Orion's Clarke: It's Time to 'Future-Proof' Your Business

He then pointed to a Pershing study showing advisory firms investing in their client experience (or CX) "are growing five time that of other firms" — Carson Wealth, for instance, is spending about $50 million on it.

Other keys to success, in Clarke's mind, are "innovating on your value prop, disrupting your business model and 'future-proofing' your business." 

These steps, he says, should give advisors what they need "to win more than your fair share." Again, Clarke said, "Use technology to do these … things."   

Thanks to firms like Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Uber, "The expectations that our clients now have are vastly different than what they used to be," he said. "Don't look at the financial competition for client expectations."

As for how advisors can best build their brands, "Think about building financial awareness and literacy via [a marketing] campaign," Clarke said.

He then shared that Orion will roll out a pilot marketing and prospecting service for a few client firms now experiencing growth that's "behind" their goals. "We want to enable them to do marketing campaigns" as part of a larger business-building road map, he explained.

The program is set to be offered to its broader client base in 2020.

According to Orion CMO Kelly Waltrich, the firm received many requests for information about the marketing service from Wealth/Stack participants after Clarke's talk at the event.

— Check out RIA M&As at 'Unprecedented Level': Wealth/Stack Panelist on ThinkAdvisor.