What I’ve learnt over the years is that most successful financial advisers have an unwavering focus on building, first and foremost, a sustainable business.
A good example is The Wealth Designers (TWD), which has just been named Professional Practice Magazine’s Best Practice for 2013
I’ve been working closely with Troy in my role as RI Regional Manager for a number of years. Here’s just some of what we’ve focused on that’s helped TWD become a financially fit advice business:
Having a clear vision
Knowing where you’re heading allows you to create the right blueprint for your business – what your structure will be, what your revenue target will be, who your ideal client is and how you’ll operate.
In Troy’s case, we created a detailed persona of their ideal client: their age, their income, where they live, their occupation, what their future looks like.
Being clear on this allowed us to create their client value proposition, which focused on what made TWD unique and, more importantly, outlined why clients would want to work with them.
Being ruthless about efficiency
While I have a range of proven processes and standard documents that I use, every adviser’s business is different and so the key here is to tailor each of these based on how an adviser wants to do business.
I also spend a great deal of time looking at ways we can customise XPLAN to ensure any efficiencies that we deliver will flow right through the business.
Succession planning is also a huge part of ongoing efficiency and this is something that we always consider when reconfiguring these processes, no matter what the business goals look like.
Having a structured approach to growing revenue
A marketing plan, which sits beside your business plan, will be the manual for how your business acquires, grows and retains its clients.
It doesn’t matter if you’re targeting people who you know, focusing on existing client referrals or setting up alliances with accountants or lawyers – you must have clear ‘rules of engagement’ before you approach anyone.
TWD wanted to create a network of referral partners and one strategy that worked well was presenting to the accountant or lawyer as though they were a potential client, not as a potential business partner.
I can’t tell you how impressed some were with all the upfront work we’d done on our pricing, service proposition and how we saw each relationship growing over time.
The same goes for existing clients – you can’t show the value that you provide until you’re 100% clear on what you offer and how much it costs.
Maximising the value of your business
Since reconfiguring their existing processes and introducing some new ones,Troy and his team now measure pretty much everything.
For instance, management and adviser KPIs are looked at weekly, the profit and loss budget is tracked monthly and every adviser must spend at least 60% of their time on client-facing activities.
Measuring business performance in this way has allowed TWD to grow its revenue by 25%, at the same time reducing its client base from 800 to 300. Now that’s efficiency.
TWD’s focus on succession planning has also been important, with its investment in quality systems, professional development and the mentoring of younger advisers being key to creating a valuable and sustainable business over the long term.
Graeme Hyland is Southern Regional Manager for RI Advice Group, and is responsible for helping around 50 of RI’s practices implement strategies that create a sustainable advice business for themselves and quality outcomes for their clients.
