The way people talk about your advisory firm is crucial to its success, according to Mark Tibergien, principal at Tibergien Insights, a business advisory and consulting firm based in Seattle.
If people tell good stories about your firm and the service they received, it will act as a differentiator and make people want to be associated with you, Tibergien told the financial leaders and advisors attending the second day of the “Next Chapter—ReThinking Retirement” virtual conference hosted by Financial Advisor, the Money Management Institute and the Execution Project.
The financial industry is ripe for a material transformation, similar to what has happened every decade or so in the past when the industry underwent cataclysmic changes, transforming from something more investment-centric to something more planning-centric.
Now the industry will be focusing on the client experience, and financial advisors will be psychologists as much as they are investment advisors, Tibergien said. Finance schools are starting to include psychology in their classwork, and the newest version of the CFP exam has a section on psychology.
Many people have not taken control of their financial lives because they have not had financial literacy training. “Financial literacy is not teaching people how to invest. It is teaching them how to shop and save so they can retire with some sense of peace,” Tibergien said.
It would go a long way to solving this problem if every advisor adopted one high school and fostered financial literacy there, he said.
Tibergien advocates linking health and wealth for the clients. “We should have addressed this sooner to help people live longer,” he said. “We need to connect the emotional and the physical with financial planning. The pandemic is one of those cataclysmic events that helps define issues like these.”
Tibergien asked the attendees to think about what the financial industry will look like 10 years from now. “Now, zoom back in to today, and tell me what strategies you would use to get there,” he said. “The cataclysm of the pandemic has made people think more strategically. If you rethink your strategies now, you will know what your firm’s structure should look like.”
He said many advisors fall prey to the same erroneous thinking that plagues many leaders, which is the belief that their firms revolve wholly around them. Instead, leaders and firm owners need to be thinking of how to make a smooth exit from the business so that clients can easily transition to new leadership.
“If you do not have a plan for continuity, you have not acted as a true fiduciary for your clients,” he said.
Firm leaders also need to focus on acquiring new talent. “What would make your firm a compelling place to work?” he asked. “There is an oversupply of clients and an undersupply of people who can deliver advice, so think about what would make your firm” an extraordinary opportunity for potential employees.