Business development and lead generation is a challenge for most financial advisors. After all, even though we've (thankfully!) left the days of cold calling scripts behind, the reality is that you can't get paid to give advice until you convince someone to pay your for that advice! And you can't convince them to pay you until you find prospects to get in front of in the first place!
In this week’s #OfficeHours with @MichaelKitces, my Tuesday 1PM EST broadcast via Periscope, we look at the question of whether it's possible to outsource business development to someone else. Is it feasible to hire a business development person, or otherwise pay a third party to bring in clients for you?
The good news it that there are some options out there, from third-party websites that provide financial advisor lead generation (not necessarily a ton, but a few they do bring in some clients!), to forming an RIA solicitor agreement to pay an accounting firm or other center of influence for business development referrals.
Of course, an RIA solicitor agreement could be formed with an individual business development person as well, but the irony is that the small firms that need the most help with business development probably won't be able to afford the best business developers, who instead will get hired by a larger firm, or simply go to form their own. In fact, many of today's most successful advisory firms were built by a partnership with one person who was especially good at business development, and another who was better at delivering planning, managing investments, and/or operating the business.
And in the end, if the problem is that you just want to provide financial planning advice but not be responsible for finding your own clients, you may want to look at merger or tucking into a larger firm that does have its own organic business development process. Your upside may be more limited as an employee instead of an owner, but it also can give you more time to do the financial planning work with clients you enjoy the most anyway, if that's really what you want to do!