Stacy Francis, a financial planner in New York well known for advising women going through divorce, made a key change three and a half years ago that dramatically increased her business: She figured out her firm’s ideal client.
Francis thought about her 10 favorite clients. Although Francis Financial, a 12-person firm, has some male clients, she realized it is women with whom she enjoys working with the most. But she decided to target an even narrower group of potential clients. “Primarily for us, the women that we are looking for are the women who have given up their careers, that have not worked, who have a decent amount of money, but who have not played a role in the managing of finances. And that is our niche,” she told advisors at the Financial Planning Association’s annual conference during a presentation on building a niche practice.
Francis Financial was open to working with anyone going through a divorce before it got super specific on its target clients. Making the change took some bravery. “I was really nervous that the amount of business we would get would be nothing and we would have to close our doors,” she recalled. “I did it because that’s what the books tell you to do. So I did it and can I tell you, we are now working on 30 divorce cases, we are growing at $5 million to $6 million a month in new assets under management, and it’s just continuing to grow year after year. It really started from that kernel three and a half years ago, and getting really brave and saying who we work with. I encourage you to do it too, even though it’s a little scary.”
Francis shared many more details about her clients, her process and her marketing during her presentation, helpful advice for many advisors looking to grow their business.
In addition to determining the firm’s key message on who it wants as clients, Francis has spent a lot of effort learning what matters most to those kinds of women. Her firm did that, in part, by doing a 100-question survey of 150 such women who had gone through a divorce. She found that their top financial concern was having enough money after a divorce so they could maintain their lifestyle and take care of their children. While many of these stay-at-home mothers had lots of experience paying bills, only 25 percent had participated in their family’s investing or long-term financial planning. The biggest mistakes they said they’d made during the divorce process was not understanding spending, failing to consider the long term, taking the family house as part of their divorce settlement, not knowing all of their family’s assets, and not understanding the tax impact of certain decisions.
Approximately 64 percent said it would have been helpful to have a financial advisor. The most important characteristic of a financial advisor for those who did or would hire one was honesty, followed by being a good listener and experience. “Most important, women want someone they can trust,” she said.
How best to work with women going through a divorce? Francis named these key steps for advisors:
- Create a team in your office. Women going through a divorce often feel ignored or not given the service they want from their matrimonial attorneys. It will give her a lot of comfort to know that if you are out of the office, another person is there to respond.
- Communicate. Reach out in other ways in addition to check-in meetings. Francis Financial reaches out with personal notes on many occasions to clients, and provides helpful books on topics of importance to clients
- Build a network. This is most important, Francis said.
“When you come to Francis Financial, you are not just hiring us, you are getting a team of experts that we have cultivated over the last 15 years who are the top experts in the area of divorce and changes for women focusing on taxes, estate planning,” she said. “We have amazing therapists who we work with and a fantastic group of matrimonial attorneys who we trust. And she may not need all of those individuals. She may not need a forensic accountant or someone to value the house. But knowing you have those professionals as resources really makes a big difference.”
Francis also holds many events to cultivate this network. For example, she regularly schedules lunches on Tuesdays at noon to which she invites five or six people from her network for discussion. Sometimes she invites them to participate on expert panels with her.
Francis adds her target clients really need a confidence boost. “Let them know that, ‘If you can balance a check book, this investing stuff, we can do together. You’ll be just fine.’ It’s really important that there’s education along the way [about money].”