“The biggest room in the world is the room for improvement.” – Helmut Schmid
How do you justify the expense and time of making changes to their businesses, especially if you decide to hire a coach?
While we can identify real benefits, my many years of experience say justification is a state of mind. Humans are driven by feelings. Studies conclude that up to 90 percent of our decisions are based on emotion. We use logic to justify our actions to ourselves and to others. Emotion is what really drives decision making. You must believe you need to make business improvements and want to make them.
Perhaps the biggest benefit of making changes to your practice is difficult to measure. In financial advisory practices, most FAs tend to work individually, even if part of a team. As part of a team, advisors can at times work with a partner to bounce ideas off one another. With solopreneurs it’s more difficult. There is a great benefit for advisors to share ideas with another individual to:
- See if plans make sense from another perspective.
- Find out what other advisors are doing in similar situations.
- Brainstorm new ideas and consider other options.
- Share confidentially.
When a coach is your partner you have an informed, knowledgeable teammate; an independent voice who cares as much about your business as you do. The difference between success and failure is often small. That gap can be narrowed with a business coach.
Statistically accurate metrics on the growth of assets and revenue over a significant period for multiple advisors are limited. One article said, “The Oechsli Institute claims that the average coaching client brought in over $19 million in assets over the past 12 months, added 21 new clients and increased advisory fees by nearly 22 percent.” It is difficult to evaluate specific benefits without knowing the situation, including the baseline in these cases.
In another article, Oechsli’s research showed that “advisors who are consistently acquiring wealthy clients are a distinct minority, and most other advisors are eager to learn how to replicate that success.”
We can point to cases in our own experience where FAs have increased production by 50 percent in little more than three years while they also grew AUM by 83 percent. However, one of the reasons it is difficult to suggest an anticipated increase in growth rates is because it depends on many variables: the advisor, the markets, the length of service of the advisor, the client base, and mostly the depth of execution the advisor puts into implementing the recommended processes and changes. While case studies are available, they are usually one-offs and don’t represent statistically accurate assessments.
Most of the literature states benefits in the form of qualitative improvements. We have no doubt, though, that you will grow your assets, revenues, and client households, and have an excellent ROI in doing so, if you:
- Formally segment and analyze your book and clients.
- Develop a realistic and complete business plan.
- Implement the “Six Core Client Facing Processes”.
- Effectively execute several business development approaches.
- Track your actions and results.
- Clearly define and state the value you deliver.
You will also be more efficient, effective, and consistent in what you do and how you do it. You will have the time to implement an effective set of marketing and sales approaches for improved client acquisition efforts. You will be less overwhelmed, less stressed, and have a more manageable practice. You will maintain or improve your client retention.
Overall, effective implementation of the contents of “The Financial Advisor’s Success Manual” will provide:
- More structure around what you do, when you do it, who you do it for, and how you do it.
- A focus on what is important to you.
- Ideas on what is working for others.
- An opportunity to be held accountable if you implement these processes with a capable, experienced accountability partner. On a scale of 1 to 10 (10 being high), you need a laser focus to be at a 9.5 or better. That’s where accountability comes in.
- A better understanding of your unique areas of opportunity.
- A clear roadmap of how to take your business to the “next level.”
- An increase in client loyalty.
- Deeper and more profitable relationships.
While there is data to support the benefits of coaching for the implementation of financial advisory practice improvements, and while we believe those benefits can be achieved, at the end of the day, the only important belief is yours, as the advisor. Do you believe your business needs change and you will benefit from those changes?
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