Three Keys to More Effective Business Development for Advisors

Most financial advisors didn’t set out to become marketing and sales experts. But for advisors who double as business owners, improving business development and driving growth is often an important goal. 

From our position working with hundreds of advisors who own their firms, we’ve found that rather than trying to master marketing and sales skills, nailing these three components inevitably leads to scalable, sustainable growth.

1. Retention and referrals: Before even considering how to add clients, make sure your current client experience is rock solid, as lowering churn, increasing retention, and enhancing cross- and upsell opportunities enables growth without needing to acquire, onboard, and manage a single new account. 

And of course, if you create a client experience worth talking about, they will – to friends and family who trust their opinion. While referrals, the holy grail of advisor growth, do some with an accelerated level of trust that enhances the likelihood of prospects turning into clients, it’s critical to make sure you have a strategy in place for effectively managing these opportunities. 

So what does an exceptional client experience – one that leads to greater retention and more referrals – look like? It really boils down to these three factors:

• Building trust: Overpromising and underdelivering, particularly when it comes to portfolio performance, is a recipe for instant mistrust. But when you can set clear portfolio objectives and consistently illustrate to your clients their ability to reach them, you create and continue to build valuable trust in your capabilities. 
• Strengthening confidence: It’s natural for investors to waver in the face of market volatility, especially with the media’s penchant for fear mongering. But it’s during these times in particular that you can demonstrate and solidify your value as an advisor by providing the rational answers and proactive communications they need to feel confident in their ability to reach their financial goals.
• Making them feel important: Building relationships of any kind takes time and effort, and your clients are no exception. The more efficiently you’re able to run your firm (see point #3), the more time you’ll have to spend with and focused on your clients.   

Helios empowers advisors to exceed today’s client experience expectations. Not only do we help you create highly personalized portfolios with extensive model customization capabilities, backed by quantitative expertise, but we also offer weekly commentary on the most important things going on in the markets – which you can whitelabel for your firm. 

2. Differentiation: Today’s clients have no shortage of places to turn for financial advice and investment management, from DIY solutions to massive wirehouses to the advisor down the street. Why should they choose you?

Nailing your advisor value proposition – the unique benefits you bring to the table that no one else does – is critical for attracting and closing new business. If you’re not sure what that is, ask your current clients, particularly if you serve a niche market. They’ll be able to help you illustrate why you’re the best firm to meet their unique needs.

You can also turn asset management into your biggest competitive advantage, even if you don’t consider investments your core competency. Helios empowers advisors with the ability to create customized, institutional-quality portfolios for clients at scale with our complete model ecosystem and portfolio design strategy capabilities. 

By harnessing our mathematically diverse models that are designed to work together, you can level up your investment story and leapfrog competitors using the same generic models as everyone else.

3. Efficiency: Growth without scale rapidly becomes cumbersome, expensive and unsustainable. Adding new clients without a systematic and repeatable process for serving them is only setting your firm up for failure in the form of client churn, frantic and risky hiring decisions, and potentially costly errors. 

That’s why it’s important to prepare for growth before it happens and overwhelms your resources. Consider your existing workflows: what tasks can you eliminate? What can you delegate? What can you outsource?

For many firms, managing investments in-house comes at a massive time and resource cost. Helios alleviates the operational burdens associated with investment management – monitoring holdings, building portfolios, creating compliance documentation, and ensuring ongoing training – while helping you deliver a better experience for your clients, all for far less than hiring an investment expert in-house.

Want to learn more? Get in touch with our team today by clicking here.