"The things that concern me are the lack of operating leverage, the lack of capacity to serve more clients well, and the fact that advisors have let their marketing muscle atrophy. There's only so much cost-cutting you can do to achieve profitability. Then you have to add capacity to serve clients, leverage your time better and put a strategy in place to attract new clients," Tibergien says.

Sometimes the best strategy should involve adding a mid- or higher-level professional administrator, so the planner can free up time to do what he or she enjoys. "People hold on to the notion of independence to a fault," Tibergien counsels. "They're blinded by the idea that they're more free when they're actually consumed by more stuff that they don't actually like to do." Like management and administration.

Many planners like to get in front of clients and do financial problem solving. They don't seem to like administrative work or operational or strategic planning nearly as much, which is often why they're swamped and end up being reactive rather than proactive when it comes to making business and staffing decisions, the consultant adds.

While advisors actively are looking to expand their business, others are taking a slower approach. Thomas "Tif" Joyce, President of Joyce Financial Management in California's Sonoma County, says although the bear market has been an absolute boon, "I don't want to bite off more than I can chew. I don't need millions in income, and quality of life is more important to me. I've been too busy before, and you can't deliver that way. I get to be choosier now and even refer people out."

Is Competition Out There?

While experienced advisors may think they're the only game in town, they may be forgetting this important lesson: There is competition out there, and it is grooming itself to look exactly like advisors.

If advisors are happy with their firm size and level of clients, they may never notice the clients who go elsewhere. But if advisors are trying to be one of the top three advisory firms in a market, they will likely have to go head to head with fairly aggressive competitors, often with pretty deep pockets. These run the gamut of all the likely suspects, including banks, insurers, CPA firms, stock brokerages and national and regional broker-dealers, all of which are determined to increase their share of the asset pie by performing fee-based financial planning.

These competitors want to trade in their ever-shrinking commission and transaction-based business for recurring fees, the way many planners have. For those advisors who are interested in growing, it's wise to start a follow-up program now with prospects who they don't get as clients. "I think that advisors of all types are sometimes oblivious to the would-be clients they don't land," says Tiburon's Roame. "Someone doesn't call back, and they're forgotten about." As competition ramps up-and it is making some amount of headway all the time-Roame suggests that advisors create a program to follow up with all lost clients and prospects.

"It's easy to forget the guy who called in or came in, but someone got him," Roame says. "One thing advisors really could do better is interview the ones who got away."

All sorts of competitors are retooling their offerings and retraining professional staffs to provide a broader range of services for high-net-worth investors. This broader range of services is the primary focus of competition, says Barry K. Mendelson, managing director of Capital Market Consultants in Shorewood, Wisc., which does practice management work with financial advisors.

Like it or not, the marketplace is teeming with competitors spurred on by advisors' success, the quest for fee-based income and the fact that commissions are down two to three times as much as fees are, despite the haircut the stock market has given many firms' assets.