If there is one universal truth of the financial services industry, it’s that there is never enough time to get everything done.
Young advisors building their business need to prospect, sell, and lay the foundation of their practices. Established advisors need to service their clients, hire & train talent, and manage the operations of their team.
If you are a wealth advisor struggling to get everything done, below are a few resources that can help you save a considerable amount of time and free you up to grow your business.
The process of onboarding a new client, preparing for an annual check in, or completing an IRA rollover should be relatively standardized. Often, small RIAs and financial advising businesses will keep a lot of this information in their head.
Business gurus tend to encourage entrepreneurs to write Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) listing out all the steps of a process. However, these documents often get written then placed on a shelf (digital or physical) and never picked back up again.
Instead, setting up specific workflows in a project management software will give you way more return on your time.
You can set up a standard template for onboarding a new client in ClickUp, Monday, Asana, or any other project management software, then simply activate that template every time you need to run that process again.
You can assign each step of the task to the right person which will help you delegate and hold people accountable. It will also track activities that have been completed and store notes relevant to that particular instance.
When the process needs updating, simply update the template and it will be reflected in all future iterations.
Wealth Advisors can accomplish an enormous return on their time by creating written blog posts and videos covering the core functions that they complete for their clients.
From backdoor roth conversions to IRA rollovers to tax planning to niche-specific financial planning, this content can act as dozens of thin clones acting on your behalf.
Instead of re-explaining the strategy you’re implementing in each client check-in, you can send the blog and video in advance of the call. Then, if the client still wants to meet, you can simply ask, “Any questions on what we outlined?”
Record and write the piece once, share with hundreds of clients at no cost.
Additionally, some of this content will not need to be gatekept.
There is nothing to lose by publicly explaining general financial planning concepts that are easily Googleable. However, by sharing these points in videos and blogs, you will earn credibility with your target audience and attract inbound leads to your firm.
That also means less time prospecting or hunting for new business
Dan Martell has built four businesses to over 8 figures in annual revenue. He coaches some of the world’s top founders and wrote an tremendous book titled ‘Buy Back Your Time’
In the book, Dan outlines the process of identifying activities in your business that can be delegated to someone else.
Dan recommends replacing yourself in a sequence of five rungs.
Administrative tasks are a huge time sink for advisors because they tend to hate paperwork and not be that good at it. Delegate this to an executive assistant first.
Fulfillment is the implementation of investment strategies and the servicing of clients. This could start off as a shared director of investments and eventually scale to full time as your accrue more assets under management.
The Marketing Function is often the most overlooked by wealth advisors. They’re used to building their business on relationships, referrals, and reputation, but a marketing machine that generates consistent new leads underpins growth. Book a call with an AUM Growth Strategist if you’d like to discuss how to build this for your firm.
Sales is often the hardest part for an advisor to let go, because this is usually their greatest skill. It can be painful to review a junior advisor's calls and give them feedback, but there is no feeling quite like seeing a client sign with your firm that you didn’t have it interact with at all. Do it when you have sufficient lead flow to support an advisor dedicated to sales.
Finally, Leadership is the last function to hand off. This is not an ‘Operations Manager’ that still takes orders from you and lacks decision making authority. Truly delegating leadership authority means budget, accountability to core metrics, and the trust to make independent strategic decisions.
These will take time, but are the core tasks to be completed if you want to build a firm with $1 Billion in assets under management.
What other techniques have you learned to save time in your wealth management business? Email me at aaron@aumgrowthmarketing.com and I’ll update this blog and credit you (good for SEO) if it's a good one.
A Husband, Father, and Business Owner. He is also a Digital Marketer and Finance Nerd with over a decade of lead generation experience managing a results-driven marketing agency for Wealth Management Companies. Aaron loves studying marketing, markets, video production, and strategy to better serve his clients.
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