Hortz: What do you feel are the key takeaways most important for advisors in the Accenture “New State of Advice” survey?
Collison: In the study’s call to action, a critical headline offers us “Embracing a new business model: Holistic advice.” Certainly, AI and all things digital have added both benefits and new challenges to the way advisors run their businesses, but holistic advice is not new to the industry. In fact, it began to be offered as far back as the late 1960’s and early ‘70’s when financial planning in America was in its infancy. There are a great many advisors who have been supplying holistic advice to their clients for decades. However, there are significantly more that do not offer such all-encompassing advice.
What this study, and previous versions of the study, blatantly illustrate is that consumers are finally recognizing the need for holistic advice. They do not know what to call it, necessarily, but they want that comforting sense of advice that seems more comprehensive or thorough. And those advisors and firms that do not provide it will most certainly pay the price competitively going forward.
Hortz: Can you discuss the research and sources that you used that most influenced your training approach and are built into your professional development workshops and keynotes?
Collison: At the very top of the list are top-selling advisors. I have relied on their best practices from the very start of my advisory career and continue to do so today. Beyond that, we read the books and papers written about the industry, whether they are produced by practitioners or academics, as both views provide resources that we can work through and synthesize in our coaching and training.
Finally, I have become addicted to the research that focuses on optimal human functioning. Much of this coming from the stream of psychology known as positive psychology. The more I delve into it, the more my belief grows in what that research reveals: peak performance is both teachable and learnable. Our goal is to take that research and distill it to a level that shows financial advisors the means to achieving spectacular success, whatever that success might look like to the individual advisor.
Hortz: How did you apply and structure all this research into practical steps or processes you provide in your professional development workshops?
Collison: I was introduced to working a process from the very start of my career. My firm had a sales process that laid out, step by step, actions to be taken for turning a prospect into a client. That process was critical to my initial success as an advisor. My next inculcation came while studying for my Certified Financial Planner (CFP) designation. The financial planning process is a stalwart process in our profession.
But what truly turned me into an advocate, and creator, of processes, began when I started teaching at Schulich. I had to be able to show my MBA students how advisors worked with their clients on investing, tax planning, and all the other elements of financial planning. The simplest way to do this was to build processes into my lectures that the students, as non-practitioners, could visualize and thereby, better understand. Many of those processes made their way into my first book and have continued into my newest book.
Advice2Advisors’ coaching and training are full of such processes, as it makes it that much easier to present working strategies and structures for financial advisors to adopt. Likewise, when an advisor shows a prospect or client the investment planning process, tax planning process, estate planning process, etc., — whether in a meeting or in an educational seminar — these processes highlight the very strategic manner in which they operate.
Hortz: What kind of outcomes and feedback are you seeing?
Collison: We pride ourselves on our unique ability of taking everything technical in financial planning, and turning it into concepts, speaking points, strategies, and deliverables for advisor growth. Growth is at the heart of everything we teach. Furthermore, we have come to understand the unique strengths that all top-selling advisors have developed, which we call — The 3 Confidences of Top-Producing Advisors. They include: 1) a Confident Mindset; 2) a Confident Business Structure; and 3) Confident Growth. By training advisors to these distinct aspects of the business, they quickly see a new path to success, and for mature advisors, a rejuvenation or resurgence of energy for their businesses.
Our website has numerous testimonials from advisors we coach and train, and we are very proud of their extremely positive feedback. But mostly, we value the quantifiable growth results that we hear directly from our clients. One of our coaching clients recently told us about his tripling of new assets brought in over an eleven-month period, going from $20 million the previous year to just over $63 million in those 11 months. He did it by adapting a laser-focused approach to his Ideal Client — business owners — and then followed through on our plan to gain targeted introductions to other business owners from his existing clients and centers of influence. While we do not expect every advisor to see such dramatic growth in this short period of time, we do work with them to double their business within three years or less. For growth-oriented advisors, this is a very realistic, and very attainable goal.
Hortz: What recommendations or advice can you share with advisors and financial firms on how best to respond to this new opportunity for advisors to expand their advice offerings beyond managing investments to holistic advice?
Collison: The simple answer to that is for an advisor to become the “Personal CFO” to their “Ideal Client” profile. By doing so, an advisor will surround themselves with, and become the conduit to, all the professionals their ideal client will require lawyers/attorneys, accountants, money managers, insurance specialists, and lenders. By doing so, an advisor can confidently mimic Paul’s statement, “If ever you have a question you need answered, and it has a dollar sign in front of it, give me a call.”