In his new book, You’ve Been Framed. How to Reframe Your Wealth Management Business and Renew Client Relationships, Ray Sclafani argues that today’s successful financial services professional has adapted to, and even thrived on the dramatic changes in the financial industry of the last 20 years.
“Today’s high-performing advisors have recognized the cultural shift from hierarchy to equality and from authority to partnership,’’ Sclafani writes. “Whether it’s the way the Internet has allowed consumer access to information or the emergence of the sharing economy where people can bypass traditional corporations and turn directly or near directly to others for a car ride, room stay or grocery delivery, the world is now flatter than ever.’’
The new framework that’s needed to adapt successfully, Sclafani says, is “a shift from a vertical relationship to a more horizontal one. It’s not an approach of ‘I have all the information and you need me.’ Instead, it’s an approach of ‘All of the information is in the public domain and my job is to help you make sense of it and to remove the complexity associated with wealth management.’ ’’
To accomplish a successful new framework, he says, financial advisors can no longer go it alone. Clients are drawn to practices that offer multiple services.
“Advisors can only provide comprehensive wealth management by partnering with others, internally and externally, to augment their own specialties and expertise,’’ he says.
Sclafani worked 20 years at the investment management and research firm, Alliance Bernstein, where he developed programs directed at increasing sales and improving client relationships. In 2006, he founded ClientWise, which coaches financial professionals in restructuring their firms for better client relationships and expanded referral networks.
Sclafani, CEO and executive coach of ClientWise, has coached and created workshops for Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley Wealth Management, UBS, LPL Financial, MetLIfe, Ameriprise Financial and others.
To make his point that solo entrepreneurs (what he calls solopreneurs) should consider reframing their singular business into a firm that relies on teamwork, Sclafani cites the experience of Charles Prothro, a former insurance agent, now a principal of Prothro Blair Financial, a financial advisor for Northwestern Mutual Wealth Management Company.
After giving a woman client a sizable insurance check when her husband died, Prothro saw that the client didn’t know how to handle sudden wealth. Because he didn’t have a Series 7 license and could not advise the client, Prothro decided to reframe his business “to be about more than insurance.
“He hired an experienced credentialed investment planner and certified financial planner and he augmented his own credentials to include those of CFP and chartered financial consultant.’’
Prothro’s clients loved the increase of services, but Sclafani admits that restructuring a practice is not an easy task.
“It will take effort for advisors to make a reframe—time and resources to interview clients, to brainstorm the new frame, to incorporate the client services the advisors can provide and the clients desire, to create new marketing collateral and to communicate the new frame to clients.’’
This 248-page book details how financial advisors can accomplish this ambitious but ultimately beneficial task. Among the benefits, Sclafani says, are a bigger, healthier practice, increased personal wealth and job satisfaction, and the opportunity to make a greater impact on clients’ lives and the world at large. Sclafani says this last point was a major motivator in his decision to create ClientWise.