Every advisory practice is faced with conflicts and pressures, opportunities and choices. To focus on providing advice to 401(k) plans, however, it's important that you consider four critical perspectives:
1) Where are you strong? For many, those strengths would include good sales skills; happy clients; reputation; and product and service knowledge. So which strategies for this market would allow you to capitalize on these strengths?
2) Who is your optimal client in this market, and what are your expectations for them? We've identified several critical issues above, such as increasing demands for both advice and education and low participation and rising expectations for plan participants. Based on these issues, which strategies could you deploy that would allow you to better respond to your market?