Increase Your Value and Adapt to Change
Suppose your niche is divorced women. In your role as an advisor, you won’t address the trauma in question directly because you’re not a therapist. But you can understand, in broad strokes, what your clients have been through, and the various stages of recovery they typically experience. It’s no secret that advisors who can surface these issues in the context of providing financial advice forge stronger bonds with their clients.
In some cases, you can even shore up your standing as a niche advisor with certifications. There is, for instance, a Certified Divorce Financial Analyst designation.
Advisor Rick Kahler has built a national niche practice based on the tenets of financial therapy by catering to clients who feel they have money “issues.” In fact, Kahler believes that everybody wrestles with “money scripts” — hard-wired and often hidden feelings about money that shape financial decisions throughout life. These scripts “can come from the most innocent situations, mostly before you're ten,” the Rapid City, S.D.-based advisor told the Wall Street Journal.
To combat harmful attitudes that cloud decision-making around money, Kahler’s new clients have to answer questions and complete exercises meant to unmask these secrets. And to shore up the offering, he has a Certified Financial Therapist on staff.
Whatever niche you pick, in time you will develop the true expert’s ability to rationalize complexity as your practice matures in its specialization. This will help you select individualized flight paths to bring your clients greater peace of mind around their finances.
In other words, the positive impact of carving out a viable niche goes beyond focusing your marketing efforts. It gets into the very lifeblood of your practice, and, inevitably, to your bottom line.
In addition, a niche can make you a more dynamic and empathic person as you develop the ability to listen deeply and exhibit a profound understanding of your clients. With those elements in place, coupled with expertise in your niche, you’ll be on a path to achieving efficiencies and building trust in ways that most niche-less advisors can only dream of.