March 20, 2024

Practice Management Trends for Financial Advisors in 2024- Part Two #futurereadyfinancialadvisor

"Part two of the Practice Management Trends for Financial Advisors in 2024 - #FutureReadyFinancialAdvisor. Let's explore the latest trends in practice management that will help financial advisors to stay future-ready."

Back in 2014, did you think your firm would be managing this amount of money and wealth in 2024? What does 2034 look like for you? Will you be part of a larger team? The odds are that you will be part of a larger team delivering comprehensive wealth management advice. One of the trends is defining comprehensive advice.

Trend : What does comprehensive advice mean to you?

Most consumers don't know the difference between fragmented advice and comprehensive advice, do they? Your job is to get the message out there that you are delivering comprehensive advice in all seven areas, tax estate investment risk insurance debts and cash flow. You do this through a clearly defined process and 12 communications per year or more.  You have 12 services that you also deliver do your best clients and families. What services in writing do you deliver? What does your comprehensive advice look like in writing? Can you provide a sample? The advisors that are clearly delivering a comprehensive advice process are #futurereadyfinancialadvisor. Are you coordinating your advice through your COI network of professionals and delivering coordinated advice? Start by defining what comprehensive advice means to you in writing.

Trend: Building teams will accelerate

One financial advisor calls me and says he's thinking of selling his practice to another financial advisor. He wants to make sure that the clients are taken care of and that he is taken care of properly and not leaving money on the table. Choosing the person to take over becomes a challenge. He is a solo advisor and he's selling his business to another solo advisor. Together for a period of time they will become a team. But after he is gone there will need to be someone else who becomes part of that team to deliver on all of the promises. Building teams is inevitable for most successful financial advisors. Avoiding mistakes in building a team is difficult to do when you've never built a team before in financial services. Building teams is a specific skill and with the right processes in place, it can be done a lot quicker faster and easier. That is why the advisor called me to help him develop his future team. What does your future team look like? How many meetings will your future team have with clients in a calendar year? Think of the size of teams in 2014 and now think of how big you will be in 2034 and what team structure you want to put together, horizontal, vertical, or hybrid?

Trend: Specializing will accelerate

Elite financial advisors have a certain group of clients that grew as a cluster of clients and they start to specialize in. They started to understand the problems they had and build their advice around that group's specific needs. Then they realized they started to specialize in solving the problems for a certain group of clients. Several advisors have targeted doctors and dentists as clients. Some advisors focus on farm exit planning and succession strategies. Some deal with certain companies and executives of those companies. But the biggest opportunity is small business owners who are planning to exit in a certain niche. For example, some financial advisors target car dealers, or restaurant owners and understand how to help them with their exit plan. They have built a COI centre of influence  network of people to help them with their specialist market focus.  They have evaluators specialist accounting firms specialist law firms specialist commercial real estate firms and others to work together in that niche.  The specialist's marketing becomes easier and more sophisticated and their practice becomes more efficient than a general practice.

Trend : value added services

Ten years ago one of the firms I worked with decided to add 1 major thing of value to their best clients every year. Ten years later they have added ten different things of value to their best clients and the competitors cannot catch up. Firms are trying to decide what is value added with ideal or high net-worth clients and families.  Some firms have decided to partner up with value-added services. Some examples include hiring a certain type of coach such as a lifestyle coach, health coach or business coach for their best clients. Truly a value-added service. Other financial advisors have added bookkeeping services for business owner clients and some financial advisors have even bought bookkeeping service firms to service their clients. I have seen this happen with financial advisors in Australia. Others have added concierge services such as lifestyle and health care or travel.  Several advisors I work with have added their seven areas organizer to help people simplify their finances as a value-added service. Being creative and seeing how you can truly add value is a common trend for elite financial advisors. How else can you help your best clients accomplish more this year and every year in the future? Become a #futurereadyfinancialadvisor

Where do you want to be in three years? 

Our Practice Management resources - Comprehensive Practice Management checklist

https://practicemanagement.getresponsepages.com/

Sample: Comprehensive Financial Advisor Practice Management benchmarking report

Key data and KPI's, over 30 Key Performance indicators. Do want a sample benchmarking report to help you understand how to get the edge on your practice and your competition? 

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Updated 2024 Technology Checklist for Financial Advisors  

This checklist is five years' worth of research on the best processes elite financial advisors and their teams implement to acquire and service ideal clients while running an efficient practice.   

https://technology-checklist.getresponsepages.com/ 

We are here to serve your practice, let’s talk

Contact us to help get clarity around your goals on paper, and have the goals conversation by contacting Grant at grant@ghicks.com or click on the link to set up a no-obligation 20-minute discussion https://my.timetrade.com/book/JMTNJ regardless if we work together, let’s have a chat and listen to your biggest practice management concerns to help you get clarity around your future business.

Grant Hicks, CIM, is President of Advisor Practice Management and co-author of “Guerrilla Marketing For Financial Advisors” 1st and 2nd editions. www.advisorpracticemanagement.com for speaking, workshops, or coaching, contact Grant at grant@ghicks.com  Grants combined financial advisor clients manage over 5 billion AUM, and earn over $50 million dollars combined! 

Enthusiastically yours,

Grant Hicks, CIM, President
Advisor Practice Management
www.advisorpracticemanagement.com

PO Box 382 Lantzville BC V0R 2H0
Cell 403 970 8895
Email grant@ghicks.com  to book a meeting click here https://my.timetrade.com/book/JMTNJ  

PS Where do you want your financial practice to be at the end of 2026? AUM, Revenue, and time off? 

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