Kitces.com - Advancing Knowledge in Financial Planning

Kitces & Carl Ep 82: Balancing The Desire To Serve With The Financial Demands Of Growth

March 24, 2022 07:04 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Kitces & Carl Podcast

Kitces Carl Ep Balancing The Desire To Serve With The Financial Demands Of Growth Featured Image

When an advisor first opens their own firm, they are often eager to take on any willing client in order to generate enough revenue to ‘keep the lights on’. But after getting through the first few years of business, many find that the time they spend working with early clients hinders their ability to bring on new, more profitable, clients. This leaves the advisor with the option of hiring additional staff members to handle the growing client base (and perhaps taking on debt in the process) or of terminating the relationship with less profitable clients… both of which involve very difficult decisions for the advisor.

In our 82^nd episode of Kitces & Carl, Michael Kitces and client communication expert Carl Richards discuss how advisors can ‘upgrade’ less profitable clients by referring them to other advisors, why they might need to overcome the scripts in their heads to achieve better growth, and how they can use different models to help underserved populations.

As a starting point, it’s important for advisors to recognize that, given the limited number of hours in the day, they cannot serve every potential client who might need help. While serving others is often one of the primary motivations of advisors, this must be balanced with the need to run a sustainable business (because if their firm goes out of business, the advisor wouldn’t be able to serve any clients!).

For advisors who want to continue serving at least some of their less profitable clients, one option is to set a fixed number of clients in this category. Another option is to set aside a certain number of hours each week to work with clients on a pro bono or low-cost basis. These strategies can help the advisor continue serving clients in need while also keeping enough time in their schedule to serve more profitable clients (and to keep themselves in business).

Clients who the advisor can no longer serve profitably can be ‘upgraded’ to a new advisor who can meet their needs profitably. While it can sometimes be difficult for advisors to move on from long-time clients (particularly those who were willing to work with the advisor when they were first starting out), it is important to recognize that these clients might actually get better service when referred out to a different advisor who specializes in their particular needs and who has the capacity to give them more attention.

Another option for advisors who want to grow their firm but have hit a capacity ‘wall’ is to consider hiring additional staff to help service their growing client base. In cases where the advisor’s current revenue might not initially support new hires, taking out a loan can be a viable option to cover the costs. And while taking on debt to pay employees could trigger an automatic script in the advisor’s mind that they are making a bad financial move, actually running the numbers can confirm whether this option (which would potentially allow the firm to bring in new and more-profitable clients) would result in greater overall profits in the long run!

Ultimately, the key point is that while the desire to help others is one of the primary motivating factors for many financial advisors, time constraints and the need to run a sustainable business often mean that advisors can’t always serve every potential client. But this doesn’t mean that advisors have to ‘fire’ every unprofitable client; instead, advisors can choose to continue serving some of these clients while referring others to advisors who might be a better fit, or else consider options that allow them to expand their capacity (such as hiring additional staff). Which can help advisors grow their firm profitably while at the same time ensuring that all of their clients receive the level of service they deserve!

The 30-Minute Prospect Meeting: A Framework And Agenda That Convert By Focusing On The Prospect’s (Immediate) Problem

March 23, 2022 07:09 am 1 Comment CATEGORY: Client Trust & Communication

In recent years, financial advisors have increasingly recognized that making a personal connection with prospective clients early in the process (as soon as the very first introductory meeting) can make it more likely that the prospect will eventually become an engaged, motivated client. And so advisors often get personal with prospects early – in many cases asking them questions about their personal memories, attitudes, and psychology around money (e.g., “What is your earliest money memory?”) – with the aim of showing interest in the prospect as a person beyond the numbers on their balance sheet (which would theoretically serve to build an open, trusting relationship, and the kind of personal connection that the advisor wants to develop).

But in reality, asking such personal questions in an initial meeting (before any foundation of trust is built) can ironically have the opposite effect of what the advisor intended. Because diving into personal psychological profiles when the prospect may already feel anxious and vulnerable about meeting with an advisor could – from the prospect’s perspective – feel overly intrusive and ultimately put them off toward the advisor.

Furthermore, prospects also may have priorities on their minds going into the initial meeting other than their psychology around money. Often, there is a significant, concrete problem in their financial life that has pushed them to reach out to a financial advisor. And when solving this problem is foremost in a prospect’s mind, having the conversation shift to money psychology can feel to the prospect as though the advisor is not listening to what they have to say – the exact opposite of the feeling of open communication that most advisors hope to invoke in prospective clients.

In the initial prospect meeting, then, all that really matters is answering this question for the prospect: “Can – and how – will this advisor solve my problem?” The advisor can help the prospect answer this question by focusing on that problem for the entire meeting: first, by learning what caused the prospect to initially reach out and exploring that problem in depth; then by describing the advisor’s services and planning process as it relates to solving the problem. And by focusing solely on the prospect’s problem, advisors can hold an efficient initial prospect meeting – lasting around 30 minutes – that gets to what really matters for the prospect and gives both parties the information they need to decide how to move forward.

Ultimately, it’s important to remember that prospective clients often want to talk about the problem that has caused them to reach out – after all, that’s what pushed them to overcome any fears and schedule a meeting with a financial advisor in the first place! And keeping the conversation centered around that problem helps to keep the prospect talking, continually reinforcing that they have a problem that indeed needs to be addressed (and that the advisor can help them solve it!). Letting the prospect talk freely about what is important to them in that moment – with the advisor listening empathetically and reflecting that information back to them – can establish the strong personal connection that many advisors seek, creating a foundation of trust to build on, which can – at the right moment – include discussions of money psychology… but only after building up enough trust and preparing the client for having those conversations!

#FA Success Ep 273: Scaling Yourself As An Advisor: Tucking In Or Institutionalizing Your Own IP, With Penny Phillips

March 22, 2022 07:06 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Penny Phillips Podcast Featured Image FAS

Welcome back to the 273rd episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Penny Phillips. Penny is the president and co-founder of Journey Strategic Wealth, an independent RIA platform for advisors that manages over $3 billion in assets through the firms that they work with to outsource their back-office compliance and operations management.

What's unique about Penny, though, is her expertise in helping advisors to scale their own time and productivity to work more effectively with clients, both as a consultant who has trained advisors to turn their planning approach into processes that other advisors in the firm can be trained on, and as an outsourcing provider to support advisors who don’t want to have to build the processes themselves and prefer to simply tuck-in to a larger enterprise so that they can focus on the client work they enjoy.

In this episode, we talk in-depth about how Penny spent years helping advisors build systems and processes to eventually institutionalize their vision of how clients should be served so that the advisor’s legacy can live on after they retire, why Penny decided to launch her own advisor platform to offer advisors a space to tuck-in and to plug-in to existing operational infrastructure without needing to be bound up by restrictive covenants, and how advisors can decide for themselves where they want to be on what Penny calls the RIA “spectrum”, from being totally independent and having everything on your shoulders, to being an employee of an RIA that uses but is bound by the firm's own systems, or any of the growing number of mid-points now available in the advisor landscape for those who want to balance between the two.

We also talk about Penny’s own journey through the advisor industry from how she accidentally began coaching and consulting advisors while running a pilot program for an insurance company to transition their agents into financial advisors, how working with transitioning advisors inspired Penny to start a firm of her own that would provide advisors the platform to make that transition from working at a product-centric company into building their own advice-centric business, and why Penny ultimately decided to take her own leap to start an advisor platform in the midst of a pandemic.

And be certain to listen to the end, where Penny shares how she was surprised by how despite technology advancements in the industry, it still remains remarkably challenging to build structure and centralize operations, how Penny came to realize that making tough decisions that aren’t always popular just comes with the territory of becoming an effective leader running a growing business, and why Penny believes it is important to not only do what you love but to also keep an open mind to opportunities that may come along in life.

So whether you’re interested in learning about how Penny helps advisors maintain their independence while tucking into an RIA and leveraging its services, how she went from an ‘accidental’ coach and consultant to owning and operating a multi-billion-dollar firm, or how she is fulfilled in her career by providing the tools and concepts to help other advisors succeed, then we hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast, with Penny Phillips.

Creating A Financial Planning Residency Program To Develop The Next Generation Of Advisors

March 21, 2022 07:04 am 3 Comments CATEGORY: Planning Profession

One of the most important aspects of the development of financial planning as a profession is the setting of standards, both for the practice of financial planning and for those who can call themselves a Certified Financial Planner (CFP) professional. But while CFP Board has created a universal set of practice standards, the experience requirement for CFP certification can be fulfilled in a variety of ways and does not require experience working directly with clients.

The range of accepted options available to fulfill the experience requirement leads to newly minted CFP professionals with varying skill levels to handle the client issues they will face as a financial planner. Which means that clients may not get a consistent level of quality and service from financial advisors, even though they may be CFP practitioners. However, by replacing the current options of broadly defined experience requirements with a comprehensive universal training program for all aspiring CFP certificants, the profession could potentially elevate what it means to have CFP certification, in addition to ensuring that clients of CFP professionals can be confident that they will receive consistent, high-quality financial planning consumer experiences.

Such a comprehensive universal training program could be modeled on the accredited experience requirements that prospective doctors must complete to achieve certification. Following medical school – which provides a mixture of didactic lectures, interactive training opportunities, and heavily supervised patient experiences – graduates generally engage in a 1-year internship and a 2- to 6-year residency program where they are given increasingly more responsibility under the supervision of higher-level residents and attending physicians. This model of accreditation emphasizes the resident reaching significant experience ‘milestones’ instead of just the amount of ‘time served’. The resident’s progress is tracked by monitoring education and achievements using real-time data.

A financial planning residency program that replicates this format, where an expansive body of knowledge is reinforced through relatively standardized educational experiences, would help to create a consistent curriculum providing CFP professionals with the right breadth and depth of training to prepare them for a wide range of client encounters. Over the course of 3 years, aspiring CFP professionals (who have already completed the education requirements for CFP certification) can gain the experience needed across the range of financial planning practice areas to become a successful CFP professional. At the same time, throughout the 3-year program, residents are immersed in aspects of practice management, including compliance, business planning, and understanding the firm’s financial status. In addition to assuring clients that the CFP professional they are working with has both the education and expertise to serve their needs, such a training program would also give new advisors the confidence that they have been prepared to handle client issues they will face in their work as a planner.

Ultimately, the key point is that by using the medical field as a guide to create standardized and valuable residency programs for financial advisors, the financial planning profession can develop an educational structure that will not only raise the image of the profession among consumers, but also provide new financial planners with the real-life experience they need to build confidence and serve clients on their own!

Weekend Reading for Financial Planners (Mar 19-20)

March 18, 2022 02:04 pm 0 Comments CATEGORY: Weekend Reading

Enjoy the current installment of “Weekend Reading For Financial Planners” – this week’s edition kicks off with the news of the Federal Reserve’s long-anticipated interest rate hike – the first of what will likely be a series of increases to combat the current spike of inflation – and a look at the wide-ranging effects it may have for consumers and investors, including volatile markets and higher debt costs (in addition to the already-existing effects of inflation).

Also in industry news this week:

FINRA has issued a regulatory notice on the ability of retail investors to trade options and other “complex products” on brokerage platforms, which stops short of proposing new regulations but suggests that broker-dealers may need to do more to affirm the suitability of options trading for their retail customers
A new report from Cerulli suggests that firms should focus on a target niche (or more generally, the advisor’s “ideal” clients) to increase their efficiency (a finding that echoes previous Kitces research as well)

From there, we have several articles on ways advisors can help clients maximize their cash flow:

Why it is important for clients who are planning to leave their job to create a strategy to maximize the financial benefits from their employer before they go
How advisors can support clients in appealing a college’s financial aid offer
Why now is an opportune time to use airline miles and hotel points, and how advisors can support clients in earning and using travel rewards

We also have a number of articles on marketing:

How advisory firms can make the best first impression with their websites using a few best practices (like making it clear who the firm serves, what makes it different, and what visitors are expected to do next in the first five seconds of viewing the site)
How firms with limited resources to put towards their website can focus on their most-visited pages to maximize the return on their investment
How advisors (even those with limited web design knowledge) can improve the search engine optimization of their website content to draw in more visitors

We wrap up with three final articles, all about productivity systems:

How using a ‘productivity funnel’ can help advisors organize and execute on, but first and foremost select, the right projects
Why advisors might consider different productivity systems for projects with a set deliverable and timeline, versus those that are more intangible in timeline but still ‘need’ to be done
A look at a number of popular productivity systems that can help solve a range of challenges, from Getting Things Done to Zen To Done and more, supporting everything from tackling projects that require a consistent effort to organizing the firehose of information that advisors face each day

Enjoy the ‘light’ reading!

Asking ‘Have You Worked With An Advisor Before?’ To Uncover What Prospects Really Value Most

March 16, 2022 07:09 am 1 Comment CATEGORY: Client Trust & Communication

When meeting with a prospective client for the first time, two of the advisor’s primary goals include making a positive impression on the prospect and determining whether the prospect will be a good fit. However, if the prospect feels nervous about the advisor potentially judging their previous financial decisions, they might become uncomfortable or defensive when asked direct questions about their financial situation. And without asking the prospect about their financial history, the advisor might be challenged to determine whether the prospect would be a good fit for their services. Given this delicate balance, one particularly helpful question for the advisor is to ask, “Have you ever worked with a financial professional before?”.

This versatile question, along with relevant follow-up questions based on the prospect’s answer, can help advisors understand not only what the prospect really wants, but also how much financial planning education the advisor will need to provide to help the prospect identify and attain their goals. For example, many consumers who have never worked with a financial planner before don’t understand what advisors actually do for their clients. Additionally, prospects don’t always understand what a financial plan consists of or how they can benefit from using one. And prospects who have worked with an advisor before might come with unrealistic expectations about what they want from an advisor.

For prospects who previously worked with an advisor, good follow-up questions include asking about the length of the relationship with the previous advisor (which may give insight into when the prospect decided to examine their financial goals); why the relationship with the previous advisor ended (to see whether the advisor did something that made the prospect unhappy); and what the prospect found was most beneficial from working with their previous advisor (which can show the values the prospect finds most important).

And for prospects who have not worked previously with an advisor, helpful follow-up questions include what led them to take action now (to see what motivates them and whether they recently experienced a major life change); with whom they currently talk about their finances (to learn about alternate sources of information for the prospect); and what questions they have about the client-advisor relationship (which can show why the client wants to work together in the first place).

Ultimately, the key point is that the question, “Have you ever worked with a financial professional?” can be a useful tool for advisors not only to illustrate their value to new prospects, but also to determine potential fit. It can help them understand how much the prospect knows about the financial planning process as well as their experiences with previous advisors. And by asking appropriate follow-up questions, the advisor can learn everything from the prospect’s motivations for approaching the advisor to their expectations for the relationship. In the end, this conversation can help both the advisor and the prospect decide if a working relationship together can be beneficial and – possibly even more important! – one that they will both enjoy!
Read More...