Technology, increased competition and Wall Street scandals have changed the landscape of the financial advising community, but many advisors are reluctant to conform to there new environment and could be headed for extinction.
“This is about the death of a salesman and the awakening of the entrepreneur,” said Chip Roame, managing principal of Tiburon Strategic Advisors, a consulting firm in Northern California, in a recently published article by Research Magazine.
Cerulli Associates, a Boston-based financial services research and consulting firm, reported a reduction in advisors in 2004 over 2003 at independent broker-dealers, wirehouses, insurance broker-dealers and regionals. The reductions ranged from 1.1 for independents to 7.7 for insurance firms. What paints an even more ominous sign, is that the industry hasn’t witnessed a decline in advisors for at least 15 years, said Dennis Gallant, Cerulli Associates.
Dan Sullivan, co-founder of the Strategic Coach, a coaching program for entrepreneurs, suggest that the U.S. could be headed to where the United Kingdom is right now if some changes aren’t made.
In 1995, there were 300,000 financial advisors in Great Britain, now there are 44,000, according to Sullivan. He believes the mass exodus was triggered by the move to full disclosure of fees and commissions. Furthermore, he expects the U.S. to make this move within two years.
“It’s hard to predict but I would say that 80 percent of advisors who are not disclosing now will find it difficult to survive,” he said.
With the clouds so dark, is there a silver lining? Sure there is, but it requires a five-letter word that is often considered a curse word—change.
“Resolve to be a master of change rather than a victim of change,” said Brian Tracy, the internationally-respected business consultant, author and speaker. Have you resolved to be a master or a victim?
For the masters among us, you must do six things to survive the voluntary or involuntary reduction in advisors: hone your niche, make yourself indispensable, become a wealth manager, take a self-inventory, charge for advice and create a unique process.
Hone Your Niche
Superstar actors like Anthony Hopkins not only learn their lines and deliver them with great conviction, they become their characters. Hopkins so brilliantly portrayed cannibalistic serial killer Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs that he won an Oscar for best actor, even though he had the shortest lead acting performance ever—just 16 minutes of onscreen time.
Becoming an elite advisor is not a “crap shoot,” it requires consistent studying of your target audience. Your goal is to know their financial IQs, money management skills, goals and needs better than they do, so you can help them make the most informed decisions.
Make Yourself Indispensable
One of the most widely-used job security measures is to be the only one that knows how to do an essential function. Some people achieve this through teaching new hires just enough to survive, while others are so cutthroat that they purposely set traps to cause them to fail.
In the advising business, it’s illogical to be the only one that knows how to do something. However, you can increase your job security by fully integrating yourself into as much of your clients’ financial, business and personal affairs as possible. The more involved you are in your clients’ life, the more likely you are to keep them as a client.
Become a Wealth Manager
Don’t sell yourself short by focusing too narrowly on pure investment management or asset allocation. There’s a lot of ripe, low-hanging fruit like estate planning, investment planning, pension planning and tax planning. Your goal should be to incorporate all of these into your practice because financial freedom doesn’t occur in a vacuum.
Take a Self-Inventory
If I took a survey of your top 20 clients, how would they describe the services you provide and the value of it to their network of family, friends and peers?
“If you’re described as a broker or financial advisor who sells stuff, our research says loud and clear that the upscale market does not like salespeople,” said author Mark Oechsli, president of the Oechsli Institute, and industry consulting firm in Greensboro, N.C.
If you’re considered just a salesperson, then you need to change that image by becoming the perceived “critical link” to your clients’ financial freedom. Salespeople can and will be dropped at a whim, but wealth-building advisors are mainstays.
Charge for Advice
The product pushers in the financial advising community are not poor by any means, but the elite advisors are reaching financial independence by pushing their service. The service is what really has value to clients, not the products. The products are simply derivatives of the service.
Create a “Unique Process”
The challenge that lies before you is to package your wisdom and expertise into a copyrighted, trademarked presentation or booklet that you can charge for. Choose a topic or a series of topics under the wealth management umbrella and integrate your personality, experience and expertise into them to make them a must-have for your clients.
Financial advising has a bright future, but the roads that used to lead to success in the career are quickly fading away. To remain or increase your success, make a smooth transition from salesman to entrepreneur with BuildYourMarket.com (http://www.buildyourmarket.com/). Visit our site to learn more about our innovative and business-building marketing strategies.
Reprinted with permission from the Ezine: AdvisorMarketingNews.com- “Delivering Today’s Trends the Advisor Professional” (http://www.advisormarketingnews.com)
[tags]Financial Advisor, web-based, on-line marketing tools, BuildYourMarket.com, CRM, Drip Marketing,[/tags]
ไม่มีความคิดเห็น:
แสดงความคิดเห็น