The financial advisors success manual

Thank you for downloading this AMACOM eBook Sign up for our newsletter, AMACOM BookAlert, and receive special offers, access to free samples, and info on the latest new releases from AMACOM, the book publishing division of American Management Association To sign up, visit our website: www.amacombooks.org To learn more about the American Management Association visit: www.amanet.org The Financial Advisor’s Success Manual How to Structure and Grow Your Financial Services Practice David I Leo, Founder Street Smart Research Group LLC Craig Cmiel, Co-Founder Great Lakes & Atlantic Wealth Management & Advisory Partners LLC This book is dedicated to my wife and family for all of the love they have given me regardless (of my faults) David Leo To my amazing wife, Joyce, who has been a great partner on this wonderful journey Craig Cmiel Acknowledgments I was proud and inspired to have received a wonderful mention from Mitch Anthony Mitch’s comments made me believe it was my responsibility not to lose what I have learned over a lifetime if it could be of value to others This was my motivation for this book A Forbes article that I read stated, “But for all the good intentions, only a tiny fraction of us keep our resolutions; University of Scranton research suggests that just percent of people achieve their New Year’s goals.” In their book Following Through: A Revolutionary New Model for Finishing Whatever You Start , Steve Levinson and Pete Greider say, “According to some estimates, 90 percent of the books purchased in bookstores never get read past the first chapter,” and that “nearly three out of four new [health club] members stop going within just three months of signing up.”2 I hope that many who read this book will find some ideas that can be of value to advisors, and to coaches of advisors, and ultimately to the clients of those advisors, and follow through by trying them David Leo Contents Executive Summary Introduction Chapter | Develop Your Differentiation Strategy What Is Your Value? What Is Your Differentiation? Action Summary | Develop Your Differentiation Strategy Sample Unique Value Proposition Chapter | Formal Book Segmentation Why Analyze Your Book of Business? The Value of Determining Your 80/20 How Segmentation Is Done Action Summary | Formal Book Segmentation Chapter | The Client Loyalty Process Asset Growth Starts with Client Retention The Value of High-Quality Client Service Getting Your Client to “Completely Satisfied” Your Intake Process Your Financial Planning Process Your Risk Management Process Your Investment Planning Process Your Client Loyalty or Client Service Process Value of Continuing Improvement in Client Loyalty The Kano Model The Future of Delight Action Summary | The Client Loyalty Process Chapter | But What’s the Cost of Loyalty? Managing Your High-Quality Proactive Client Service System It’s About Time and Money Primary FA Business Activities Client Contact Plan Contact Workload in Volume Contact Workload in Time Additional Client Service Time Commitments Next Steps Additional Guidance Action Summary | What’s the Cost of Loyalty? Chapter | Your Intake Process Meeting One: Discovery Meeting Two: Detailed Discussion of Financial and Related Status Meeting Three: Detailed Discussion of the Prospect’s Game Plan Action Summary | Your Intake Process Chapter | Your Client Planning and Review Process The Client Planning and Review Meeting Process Additional Topics: General Monthly Check-in Call Discussion Topics Action Summary | Your Client Planning and Review Process Chapter | Your Business Plan Prelude Purpose of Your Business Plan The Business Plan Developing Your Value Proposition Business Foundations Goal Planning Focus Areas: Marketing and Sales Strategies and Tactics Focus Areas: Service Strategies and Tactics Focus Area: Operations Model Week/Time Blocking Action Summary | Your Business Plan Chapter | Metrics: Daily Game Plan The Qualitative Approach The Quantitative Approach Daily Time Log The Six Most Important Things Action Summary | Metrics: Daily Game Plan Chapter | Business Development Introduction to Business Development Client Introductions for Business Development Client Acquisition Through Introductions Using the Principle of “Aided Recall” at Review Meetings Introductions from Clients Using the LinkedIn Approach to Client Acquisition Summary: Keys to “Client Engagement” COI Marketing Strategy for Client Acquisition Book of Life for Client Acquisition Niche Marketing for Client Acquisition Additional Marketing and Sales Approaches for Business Development Action Summary | Business Development Chapter 10 | The Benefits of Implementation Action Summary | The Benefits of Implementation A Final Thought Afterword Notes Index About the Authors Sample Chapter from The 10 Laws of Trust by Joel Peterson with David A Kaplan About AMACOM Books Executive Summary Financial advisors must structure and organize their financial advisory practices so that they can put themselves in a position to grow their businesses To structure and organize your business for efficiency and effectiveness, you need to: • Formally segment your book and analyze the results in depth You may have already placed clients into A, B, and C service tiers This segmentation should be reviewed and modified as needed annually It should also be based on more than assets and/or revenues Likability, willingness to heed your advice, and whether clients are a source of introductions and their future potential all impact their value to the business and therefore their tier • Segmentation will also help you answer the question, “How many clients can I effectively and efficiently manage?” • Detail your Client Service Model or Promise for each of the client tiers you choose to service In this book you will learn exactly how to approach detailing these promises using a structure that provides consistency and completeness for both the client and advisor • Define and implement your six core client-facing processes: • Intake Process—putting your best foot forward at the onset of your relationship • Financial Planning Process—providing a comprehensive set of wealth management solutions • Risk Management Process—accounting for life’s risk above and beyond investment risks • Investment Planning Process—delivered in a highly consultative manner • Client Service Process—yielding a set of deliverables that is highly satisfactory to the client • Client Planning and Review Meeting Process—designed to make your client communications highly effective and keep you and your clients aware of their satisfaction Commit that every client you are willing to accept into your practice will receive a version of these processes based on their needs, the deliverables they deserve, their value to your business, and the fees you charge in compensation for the value you deliver • Understand the value you deliver but also the cost of your deliverables Value is determined by the client; cost is determined by you Don’t deliver items that clients don’t value, because they almost always have a cost • Develop a real business plan This plan is much more than a set of goals Goals are the “What” and the “How Many.” What I want my 20XX assets under management (AUM) to be? What I want my 20XX production to be? How many new clients I want to acquire? • A business plan lays out the “How,” the “When,” and the “Who.” In addition to outlining where I am and where I want to be, the plan defines the strategies and tactics for how to get there, by when, and who has responsibility Robbins, Tony robo-advisors robo industry Rock, David on consistency of actions on training programs Roman army roundtables, targeted sales and business plan developing your approach to and “pencil selling” technique satisfaction and advocacy complete as driver of loyalty in Kano model savings, and risk management savings rate, importance of, vs rate of return scheduling of client planning/review process of meetings with clients Schwab Advisor Network Schwab Private Client Schwartz, Jeffrey on consistency of actions on training programs Seawright, Bob, Hierarchy of Advisor Value of security selection segmentation, see also book segmentation self-confidence, and aging self-directed advisory services, client satisfaction with self-employed clients, promoting client tier for selling, consultative sentiment service commitments Service Deliverables service expectations service level agreements (SLAs) service strategies and tactics, and business plan service tiers service to clients significant others silos, in wealth management business Silverstein, Sam Simmons, Annette 6-2-1 contact plan Six Most Important Things worksheet Skype social media solo-preneurs S&P 500 Index Spectrem Spheres of Influence spouse of client, in intake process “stickiness” Stoner, Jesse Lyn, on questions for starting and ending your day The Storytelling Animal (Gottschall) Storytelling for Financial Advisors (West and Anthony) strategic networking strategic partnering, with COIs strategic relationships subjective data, in book segmentation summary letters SunAmerica Client Referral Program Supernova contact model support services, matching client needs and added value to suspects system data, in book segmentation “talking the talk” targeted roundtables teams, professional wealth-management technology telephone calls answering in client contact plans first call to COIs monthly check-in call Tell to Win (Guber) 3M “Three Retirement Goals People Never Achieve” (Laura) Tiburon Strategic Advisors tier, client book segmentation by calculating contact plan based on and maximum number of clients managed promotion/demotion of clients to next as system data and trailing 12-months revenue time time blocking and business plan committing to Time in Hours (Client Service Promise) time log, daily time value of compounding “tipping point” top clients, identifying your total AUM (total assets under management) Total Client Cost Total Cost of Service total logical households Total Score, and client contact plan Total Work Hours toxic emotions, reducing trailing 12-months revenue (T12) training programs travel time, for in-person meetings trust from “completely satisfied” clients in financial planning Trust and Estate attorneys turnkey asset management programs (TAMPs) 12-4-2 contact plan 20-60-20 Rule Twitter UBS ultra-high net worth (UHNW) clients family office services for financial planning process for unaided recall uncertainty, in financial planning “underperforming” clients “under reported” revenue Unique Selling Proposition (USP) Unique Value Proposition (UVP) unprofitable clients, retaining updates, delighting customers with USA Today value cost vs demonstrating your distinctiveness of your documenting your Hierarchy of Advisor Value of households as part of Unique Value Proposition and pricing value-added selling “value characteristics” (of clients) Value Ladder “The Value of Financial Advice” (Pfau) Vanguard velocity Vessenes, Katherine, on meeting with prospects videoconferencing VIP Forum Virgin Group Ltd vision volatility “volume” practices “walking the talk” WealthManagement.com wealth management consultative process Weir, Mike Wells Fargo West, Scott, on listening to clients’ stories “Why Goals Are Secondary in Business Planning” (Littlechild) “Why Satisfied Customers Defect” widows, changing of financial advisors by Wilde, Oscar, on cynics women, role of, in financial planning Woods, Tiger work ethic workload, contact written financial plans Xerox 0-0-1 and 0-0-2 contact plans zone of affection zone of defection zone of indifference About the Authors DAVID LEO is a business coach and strategic consultant to financial advisors He has decades of financial services industry experience, including over seven years in PaineWebber’s Private Client Group where he specialized in productivity solutions CRAIG CMIEL is co-founder and managing partner of Great Lakes & Atlantic Wealth Management and Advisory Partners Sample Chapter from The 10 Laws of Trust by Joel Peterson with David A Kaplan In this smartly organized, evidence-based book, Joel Peterson decries the mediocrity created by selfcentered leadership, profit-above-people mentalities, and cloak-and-dagger cultures The JetBlue chairman and Stanford professor reawakens our instincts for using trust to catalyze people and companies to their highest potential—working together toward goals, innovating, and sharing knowledge Start reading this inspirational book with the following excerpt THE POWER OF TRUST IN BUSINESS, AS IN life, trust is elemental We all cherish it Most of us think we deserve it Few of us think we violate it But what exactly is it? At its core, trust means willingly ceding a measure of control to another—be it a person, organization or institution— and without the apparent safety nets of a binding contract or other means of coercion in place Although we trust with an expectation that others will respond in kind, vulnerability is the psychological hallmark of trust We’re taking a risk, sometimes based on limited evidence Trust is a leap of faith rooted in optimism We take trust for granted, not conscious of how it pervades relationships Partners rely on partners; employers on employees; companies on each other; nations on other nations; families on other family members And in a world in which the peer-to-peer economy is gaining ascendance—with individuals sharing cars, boats, and apartments—trust is all the more indispensable Understanding the underpinnings of trust, therefore, is increasingly important as companies become more global, more competitive, more diverse culturally and demographically Each new thread of well-founded trust adds strength and richness to the complex tapestry of our interwoven economic and personal lives But trust doesn’t just happen It takes initiation, nurture, evaluation, and repair Trust is earned Trust builds over time, fostered not only by decency but also by enlightened self-interest, a recognition that trust works to everyone’s benefit As a lubricant, trust accelerates decision-making, results in agreements that are both durable and flexible, and makes life infinitely more pleasant Trust creates a bond among an organization’s associates, customers, and suppliers, which in turn accelerates its ability to deliver on its promises to each group But trust is neither an end unto itself nor merely a technique for achieving a desired outcome Trust is the operating system for a life well lived There is power in being trustworthy In the economy of trust, what goes around comes around The more we look out for others, the more they look out for us The more we trust, the more we are trusted When trust is the medium of exchange, people collaborate and altruism can grow, again to everyone’s benefit Evolutionary biologists David Sloan Wilson and E O Wilson propose a thought experiment for the relative power of selfishness versus generosity: Two groups are placed on separate islands with no way to communicate On one island, it’s each person for himself On the other, everybody works together to achieve broader goals A few generations later you’ll find two very different societies: one in a state of constant, near-psychopathic conflict, the other successful and harmonious Summarizing the essential argument for building trust, these scientists conclude: “Selfishness beats altruism within groups Altruistic groups beat selfish groups Everything else is commentary.” Put simply, high-trust (altruistic) organizations prevail over low-trust (selfish) organizations, and over time, high-trust leaders are more successful than low-trust leaders Contrast the high trust levels of the legendary teams built by Alan Mulally at Boeing and then at Ford, with those at Enron, where temporary success ended in spectacular failure Just as important, selfish (low-trust) groups, besides losing to altruistic (high-trust) groups, suffer misery within their ranks One need only review Stanford University professor Bob Sutton’s bestseller, The No Asshole Rule, to see how untrusting workplace behaviors wound productivity and morale Like air, trust is invisible, and when abundant, it is taken for granted But again like air, when trust is in short supply, people must find ways to cope When suspicions arise, people reach for legal documents, policy manuals, and other prophylactic measures—the scar tissue of strained trust Worse, when trust breaks down altogether, responses to the ensuing wreckage can vary from giving up altogether to grabbing power, from threatening to litigating Make no mistake: Building and maintaining trust are hard work Trust can be fragile One bad actor can damage it A single act of deceit can destroy a reputation for being trustworthy that was built over a lifetime Be it in the boardroom or in statecraft or in literature—Hewlett-Packard or Caesar or Othello—betrayal is poison Bernard Madoff’s investment firm and Bernie Ebbers’s WorldCom will forever live in the annals of capitalist infamy There’s a good reason why being called an Iago is among the worst stains on a reputation But if you live in a world of suspicion or selfishness, you may not even be aware that you and your necessarily low-trust teammates are like runners on a relay team lugging around heavy oxygen tanks in order to cope with the short supply of trust You may not notice that your attention has shifted from the potential of posting a winning time to avoiding the risk of finishing last Your energy is spent securing a replacement for the air you’d enjoy naturally in a high-trust environment You look past innovation, optimization, and mutual gain in order to obsess over threats, downsides, and coercion You look out only for yourself As a result, low trust begets even lower trust The following 10 Laws of Trust lay out attitudes and behaviors you can count on to increase the odds that the flow of trust in your enterprise will not be interrupted Their implementation will arrest the decline of trust and keep you from burning all of your energy to protect against low-trust behavior on the part of others Scientists point out that a good theory is one that predicts outcomes, giving us a sense of causality One should expect a correlation between certain behaviors and the development of predictable trust within a team And while no one has scientifically tested these 10 Laws, I’ve spent a lifetime assessing them to figure out what works and what doesn’t My bottom line is that investing in trust works to create abundance and is far superior to hoarding power, harboring suspicions, or barricading oneself behind gotcha controls Being smart about whom to trust, when to trust, and how to nurture organizational trust is key to implementing the 10 Laws Understanding the following truths about the very nature of trust—its preconditions, varieties, underpinnings, and risks—prepares a leader to undertake the job of building a high-trust organization Trust—well-grounded—depends on three conditions To safely and reliably allow others to act on our behalf— which is what we mean by trusting them—we must be able to count on three underpinnings: Character, Competence, and Authority • Character means that those we trust will value our interests as their own • Competence means that those we trust have the requisite intelligence, ability, and training to achieve our best interests • Authority means that those we trust are empowered to deliver on promises When all three conditions are present, trust develops naturally, almost reflexively But when any of the three is absent, trust must take a holiday To trust in the absence of any of these three elements is not smart but naïve—and eventual betrayal is almost certain Those who meet these three conditions for being granted our trust (Character + Competence + Authority) almost always possess a broader view of life’s purpose than merely securing the best personal outcome in every single transaction, in every conversation, in every negotiation People who see life as a marathon rather than a sprint, as a narrative in which everything eventually connects, are the best bets for long-term trust These individuals tend to have an enlightened, all-things-considered selfinterest They choose to act in the belief that trustworthy behavior pays dividends, if only in the harmony that comes from a lifetime of durable, high-trust relationships Possessing a bone-deep belief that they are accountable to more than just their own interests, they are simply unlikely to betray another’s trust There are three types of trust In building a hightrust organization, one must understand the three forms that trust can take: reciprocal, representative, and pseudo-trust: a Reciprocal (or mutual) trust exists when people advance each other’s interests out of love, duty or enlightened self-interest Most prevalent between spouses and other family members, mutual trust can also be found between interdependent business partners As with a relay team, the practitioners (and beneficiaries) of reciprocal trust can be confident their combined performance will exceed the best efforts of any single member Thus, in reciprocal-trust relationships, the results of individual efforts are multiplied, and outcomes are predictably superior to any one member’s independent efforts Shared goals are achieved faster and more durably than when everyone is on his own—mistrustful of colleagues, wary of leaders Nobody on a relay team worries that the next person to get the baton is going to run a faster lap And no single runner will beat a 4x100 relay team b Representative trust is the more common form of reliance on others When electing officials or, say, hiring a lawyer, we hand over our trust, expecting it to be honored in return Young children rely on parents to represent them, and parents honor children’s trust by protecting their interests Similarly, doctors and other professionals honor our trust by safeguarding our welfare, asking that we provide good information in exchange The uneven economy of representative stewardship makes possible the specialization needed to achieve complex goals Absent reliable representative trust, society breaks down Nobody can produce, or be an expert at, everything; we all must trust professionals to represent our interests faithfully c Finally, under the label of trust operates its counterfeit, pseudo-trust, the temporary alignment of one’s self-interests with those of another While pseudo-trust necessarily forms the basis for many contractual economic relationships, this convenient arrangement shouldn’t be mistaken for the real thing As a governor of short-term actions, it has less to offer and may actually undermine efforts to build a high-trust culture of collaboration In the end, pseudo-trust will almost invariably lead to shortterm, episodic thinking and, when conditions change, eventual betrayal Indeed, many who have not paid the price to build a genuine trust temporarily accrue some of trust’s benefits by simply aligning with the self-interested Pseudo-trust is dangerous, however Hitching one’s interests to a counterparty can feel like authentic trust, but only until respective interests diverge Like Mafia dons thriving by mutual dependence on fear and greed, individuals in a pseudo-trust arrangement (for example, the enemy of my enemy is my friend) often discover that it rarely leads to more than the fleeting security of common interests Useful for a season, it is destined to fail as circumstances change Voters often trust politicians to back causes that matter to them without realizing that a politician’s primary interest is being reelected These voters are destined to experience the betrayal of a flip-flop—a breach of pseudo-trust—the minute their cause no longer appeals to a majority of a politician’s constituents Underlying motivators establish potential trust levels Intuitively, we know that different levels of trust exist in different kinds of organizations No-trust organizations, such as prisons, rely on force Low-trust organizations, such as dictatorships, live on fear The motivator in most business organizations is reward Only high-trust organizations are motivated by duty and love, by a sense of meaning and mission—even calling The bonds between parent and child often yield this sort of trust within a family, for example While combinations of these motivators are present at different times in most organizations, only those organizations in which exists a sense of responsibility to all constituents, and a sense of meaning or mission, will consistently be moved by higher-level motivators such as duty or love As Figure illustrates, there is a hierarchy of motivators The half-life of the motivating force increases as one moves from left (Force) to right (Love), and as the source of the motivator moves from extrinsic to intrinsic Naturally, trust grows when people relate to the mission of an organization and have leaders and employees committed to that mission What tends to motivate people within any organization tells you what level of trust you might realistically hope for FIGURE Trust Level by Organization The good news for leaders is that other than in prisons and asylums, trust levels are not fixed by the nature of the organization As a leader, you can move the needle The goal of any leader should be to move to the high-trust end of the spectrum and thereby to reliance on mission, caring, meaning, and duty Here’s where adhering to the 10 Laws of Trust can make all the difference As trust declines, people grab power Another way to contrast low-trust with high-trust organizations is to compare the role of power in achieving desired ends In low-trust organizations, power plays the key role in attaining goals In hightrust organizations, authority is still vital, but it tends to be distributed and is aimed at a shared mission And it is seen not as a personal asset to be wielded by leaders for their own benefit but as both a duty owed to those granting it and a responsibility to those over whom it extends Figure compares how leaders view power in low- and high-trust organizations FIGURE How Leaders View Power Stanford professor Jeff Pfeffer asserts in Power: Why Some People Have It—and Others Don’t that power flows to those who break rules, make credible threats, self-promote, and use its exercise as a technique to coerce others—the essence of a lowtrust organization In high-trust organizations, however, such behaviors are anathema Pfeffer’s thesis ignores the essence of hightrust organizations and their leaders Power in high-trust organizations derives not from scheming or techniques It is less imposed than freely granted Durable power derives from trust and is distributed as an expression of trust As Rod Kramer, another Stanford professor, has remarked, “Power without trust seems like a hollow victory for a leader and a thin platform from which to lead.” Ultimately, for all the bare-knuckled, power-grasping tyrants who have succeeded (if only for a season), there are many other leaders who have labored to create the greatest good for the greatest number of people These hightrust leaders have developed durable organizations and flexible, trusting teams, working together to achieve more than any of them would have accomplished individually Trust risks betrayal Although trust relationships can, of course, terminate by mutual agreement, they occasionally end in betrayal In fact, betrayal requires the existence of trust in the first place Indeed, all three forms of trust are subject to potential betrayal: pseudo-trust by its very nature, and reciprocal and representative trust to the extent you’ve trusted someone without Character, Competence, and Authority Betrayal can demolish the trust earned over a lifetime, probably never to be rebuilt So, people naturally worry about balancing the need to trust with the recognition that treachery may lurk If betrayal lies ever in wait, what, then, is one to do? Can one ever rely on a handshake, trust someone’s word, take it on faith? Must trust be carefully evaluated to be certain it is well-grounded before taking the leap? In short, how you know if you’re dealing with George “I Cannot Tell a Lie” Washington or Benedict Arnold? The potential for betrayal can be minimized by: • Making sure all the elements of trust (Character, Competence, and Authority) are well established • Understanding the three forms that trust takes (reciprocal, representative, and pseudo) and recognizing that the betrayal of pseudo-trust may only be a matter of time • Building a culture rooted in the 10 Laws of Trust To be sure, trust risks occasional betrayal But the absence of trust is betrayal—of everyone condemned to work for coercive leaders Because “[a]ltruistic groups beat selfish groups,” organizations deprived of trust are destined to be surpassed by those animated by trust IN SUM M ARY, THE ODDS of building high-trust organizations through consistent application of the 10 Laws of Trust increase when their leaders first gain a solid understanding of the nature of trust, as outlined above and restated here: Well-grounded trust depends on accurately assessing the Character, Competence, and Authority of those to whom we consider granting our trust Of the three common strains of trust (reciprocal, representative, and pseudo), pseudo-trust is the least reliable, as it is stable only when interests are aligned Different organizations have inherently different potential for trust depending on the primary motivators used by those in charge (Force, Fear, Reward, Duty, or Love) When trust is low or absent, the vacuum will be filled by those who depend on power to drive outcomes The risk of betrayal can be diminished by hiring and promoting those willing to adhere to the 10 Laws Over time, high-trust enterprises will successfully compete with their benighted counterparts obsessed with politics, selfprotection, and self-aggrandizing power The satisfaction that derives from collaboration, the innovation that flows from interdependent teams, the joy that springs from knowing you can trust those with whom you work—all are well worth the effort required to understand the nature of trust and to internalize and live by its laws Best-Sellers from AMACOM Leading at the Edge Stranded in the frozen Antarctic sea for nearly two years, Sir Ernest Shackleton and his team of 27 polar explorers endured extreme temperatures, hazardous ice, dwindling food, and complete isolation Despite these seemingly insurmountable obstacles, the group remained cohesive, congenial, and mercifully alive—a fact that speaks not just to luck but to an unparalleled feat of leadership People Styles at Work and Beyond The book reveals the strengths and weaknesses of four different people styles, providing practical techniques that work both on the job and off Now including all new material on personal relationships, parenting, and more, this is the ultimate guide anyone can use to enhance even the most difficult relationships Just Listen: Discover the Secret to Getting Through to Absolutely Anyone Barricades between people become barriers to success, progress, and happiness; so getting through is not just a fine art, but a crucial skill Just Listen gives you the techniques and confidence to approach the unreachable people in your life, and turn frustrating situations into productive outcomes and rewarding relationships Talking to Crazy: How to Deal with the Irrational and Impossible People in Your Life Difficult people can make life hard, but a select few can make it hell The boss with nonsensical demands The spouse who explodes at nothing The overly emotional coworker, hostile neighbor, or friend who frequently bursts into tears Top-ranked psychiatrist and communication expert Mark Goulston unlocks the mysteries of the irrational mind, and explains how faulty thinking patterns develop His keen insights are matched by a set of counterintuitive strategies proven to defuse crazy behavior, along with scripts, examples, and exercises that teach you how to use them Ask More: The Power of Questions to Open Doors, Uncover Solutions, and Spark Change Ask More puts questions at the center of every conversation Author Frank 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American Management Association: www.amanet.org This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered It is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering legal, accounting, or other professional service If legal advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional person should be sought Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Leo, David I., author | Cmiel, Craig, author Title: The financial advisor's success manual : how to structure and grow your financial services practice / David Leo, Founder, Street Smart Research Group LLC, Craig Cmiel, Co-Founder, Great Lakes & Atlantic Wealth Management & Advisory Partners LLC Description: New York : American Management Association, [2018] | Includes index Identifiers: LCCN 2017023379 (print) | LCCN 2017036947 (ebook) | ISBN 9780814439142 (ebook) | ISBN 9780814439135 (hardcover) Subjects: LCSH: Financial planners | Investment advisors | Financial services industry Classification: LCC HG179.5 (ebook) | LCC HG179.5 L46 2018 (print) | DDC 332.6 dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017023379 © 2018 David Leo and Craig Cmiel All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America This publication may not be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in whole or in part, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of AMACOM, a division of American Management Association, 1601 Broadway, New York, NY 10019 The scanning, uploading, or distribution of this book via the Internet or any other means without the express permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law Please purchase only authorized electronic editions of this work and not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials, electronically or otherwise Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated About AMA American Management Association (www.amanet.org) is a world leader in talent development, advancing the skills of individuals to drive business success Our mission is to support the goals of individuals and organizations through a complete range of products and services, including classroom and virtual seminars, webcasts, webinars, podcasts, conferences, corporate and government solutions, business books, and research AMA’s approach to improving performance combines experiential learning—learning through doing—with opportunities for ongoing professional growth at every step of one’s career journey 10 ... helps financial advisors define those areas they and the coach believe can best serve the advisor, and the coach then works with them on how best to approach implementation While many of the areas... financial advisors in the United States, a Reuters article says there are about 285,000 financial advisors. 24 The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated the number of “personal financial advisors ... version of these processes based on their needs, the deliverables they deserve, their value to your business, and the fees you charge in compensation for the value you deliver • Understand the value