The Vision
A vision is a destination—where a firm wants to be in the long term. For most large advisories, the vision is not just to be twice or three times their current size but also to be among the premier firms in their industry and market.

A good vision gives a firm a sense of purpose, and it gives the professionals and owners who work there a reason to devote their energy to it. The founders of a firm can naturally speak of “our firm” in a very non-abstract way—much like my family says “our car.” We drive the car, we fill it up with gas and we take it wherever we want. We know the car well and we know all the passengers. But a $5 billion dollar advisory has a different definition for “our firm”—one that is more abstract. It is much more like “our community.” We belong to it. It defines a lot of our quality of life. But we don’t know all the people and we don’t control it beyond our front door.

I often joke that the test for a real firm is when you have a client you’ve never met—and the test for a large firm is when you have an employee you’ve never met. I guess the test for a $5 billion firm is that you have a partner you’ve never met. If you don’t see a partner daily, what brings you together is your vision of the firm—what you can achieve together that you can’t achieve without it.

Developing Business As A Firm
Even with the huge asset levels, many super-ensemble firms continue to draw clients because of the personal reputation of the founders and the influence of a small group of individuals.

There is a dramatic disconnect between the growth ambitions of firms and their sources of growth. The average super-ensemble grew revenue by 18.2% in 2013 according to the Moss Adams survey. But only about 40% of the new assets in 2013 came from new clients—the rest came from market performance (appreciation) and continued contributions from existing clients. Of the new business developed in 2013, approximately 35% came from referrals from existing clients and 25% came from professional referrals. Only 40% of the new client assets (16% of net new assets) came to the firms as a result of new business development.

Part of the problem is that lead advisors and partners at more than half the firms don’t have new business targets. At those firms with targets, lead advisors are supposed to bring in only $100,000 in new revenue while partners are supposed to bring in $150,000. For a firm with $30 million in annual revenue, it would take 20 partners or 30 lead advisors to grow by 10% with such targets. And even those firms with targets don’t always enforce them.

There are two dimensions to fostering business development. One is training and encouraging all professionals to develop new business, something that’s only in a nascent stage in the advisory industry. Most firms have only a basic marketing planning process without specific activity or revenue targets or ties to compensation.

The second dimension to business development is the brand—developing the reputation as a firm, rather than as individual professionals. Firms like Aspiriant and Laird Norton have sophisticated branding strategies that develop their firms’ presence in all of their markets and includes advertising, event sponsorship, the publishing of white papers and articles, public speaking, a social media presence as well as graphic and visual representations of their brands in the form of logos and other materials.