How do you go from where you are now, to where you want to be? How can financial advisors generating $500k of income get to one million-plus revenue? I will give you a hint. It’s not about time management. It is also not about products or services. It’s about your path to success, are you on it?
What is Your Path to Success?
For financial advisors struggling to grow, they are on the path to frustration and as one advisor told me, chaotic. How can you go from $500k in revenue to over 1 million? What are the keys to your path to success? Let’s examine your current path?
Ideal Clients Defined
Do you have a clear definition of what an ideal client is? How much revenue do you want to generate for every ideal client, family or household? Is it $5000 or $10,000 or $20,000 or more? Defining what your ideal revenue is first. Then plan on delivering more value to those clients that pay you the most, and you will gain confidence by delivering more to your best clients.
What Value Add Did You Deliver Last Year?
What value-added items did you deliver to your best clients last year? Did you deliver a comprehensive estate plan in writing? Did you build a legacy binder for them, or do a beneficiary audit? Did you give more comprehensive planning and advice, or was it all about performance? What are you going to deliver of great value this year? “Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is Albert Einstein’s definition of insanity. Deliver more value, means you are worth more. This is how you are going to go from generating $5000 per client to eventually $10,000 to $20,000 or more revenue to you. ( Note I am not saying charging fees, depending on your compensation, it is the revenue generated by assets, fee-based commissions or other methods. This is up to you and your firm.)
Measure Your Revenue
The number one thing advisors measure is their overall revenue. Divide your total revenue by the number of clients, and you have your average revenue per client. Now measure your top 10 revenue per client. This will help you determine your ideal revenue per ideal client.
Measure the Number of Ideal Clients
How many ideal clients do you have now generating your ideal revenue per client? If your ideal revenue per client is $10,000 and you have 20 clients paying that, how many could you manage in a calendar year, if that is all you did? If eventually all of your time was spent on ideal clients and prospects, how many could you manage in a calendar year delivering more value each year? Usually, the number is 100 or less. Is this the path you are currently on? Or are you just getting more and more clients and less and less time? Now change your definition from ideal clients to ideal families. This will take you from a $10,000 client to a $20,000 plus ideal family. Think about siblings and parents, not just kids, as an ideal family. Imagine if you turned 20 ideal clients into ideal families in the next 12 months? Imagine having 50 ideal families paying $20,000 per year?
Steps on the Path
So let’s focus on the path to success. First focus on delivering more value to your best clients. Let’s say you have 50 clients generating $10,000. Then acquiring more ideal clients where the revenue is more. Let’s say you acquire 10 new ideal clients per year at $20,000 each. Now in 5 years, you have 50 clients generating $1 million in revenue. You end up with fewer clients and more revenue. Is this the path you are on? Now focus on ideal families.
Related: Delivering an Innovative Client Experience as a Financial Advisor