As the independent financial advice industry heads into the summer season, traditionally a busy time for advisor conferences, there’s an inevitable surge in the numbers of third party practice management consultants and business coaches who are put in front of independent advisors as experts they should listen to, generally in the capacity of conference speakers and panelists who are going through the usual summer conference circuit.
Indeed, in recent years, we’ve seen an increasing number of advisors across the board enlist the services of highly paid professional coaches and practice management consultants to find innovative ways to add—and preserve—client relationships, boost growth and better adapt to the rapidly changing financial services landscape. Given the massive transformations that are buffeting the industry, this trend is hardly surprising.
But advisors shouldn’t have to resort to these kinds of measures.
This is particularly the case when broker-dealers are fully capable of delivering similar results, simply by creating conditions in which their own advisors are more eager to support, empower and mentor one another.
Naturally, that begs the question: How, precisely, can firms do this?
To be sure, building this type of support system within a firm and cultivating it over time isn’t easy. But the following are three steps to get started:
1. Establish an advisory council, ensuring that the membership reflects a diversity of backgrounds and viewpoints. The formation of an advisory council is hardly a novel concept in our industry. Broker-dealers and other large organizations serving independent advisors certainly pursue this path frequently as a way to gain important feedback and valuable perspectives from stakeholders. Too often, though, such bodies are stacked with those who have the “most”—top producers or advisors with the biggest businesses. While production is undoubtedly important, broker-dealers should recognize that success comes in many forms. Within any firm’s community of advisors, almost every one blends a different combination of growth model, client focus and size. By using production as the lone prerequisite for inclusion on an advisory council, firms are, in effect, silencing much-needed disparate viewpoints. Not only can that lead to firm policies, procedures and solutions that favor only a select few, but, ultimately, it creates a caste system made up of the haves and have nots—which is very unlikely to create conditions in which all advisors can prosper and learn from one another.
2. Facilitate regular meetings between advisors. Almost all broker-dealers hold an annual national conference for their advisors to celebrate the year’s successes and talk about important ongoing trends. Typically, firms create the agenda of such gatherings, with senior executives and thought leaders from around the industry driving the discussions. While these types of forums undoubtedly have value, firms should up the ante by carving out time during their national conferences to facilitate “advisor-only sessions,” where the entire agenda is tailored for and driven by fellow advisors. No one knows their business better than the advisor running it. They recognize areas in which they do well, as well as those that are causing problems. Chances are, their peers are confronting the very same challenges and opportunities or have confronted them in the past. This dynamic creates an ideal forum for advisors to learn from one another, whether it’s about evergreen topics like marketing and practice management or issues that are more timely such as adjusting to DOL-related concerns.