The rise of wealth coaching in the financial advice industry is growing but how do you scale a personal trainer-like service?
Ever since I first started writing about the industry during the global financial crisis, the sector has been evolving in response to challenging industry conditions, advice scandals, increased education and professional requirements.
Wealth coaching is part of that evolution, and in Australia it’s just beginning.
I was surprised to learn that some advisers debate the level of scale that can be achieved in wealth coaching and whether it’s as cost productive as traditional advice models.
Wealth coaching can however be highly scalable when you have supportive educational products to sell such as online courses, books and webinars.
Where scale can be restricted is with one-on-one coaching but this is also where some advice businesses are using wealth coaching as a portal to encourage clients to become more traditional financial advice customers.
Pivot founder and adviser Ben Nash believes maximising economies of scale in the wealth coaching isn’t as easy as it is in more traditional financial advice businesses, but it’s not impossible either.
“In the wealth coaching space, you can’t scale to the same extent as traditional financial advice models allow. They are doing more transactional advice and solving problems.
“But there are thing you can do to make things easier in this regard.”
Some of the ways advisers can achieve scale in wealth coaching are:
Video and webinar content
Video content can be used to create evergreen educational material that helps a wealth coach talk with their clients at various stages and towards achieving their goals.
These videos can be subscribed to as part of a paid series or purchased as a one off.
E-courses, e-books and books
Wealth coaches are also applying their skills to build educational courses and write books that can help improve their client’s financial literacy and understanding of key areas such as investments or superannuation.
Efficient processes
Making sure that you have got an extremely efficient process in terms of workflow and client flow management is really important.
“We use a customer relationship management (CRM) system to capture key information so that when we are making our monthly progress or coaching calls, that we know exactly where our client is at with their goals and we can actually track that.
“So we are capturing their information and having conversations in an efficient way instead of trying to a fact find with clients each time we speak,” he said.
The Association of Financial Advisers National President Marc Bineham says key to achieving scale is being able to explain to clients how you charge for your services and the ongoing value you can bring to their lives.
Costs versus value
Wealth coaches tend to be charging a fee for their services based on the products they are selling as well as ongoing coaching, but what’ critical is showing the value.
“First you have to prove the value of what you do. I have seen advisers fail at this when they say at the start of the meeting, I want to be totally transparent so before we start this is going to cost you $2,000.
“The client then switches straight off because you haven’t explained to them the value or benefit yet of what you are going to do or the services you are going to provide before you explain your fee.
“If you help someone for example get their money under control through say a cashflow tool, you can actually build your fee into that process. The client can see how they are re-gaining control of their money and they can also see what they are paying you at the same time.
“With wealth coaching, it’s not about best products, best interest rates or lowest prices, it is all about helping people reach their goals,” said Mr Bineham.
Bianca Hartge-Hazelman writes on women’s money matters and is the publisher of Financy.com.au and The Women’s Index.
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