrals remain a powerful growth engine across the industry.​

Too many firms leave referrals to chance—Here’s my take: not because they forget to ask, but because they rely on outdated, uncomfortable methods that don't serve clients or advisors well. They lack a clear, proactive strategy and fail to identify their top referrers or track which ones bring in high-value, ideal clients. Advisors often tell me, 'If we do good work, referrals will come,' but hope is not a strategy. Sustainable, accelerated growth requires a structured process with intentional steps for engagement and follow-through. If you want referrals to fuel your growth, you cannot afford to sit back and wait—you need to act with intention and precision.

At ClientWise, after years of research studying the most successful firms in building client advocates, we developed and coined the Loyal Client Advocate (LCA) process. This approach focuses on building deep trust with a select group of clients who are already influencers and have networks aligned with your ideal client profile. You create sustainable, repeatable growth by partnering with these advocates (we'll cover centers of influence in another article) and engaging them in your LCA process.

When advisors coalesce around a focused list--no more than 5-7 client advocates per advisor in your firm--and activate this group, magic happens—and it keeps happening. This "less is more" strategy ensures that everyone involved—advocate, advisor, and prospective client—feels great about the process. So, instead of relying on expensive M&A or recruitment alone to drive inorganic growth, this approach drives meaningful referrals and trust-based growth.

Your CRM system plays a vital role in tracking referral activities, automating follow-ups, and measuring the effectiveness of your LCA process to ensure no opportunity slips through the cracks. When combined with AI tools, your CRM can identify patterns, automate workflows, and track conversion rates, turning referrals from a hopeful endeavor into a dependable, repeatable strategy for growth. With the right systems in place, your firm can move beyond chance and create intentional, sustained momentum.

At ClientWise, we coach firms to refine and flawlessly execute their LCA strategy, helping them build a reliable referral engine that fuels long-term, sustainable success.

Action Item: 

• • Build or refine your referral and LCA process by year-end. Improve it!
  • Identify those clients who want to continue to help you identify the right-fit client for your firm. These will be the clients with solid networks and influence their communities.
  • Use your CRM to track referral metrics and automate follow-ups.

3. Set Bold Goals for New Clients, Revenues, and Assets
   Along with maximizing existing client relationships and generating more consistent referrals, you must focus on actively pursuing new clients and assets outside your current network (i.e., 'hunting in the jungle'). This requires targeting prospects from unfamiliar territories who fit your ideal client profile. Let's call this inorganic growth.
   
   Once again, technology offers you a competitive advantage. AI and predictive analytics can help focus your jungle hunting on the right individuals – assessing market trends and public financial data to identify high-potential prospects such as those who've recently sold businesses or received large inheritances, won the lottery, or executed on a stock option plan. Potential jungle hunting strategies might include:

    Expanding into new market segments or industries

    Hosting exclusive events or webinars to attract affluent prospects

    Building partnerships with attorneys and other trusted professionals

To keep your team focused, we recommend setting a 10% inorganic growth target for 2025—excluding M&A activity or any growth driven by market appreciation. This goal focuses on increasing new revenues and/or assets by 10% of your current totals. It's a bold, achievable objective designed to keep your team proactive and accountable. Let me share an example: If your firm is generating $5,000,000 in revenues and has $500M in AUM, take 10% of those numbers and make that your inorganic growth target for 2025. That would mean $500,000 in new revenues and/or $50M in new assets. If you're running a $1B+ firm, you might initially believe this is unrealistic. However, time and time again, I see the largest firms with more resources, more advisors, more capability, able to build this kind of growth, and this doesn't account for M&A activity, growth from existing clients, or the capital markets. This approach will ensure a durable growth strategy.

Many wealth advisory leaders mistakenly view capital market growth and AUM-based fees as complete indicators of firm success. But to truly understand how well your firm grows, you must dig deeper and separate organic from inorganic growth. Setting a clear inorganic growth goal (less M&A) ensures your team drives intentional progress beyond what the markets provide, positioning your firm for exponential success. This proactive approach is an emerging trend among the top-performing firms in the industry.

Action Item:

• • Set clear, measurable growth targets for 2025 focused on 10% growth in revenues or assets as described above.

  • Use AI-powered tools to identify prospects and build outreach plans. And track progress through your CRM to ensure accountability and success.

Choose How You Measure Growth—But Be Strategic

As year-end approaches, reconsider how your firm defines and measures growth. While industry growth definitions are inconsistent, making benchmarking more challenging, what's very clear is that focusing solely on acquisitions simply isn't enough. True growth comes from capturing every opportunity with existing clients, developing referral pipelines, and pursuing new business with intention. And technology will be essential to making your efforts efficient and measurable.

By embracing these strategies, your business will be better positioned for sustainable growth in 2025 and beyond. The choice is yours: rely on outdated definitions of growth or take control, measure intentionally, and grow strategically. And by bringing the team together around aligned objectives will ensure success.

Make the year ahead your firm's best by expanding, tracking, measuring, and hunting more deliberately. Your success depends on it.

Here are four open-ended, future-oriented coaching questions for your team to discuss:

1. How well does your firm proactively track future opportunities with existing clients to ensure no chance for deeper engagement slips through the cracks?

2. How effectively is your team using technology, such as AI and CRM systems, to identify and act on patterns that point to potential growth opportunities over the next 12 months?

3. How would you rate the quality of your loyal client advocate process? What would you change or improve about your referral approach so it's comfortable for everyone, ensures sustainable results, and focuses on partnering with fewer, more influential clients to drive results?

4. What steps will your firm take to set and achieve a 10% inorganic growth target in 2025—without relying on market performance or M&A—and how will you hold your team accountable throughout the process?

These questions will challenge you and your team to think beyond reactive strategies, focus on intentional planning, and leverage systems and processes to drive measurable results.