Build strategic partnerships with other non-competing professionals: A well-performing wealth management practice at an accounting firm not only gets clients from its accountants but also creates pipelines of new clients from strategic partnerships with lawyers, bankers and other professionals that don’t provide accounting or wealth management services.
There are systematic ways to build prosperous client referral networks with other professionals. Many accountants and wealth managers refer their clients to attorneys, for example, and hope they will get a referral in return. But that’s a fatally flawed idea for the most part.
Instead, advisors should be able to discern the attorneys’ interests and tactically help them achieve their agendas. This strategy, which we call “Everyone Wins,” is exponentially more effective.
What is important to realize is that the accounting firm’s wealth management practice should not be solely dependent on referrals from its accountants. Although they will be a significant source, they aren’t the only ones, and over time they will provide a smaller and smaller percentage of new wealth management clients.
Wealth management practices at a great many accounting firms are not anywhere close to reaching their potential. Moreover, many of them are severely underperforming. While the opportunities with clients of the accounting firms are usually tremendous, a lack of strategic direction or a lack of operational proficiencies can easily limit the success of the wealth management practice.
By concentrating on addressing the four guidelines discussed here, however, many accounting firm wealth management practices can considerably increase the revenues they contribute to their firms. None of the guidelines are that difficult to follow. It is all a matter of what the accounting firm wants from its wealth management practice.
Russ alan prince is president of R.A. Prince & Associates.