Overcoming Mental Mistakes That Limit Your Firm’s Success

And it's true: these things can be expensive, especially when you work with a professional marketing firm that creates an "8-step" marketing plan. Yet I've found that most marketing plans fail because they try to grow a firm too big, too soon.

For one thing, most firms can't absorb a flood of new clients and maintain high-quality client service. What's more, the owners and employees at most firms don't have the spare time to devote to large marketing initiatives. Instead, we recommend that firms focus on one major project each year: improve the website, do investment seminars, launch a newsletter, etc. We find that when firms just do one project—and do it really well—over a year, it will usually produce tangible results in eight to nine months. If you do that for two or three years, you'll have all the growth you can handle. 

3) What would you do if time wasn't an issue?
The basis of this question is that virtually all owner-advisors feel that they are overloaded already and, consequently, are reluctant to take on any new projects. Still, the No. 1 answer is that they would spend more time researching investment opportunities.

What's holding them back? In most cases, firm owners are wasting too much of their time trying to implement massive marketing programs (see above). That in turn prevents them hiring new advisors to take some of the workload off their desks. 

Obviously, the solution is to hire and train more lead advisors (see question #1), which would free up older advisors to look for investment opportunities. But it also involves changing the traditional financial planning mentality that older advisors work with clients, while younger advisors create financial plans and investment portfolios. In today's increasingly complex financial world, we find that older advisors can often add more value using their experience to find new and better investment and planning opportunities: while properly trained younger advisors can be trusted to handle the bulk of the client facing work. 

The takeaway here is that once you can identify the problem, you can often find a workable solution. The key is to not let your preconceived thinking stop you from exploring ways to build the advisory firm you really want. Happy New Year.