Nerd's Eye View blog

#FA Success Ep 328: Turning Senior Housing Guidance From A Non-Discretionary Value-Add To A Pay-For-Value Service, With Thomas West

April 11, 2023 07:02 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome back to the 328th episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Thomas West. Thomas is a Senior Partner for Signature Estate & Investment Advisors, an independent RIA based in Los Angeles, California, that oversees nearly $16 billion in assets under management, with $570 million of those assets being managed by Thomas' practice that serves more than 250 client households.

What's unique about Thomas, though, is how he has leveraged providing advice to seniors looking for appropriate housing and health care as they deal with medical and cognitive issues in their later years, into a standalone offering he calls the "Lifecare Affordability Plan", which was so successful as a value-add to his clients and their elder parents that he was able to spin it out to a separate DBA under his firm and begin charging for it as a standalone service.

In this episode, we talk in-depth about how, in the early stages of his career selling long-term care insurance, Thomas realized that so-called 'one-legger' senior couples – where one spouse is healthy but the other is not, such that if something happened to the healthy spouse, they’d both be in trouble – face unique challenges as a couple because their decisions about health care have significant financial ramifications but are usually decided with the family (not the financial advisor), how Thomas leveraged the guidance he was providing to senior couples that needed help navigating health and especially cognitive decline into creating a DBA to his firm that offers his trademarked "Lifecare Affordability Plan" so that he could get paid for the in-depth advice he was providing, and why Thomas feels his planning is so important as it he saw personally how his father-in-law struggled with managing his financial planning during the financial crisis in 2008 while facing medical issues of his own shortly after his mother-in-law died of cancer.

We also talk about why despite the rising industry trend towards centralized model portfolios managed on a discretionary basis, over 90% of the assets that Thomas and his firm manage are held on a non-discretionary basis, how Thomas has found because he mostly manages non-discretionary assets and has to call clients about every investment recommendation it has actually increased the frequency of client communication and portfolio customization and allowed him to more deeply engage with clients, and why Thomas' firm doesn’t charge more for the additional service of trading assets for clients on a discretionary basis and instead charges less for clients who are willing to let him manage with discretion (yet in practice, has been able to differentiate and grow primarily with the firm’s higher-priced non-discretionary offering instead).

And be certain to listen to the end, where Thomas shares why he believes that newer advisors have an opportunity to provide value for their clients by being proactive in having conversations about planning for medical crises before they arise, and by doing so, they can create deeper, longer-lasting relationships with their own clients, how Thomas has become more comfortable with easing into his big ideas and understanding that they won’t all succeed (as he admits that he would dive headfirst into ideas and take failure personally in the past), and how Thomas' own definition of success has shifted through his career from one that focused on being competitive about his production in the early years, to the greater good impact that he feels his elder planning work brings now, which has kept him working far harder now than he ever expected when he first launched his advisory business years ago.

So, whether you’re interested in learning about how providing a standalone Lifecare plan has helped Thomas create more longer-lasting relationships with his clients, why Thomas feels managing non-discretionary assets for his clients gives them more agency in their financial planning, or how Thomas plans to expand his financial planning vision beyond his practice, then we hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast, with Thomas West.

Highlights From The 2023 T3 Advisor Conference

April 10, 2023 07:07 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Conferences

The 2023 Technology Tools for Today (T3) Advisor Conference, held last month in Tampa, Florida, featured a large gathering of financial advisors and representatives across the fintech industry attending the 2½-day conference. Hosted by Joel Bruckenstein and his team from T3 Consulting, the conference covered everything from how technology providers are continuing to expand their features and integration capabilities to how advisors can manage their own expanding tech stacks to the ever-present question of how AI tools like ChatGPT will impact the advisory industry.

In this guest post, Craig Iskowitz – CEO and founder of Ezra Group, a financial technology consulting firm – summarizes this year’s conference highlights with his signature Twitter-driven recap, kicking off with presentation highlights from financial planning software platform MoneyGuide, which announced its own version of the increasingly popular “one-page financial plan”, reflecting the greater demand from advisors to streamline printed plan materials. Additionally, MoneyGuide rolled out a new "Plan Pulse" dashboard allowing advisory firms to look across all of their clients’ plans and identify those who have fallen behind.

Another ongoing theme of the conference, which has persisted for several years, is the continuing effort to expand software integration capabilities to cover all parts of a client’s plan with no gaps caused by the failure of one tool to talk to another, and the different approaches that firms take to achieve better integration – whether they work to increase their integration with different third-party software tools (like MoneyGuide), offer a variety of products and services that can be purchased separately but integrate seamlessly with one another (like Morningstar), or combine virtually every type of technology tool into a single “growth platform” (like Riskalyze) that seeks to serve as virtually the advisor’s entire tech stack in one product!

Other major highlights from the T3 Advisor Technology Conference included:

Several speakers talked about how their firms are using AI technology, including Orion Advisor Technology President Brian McLaughlin, who discussed how advisors add value in ways that can’t be co-opted by AI and whose firm recently integrated ChatGPT into its RedTail CRM software.
The resources that advisory firms invest in new technology can be wasted if employees don’t know how (or why) to use it. As Sequoia Financial’s Chief Technology Officer Trevor Chuna discussed, a software adoption plan goes beyond just initial training and includes updates on new features, ongoing training, and regular communication to get ongoing results.
An update from Fidelity provided data suggesting that clients increasingly want support in areas beyond investment management from their financial advisors – which in turn has led advisors to invest heavily in specialized planning software to go deeper into more areas as robo-advisor technology has drastically reduced the cost of providing investment management.
An update from Schwab, amidst the final stages of its integration with TD Ameritrade (scheduled for completion before next year’s T3 conference), confirmed that TDA's thinkpipes and iRebal trading and rebalancing tools are expected to be retained and migrated over to Schwab. The Schwab executives also noted that the Schwab Advisor Center platform will incorporate many of the most popular features and functionality of the Veo advisor platform. SAC, like Veo, allows for integrations with many third-party platforms.
RIA owners who sell their firms to large RIA aggregators based on overall price alone – without fully understanding the terms of the deal – can find themselves regretting their decision, according to Dynasty Financial Partners founder Shirl Penney.

Finally, the annual T3/Inside Information Software Survey, which assesses the software programs used by financial advisors, found that almost every software category has seen greater adoption among advisors – as while advisors are increasingly offering comprehensive advice and expanding how they provide value to their clients, their tech stacks are also expanding in kind – which only reinforces the challenges of navigating and maximizing the value of numerous software tools via enhanced integration capabilities in the software platforms themselves.

Ultimately, the 2023 T3 Advisor Conference brought together vendors, industry thought leaders, financial advisors, and students to gain insight into the fast-paced growth and change of the financial planning industry and the new technology tools available to help financial planning businesses flourish. And with the expansive array of new and upcoming technology solutions, there was an increased focus – which will no doubt continue as a theme in future conferences –not just on the tools themselves but also on how to use an entire suite of technology solutions while still creating a seamless planning experience for clients!

Weekend Reading For Financial Planners (April 8-9)

April 7, 2023 02:00 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 that the T3/Inside Information Software Survey is available, providing insights into which technology tools advisors use and their level of satisfaction with them, which highlighted the continued rise of specialized financial planning software tools for topics like taxes and Social Security as advisors continue to seek tools tobroaden and deepen their planning capabilities.

Also in industry news this week:

FINRA has announced that, on the heels of its first enforcement action under the Reg BI rules, it will be ramping up its examinations of broker-dealers for potential violations (after a long period of relative leniency when firms were still determining how best to comply with the rule)
A recent study from Ameriprise found that a growing number of Millennials are ready to listen to financial advisors, and that those who do have a financial advisor feel greater confidence in their financial situation

From there, we have several articles on practice management:

How growth in the advisory industry can be a double-edged sword, allowing for more scale and ability to attract talent but also introducing greater complexity and reducing the control that firm leaders have over their business
A 4-step framework for advisors to audit their processes and make changes when a process isn't fulfilling the function it was intended to do
How transparent organizational goals – translated into clear objectives and reinforced regularly firmwide – can help create a shared sense of purpose that keeps everyone working toward the same goal

We also have a number of articles on client communication:

Why different parts of the client journey present opportunities to ask different types of questions (and which questions to start with when deepening one's question-asking skills)
The best practice for administering personality assessments to ensure clients respond honestly (and not with what they think is the 'best' answer)
Why digging into clients' past history with money – rather than discussing future goals – can be the key to understanding what really motivates them

We wrap up with 3 final articles, all about finding balance:

Why people are reluctant to change their beliefs, even in the face of evidence to the contrary, and why it's important to have the mental flexibility to update or abandon beliefs
How the concept of 'work ethic' can result in more material wealth but less happiness, and why paying more attention to 'life ethic' can help prioritize enjoying one’s life
Why the idea of 'work-life balance' misses the fact that people fulfill different psychological needs from multiple areas of life, and how to craft a life structure that satisfies those needs

Enjoy the 'light' reading!

Kitces & Carl Episode 109: Attracting Clients – An Advisor For Their Goals Or A Role Model Of What They Can Achieve?

April 6, 2023 07:01 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Kitces & Carl Podcast

One of the benefits of owning a financial planning business is an advisor’s ability to control their work schedule. While some advisors might want to go full throttle, perhaps working well over 40 hours per week and taking few days off, others might prefer a more relaxed schedule, perhaps taking every Friday off or going on vacation for multiple weeks each year. But some advisors who choose to take more time off from their schedules might be concerned that prospects and clients will consider them to be less committed to serving their planning needs than other advisors.

In our 109th episode of Kitces & Carl, Michael Kitces and client communication expert Carl Richards discuss how advisors can approach decisions regarding work flexibility and tactics they can use to communicate these choices with prospects and clients.

Notably, the choice of work schedule can affect the type of client with whom an advisor might want to work. For instance, while landing an ultra-high-net-worth client is likely to bring significant revenue into the firm, such clients could prove demanding on the advisor’s time. While this might work well for some advisors willing to put in the requisite hours, it could strain other advisors seeking more flexibility. On the other hand, some prospects might prefer to engage with an advisor who works a limited number of hours to serve as a mentor, if that is their own goal for their business or career as well (in which case the advisor’s flexible schedule could actually attract more clients!).

An advisor’s desired work schedule can also play a role in how they choose to develop their client base as they build their firm. For instance, an advisor might purposefully limit the number of clients they service in order to have the flexibility of only working a certain number of hours each week (e.g., take on no more than 25 clients to maintain their 20-hour workweek). While a prospect might be concerned that their needs will not be met by an advisor working less than full time, the advisor can explain that they deliberately manage a smaller client base than other ‘fulltime’ advisors, which lets them devote their full attention to each client despite their shorter workweek.

Further, by being transparent about their flexible schedules, advisors bring the conversation into the open not only for their clients, but for other advisors as well. As while some advisors might think they are alone in considering ‘alternative’ work schedules, discussing these issues more openly can show that there are many others in the same boat. And receiving constructive feedback from supportive peers, mentors, and coaches who understand and share similar issues can help advisors decide how to meet their own needs while continuing to provide high-quality service to their clients.

Ultimately, the key point is that even though the decision to adopt a more flexible work schedule (and choosing how to communicate this choice to clients) can be difficult, advisors may find that creating the working conditions that optimally support their own work-life balance can help them not only attract new clients who appreciate the advisor’s talents (and who may even look up to them as role models and mentors helping them to implement similarly balanced lifestyles), but also to provide their clients with the support they need to achieve their financial planning goals!

Build (Customized) Flexible Estate Planning Strategies In A Constantly Changing Political Landscape

April 5, 2023 07:01 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Estate Planning

In recent years, the Internal Revenue Code (IRC) has endured some drastic changes resulting from legislative action that have altered the strategies estate planning professionals have recommended to clients. And while the near-constant drumbeat of proposed legislative actions that would further alter the estate planning landscape has led some planners to try to 'get ahead' of those changes by suggesting action in anticipation of those bills becoming laws, doing so can come with risks… especially when those proposals never come to fruition. To account for the multitude of legislative proposals that arise from a constantly changing political environment, advisors can ensure that clients' estate plans contain flexible provisions to avoid potentially disastrous and costly results, while still preparing them for possible changes that might impact their estate plans.

Given how frequently the tax code changes, advisors can add value for clients by ensuring their estate plans are aligned with current law to meet the clients’ objectives, and not with past rules that may no longer apply to them. For instance, prior to the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), "A/B trusts" had become ubiquitous for spousal estate tax planning. However, the passage of TCJA resulted in the estate gift tax exemption nearly doubling (from $5.6M to $11.2M for individuals), which changed the perspective of estate planners on A/B trusts as they became less relevant for those whose net worth did not warrant such planning strategies, especially when accounting for the portability of the estate tax exemption between spouses. Instead, "Disclaimer Trusts" suddenly made more sense for many clients as they gave surviving spouses the flexibility to choose how much to fund their credit shelter trusts. And now, with the TCJA’s pending sunset provisions expected in 2026, gifting strategies are especially appealing for some individuals with large estates, looking to take advantage of the high exemption while they can.

Contrary to what their name might suggest, flexibility can even be built into irrevocable trusts. For instance, in some states, naming a "Trust Protector" is an option that allows a 3rd party to oversee the trust's activities, resolve disputes, or amend trust provisions if the beneficiaries’ circumstances or legislative changes make the trust run in contrast to the grantor’s original intent. This role offers a potential 'do-over' option for trusts that were validly created but rendered obsolete due to unforeseen legislative or personal circumstances. Some states also allow decanting provisions as another method of providing some flexibility in an irrevocable trust, which permits assets to be 'poured' into a new irrevocable trust if the original is no longer suitable.

Ultimately, the key point is that the effectiveness and suitability of any potential estate planning solution will depend on the unique circumstances of the client and their individual planning goals and needs. Even more important than the specific potential solutions, though, is a mindset that focuses on flexibility to adapt to a constantly changing political landscape. Which means that advisors can add significant value for clients by ensuring that their estate plans meet their current needs but are also designed to withstand unexpected changes – both to ever-changing estate tax laws and to the clients' own personal circumstances!
Read More...

#FA Success Ep 327: Growing To $1B By Standing Out With Marketing The Competition Can’t Mimic, With Marc Horner

April 4, 2023 07:07 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome to the 327th episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Marc Horner. Marc is the Founder of Fairhaven Wealth Management, an independent RIA based in Wheaton, Illinois, that oversees more than $1 billion in assets under management for 450 client households.

What's unique about Marc, though, is the way he's been able to market and differentiate his firm by drawing upon his years of wirehouse experience to create a distinctly un-wirehouse brand… going so far as to create a series of parody commercials that portray stereotypical 'big-firm' sales-oriented advisors who may not have their clients' best interests at heart as a way to distinguish and contrast not only his firm's fiduciary approach but their 'willing-to-be-different' culture to prospective clients.

In this episode, we talk in-depth about how Marc developed and implemented his unique marketing strategy of writing parody commercials that feature a satirical sales-centric advisory firm, Bear Brothers Financial, and how he got mentally comfortable taking such a non-traditional approach to trying to stand out in his marketing, how Marc has sought to grow his team through a split of one-third organic hiring, one-third of recruiting existing advisors with clients, and one-third of hires made through acquisitions, and how, while Marc was in the early stages of planning to leave the wirehouse world and go independent, he made cold calls to other advisory firm owners asking for advice on making the transition… which also grew relationships with them, to the point that 4 out of the 5 firms he has now acquired were a result of those initial cold calls.

We also talk about how, after 14 years in the wirehouse world, Marc decided to break away and go independent by himself, and managed to grow quickly from $80 million in AUM to over $1 billion and 22 employees in under 8 years, how Marc created what he calls a Protective Put to find new opportunities to acquire other advisory firms, where Marc signs an agreement that if something were to happen to the advisor, Fairhaven would take over the advisor's clients and give their families an agreed percentage of revenue over a period of time so the monetary value isn't lost, and how, in addition to his website and parody commercials, Marc self-publishes a bi-annual print magazine (that features financial topics with lots of photos and employs local college students to write the copy) so that he can stay in front of prospects (and even other advisory firms he might someday acquire) in a more tangible way.

And be certain to listen to the end, where Marc shares how he balances the mentality of taking the work they do for clients very seriously but 'not taking ourselves so seriously' in the way he markets, why Marc feels that aspiring advisors would benefit from beginning their careers not by pursuing financial advisor jobs but getting into the commercial banking industry right of college, where there's less pressure to prospect and sell and more opportunity to learn the mechanics of finance and get familiar with the needs and challenges of small business owners looking to borrow from a bank's commercial lending team, and how Marc was able to balance the rapid growth of his firm over the past 8 years with still being present for his family (including driving 5 hours to be present for his oldest daughter's college volleyball games) by setting his family as a hard priority on his calendar just like any other client or work commitment!

So, whether you're interested in learning about how Marc's unique marketing strategy is received by current and prospective clients, how Marc handles the rapid growth and scaling of his firm, or the way Marc structures his firm and compensates his advisors, then we hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast, with Marc Horner.

The Latest In Financial #AdvisorTech (April 2023)

April 3, 2023 07:02 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Technology & Advisor FinTech

Welcome to the April 2023 issue of the Latest News in Financial #AdvisorTech – where we look at the big news, announcements, and underlying trends and developments that are emerging in the world of technology solutions for financial advisors!

This month's edition kicks off with the news that RIA custodial platform Altruist has built its own full self-clearing capabilities, while nearly simultaneously buying competing (not-self-clearing) custodian Shareholder Services Group (SSG) – which given the heavy costs of being in business as a self-clearing custodian, suggests that Altruist has reached a tipping point in terms of growth and scale (and intends to push that growth further, given its acquisition of SSG) as it seeks to grow its market share as an alternative to the "Big 3" (or part of the new "Big 4") custodians of Schwab/TDAmeritrade, Fidelity, and Pershing.

From there, the latest highlights also feature a number of other interesting advisor technology announcements, including:

BlackRock has closed the retail arm of its robo-advisor FutureAdvisor and shifted its clients to Ritholz Wealth Management, in another sign of how direct-to-consumer robo-advisors have struggled to gain traction given the high costs of client acquisition
Absolute Engagement has launched its Engagement Engine tool to provide opportunities for advisors to inject client input opportunities into advisor workflows and ensure that clients feel heard, understood, and engaged with on the issues that matter to them
Advice delivery and engagement platform Lumiant has raised $3.5 million in seed funding to support its growth as it builds out its "end-to-end" financial planning and advice engagement platform (but will it be able to replace, rather than augment, advisors' existing financial planning software?)

Read the analysis about these announcements in this month's column, and a discussion of more trends in advisor technology, including:

FP Alpha unbundles its Estate Planning Lab solution for automatically reading and summarizing clients' estate planning documents available as a stand-alone option, and rolls out a new P&C Insurance Snapshot tool, as demand for AI-driven document analysis grows but different advisors focus on different documents
Sora Finance has raised $3.9 million as it seeks to gain traction with its debt (re-)financing tool that allows advisors to take a more active role with their clients' "liabilities under management" via executing on refinancing opportunities along with shopping for new loans at the most favorable rates

And be certain to read to the end, where we have provided an update to our popular "Financial AdvisorTech Solutions Map" (and also added the changes to our AdvisorTech Directory) as well!

*And for #AdvisorTech companies who want to submit their tech announcements for consideration in future issues, please submit to [email protected]!

Weekend Reading For Financial Planners (April 1-2)

March 31, 2023 02:01 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 that, according to a recent survey, RIAs are considering metrics for growth other than assets under management, from the number of clients to diversifying the services they offer. And given that growth can create additional time burdens for advisors, many advisors are looking to automation as a way to gain efficiencies as they scale.

Also in industry news this week:

How RIAs appear to be increasingly pushing back against proposed rules and enforcement actions from the SEC
How one broker-dealer reminded its advisors that they do not necessarily have full independence when it comes to selling their firm

From there, we have several articles on spending:

Why now could be a good time to buy a house despite elevated mortgage rates
Why some of the most valuable 'luxury goods' money can buy do not have brand names
How advisors can help clients transition from savings mode during their working years to spending down their portfolio in retirement

We also have a number of articles on management:

7 books that can help new managers lead effective teams
How to create an employee onboarding process that can improve retention
How advisory firm leaders can take advantage of the trend of 'boomerang employees'

We wrap up with 3 final articles, all about personal growth:

Why taking a massive leap in personal growth can be rewarding, despite the risks
Why self-compassion is more effective than self-criticism when it comes to overcoming mistakes
A step-by-step process for finding and developing your passion without having to spend 10,000 hours working on it

Enjoy the 'light' reading!

Discovery Meeting Framework: 6 Questions To Help Prospects Who Are Resistant To Change

March 29, 2023 07:02 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Financial Psychology

Financial advisors often approach discovery meetings with prospects as an opportunity to ‘sell’ the value of the financial planning services they provide. This is often done by having the advisor learn about the prospect’s needs and show the prospect how the advisor can help them achieve their financial goals, ideally motivating the prospect to sign up for the advisor’s services. But for some prospects, the value they will get from an advisor is not just in the dollars and cents of planning, but also in making changes to their behavior. Which means that advisors can help prospects get on the path to change (often starting with actually signing up for the advisor’s services!) by using financial psychology and behavior change principles with effective discovery meeting questions.

The Transtheoretical Model (TTM) of change offers a framework that can help financial advisors motivate clients who might be resistant to or struggling with change. TTM involves a 6-step process, where each step is designed to help individuals progress through change. Notably, the TTM process intersects with the financial planning process and the common challenges that arise in financial planning meetings can often be aligned with and explained by the different stages of TTM. For instance, new prospects might still be in the pre-contemplation stage of TTM, when they aren’t clearly aware of the problems they should solve, or they may be in the contemplation stage of TTM, when they are aware of a problem but aren’t yet ready to take action on it. In these cases, deciding whether there is value in engaging with an advisor at all and whether they will be able to follow through on what the advisor will ask them to do are often the key challenges for prospects that the advisor can address in the discovery meeting.

With this in mind, crafting the right questions to help prospects absolve themselves of the doubts they may have about an advisor’s value and their own ability to take on the responsibility of following their financial plan can serve both the prospect and the advisor well – because building up a prospect’s confidence in the advisor’s value and in their own capability to follow their plan (with their advisor’s support, of course!) will increase their own chance of success as well as the likelihood that they will sign on as a client.

Accordingly, there are 3 questions advisors can ask to address doubt by understanding what makes their prospects feel dissatisfied. These include asking about the prospect’s (dis)satisfaction with their net worth, with their financial decision making and self-confidence, as well as with their financial relationships. Together, these questions can help the advisor discover specific challenges that the prospect faces and start a conversation about how working with the advisor could help address these issues.

There are also 3 questions that explore the forces leading prospects to delay and procrastinate. These include exploring how prospects value action, talking about next steps, and asking the prospect to get started working with the advisor. These questions and the resulting discussion can help spur prospects to take action by officially becoming a client.

Ultimately, the key point is that while asking these 6 questions all together might not necessarily result in more prospect discovery meetings or better conversion rates, advisors might find that new clients are more likely to comply with their plans and take action on their tasks when this approach is used from the start of the relationship. Because at the end of the day, the more advisors are able to support the process of behavior change in their client relationships, the easier and more impactful their client work will become!

#FA Success Ep 326: Finding Marketing Success By Building Spreadsheets To Track That Advisor Data, With Erica Pauly

March 28, 2023 07:05 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome back to the 326th episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Erica Pauly. Erica is the Founder and Owner of Track That Advisor, a consulting and coaching firm based in Gilbert, Arizona, that helps advisory firms track, and then improve upon, their marketing results.

What's unique about Erica, though, is how she built a series of spreadsheet tools to measure the details of each step of her advisory firm’s marketing funnel, from lead generation to each meeting in the sales process to client onboarding and getting initial revenue for the firm… and then turned it into a series of tools that any advisory firm can use to evaluate how their marketing is performing, where it needs to improve, and how they compare to the average advisory firm as a benchmark.

In this episode, we talk in-depth about how, through a series of Google Sheets, Erica helps advisory firms begin to track each of the steps in their marketing funnel, analyze how successful those steps are in turning a lead into client, and develop strategies to help improve those metrics, why Erica focuses on 5 key marketing metrics of stick rate, close rate, average client size, pending days, and cost per client, to quickly gain an overall picture of an advisory firm or individual advisor’s marketing process (and compare those numbers to her benchmarking data to identify where improvements should be made first), and why Erica ultimately built an additional tool on top of her spreadsheets that she calls the ‘Tracker Genie’ that helps advisory firms quickly spot gaps in their data and fix them (because in the end, it’s not just about tracking marketing data, but helping advisory firms to actually do what it takes to input and maintain their data in the first place!).

We also talk about how, while working in a marketing role at an advisory practice, Erica began to track data on their individual advisors’ marketing efforts because she realized that she didn’t have the data to support her suggestions for the firm’s strategic planning and decided to start measuring how the firm was performing at each step along the way so that she could prove that her recommendations were based on actual evidence, how, after moving to another state because of a job opportunity for her husband, Erica was contacted by the firm that she tracked data for asking her to continue her work for them, helping her realize there is a demand for her specific type of work and gave her inspiration to found Track That Advisor, and why Erica still deliberately chooses to use Google Sheets to track data (instead of a standalone software application), as it allows her to customize layouts for individual advisory firms and make it easier for support staff to navigate (instead of asking them to learn a whole new software platform).

And be certain to listen to the end, where Erica shares how, as a self-proclaimed introvert and people pleaser, she has learned to become more comfortable with having difficult conversations with advisors about their strategies and how they are performing, why Erica hasn’t taken the role of CEO in her own firm and has instead given that role to one of her trusted employees (because she recognizes that her strengths lie in analyzing data and coaching others, but she still needed someone in the role that has the drive and ability to help the firm continue to grow), and how Erica learned the hard way the importance of not only finding employees that are the right fit, but having detailed processes and workflows so that as the firm grows, she can ensure that she is maintaining firm culture and business execution and ensure that the firm can continue to grow into her long-term vision and beyond.

So, whether you’re interested in learning about how Erica and her team track advisor data and keep advisory firms accountable, how using Google Sheets allows Erica more flexibility in creating customizable data sheets for the advisory firms she helps, or how Erica has evolved Track That Advisor and her plans for the future of the business, then we hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast, with Erica Pauly.