Journal of Financial Planning: June 2023
Charesse Spiller is the founder of Level Best, which empowers financial planners and entrepreneurs by teaching them how to level up their operations. Learn more at www.getlevelbest.com.
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As the principal consultant and founder of Level Best, I’ve been working with financial advisers for nearly a decade. Over the course of my career, I’ve had the opportunity to take a look under the hood of hundreds of firms. The truth is that, regardless of firm size, years in business, or even the types of clients they serve, most firms run into the same operations pain points. Today, I want to focus on the top five ops problems I see in my line of work, and the solutions advisers need to keep their businesses running like a well-oiled machine.
Problem 1: I’ve Hit Capacity but Clients Keep Coming
This often happens to solopreneurs, but firm owners at any stage can run into this problem. Capacity caps happen when a solopreneur’s or small team’s client base grows more quickly than their firm does.
Sam Solopreneur, who plans to run a lifestyle practice, decided that once he hit a specific number of clients or revenue, he wanted to stop adding to his book. To get his business started, he took on project-based clients. This wasn’t a scalable solution, or his ideal client type, but it helped his business grow.
Now, three years later, Sam has filled his book with ongoing retainer clients. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it), Sam had done such an outstanding job with his past project clients, they keep circling back for more work. But the more he works with project clients while trying to balance his book of retainer clients, the more he realizes that the balance isn’t sustainable.
The Solution: Sam Solopreneur can continue to presell retainer clients and schedule out his months at a comfortable working pace, and increase rates on clients accordingly to keep a schedule that fits his unique lifestyle practice needs. Legacy clients can still schedule plan update meetings, but all new prospects who are looking for project work are referred to a trusted colleague.
Sam decides that outsourcing solutions isn’t ultimately what he’s looking for at this time, but plans to put it on his future road map. For now, he’s focusing on finding better ways to automate his project-based clients who come back for plan updates to make the process more efficient.
Problem 2: My Team Can’t Function Without Me
This is common with multi-adviser firms where the founder is training up-and-coming team members. In short—sometimes teams don’t function independently without the direct intervention or supervision of the founder. This can create inefficiencies in processes and make for a difficult team culture.
Fiona Founder has started and grown a successful firm by herself. In the past two years, she’s hired a junior adviser and an administrative assistant to help her run her business. Unfortunately, even after being with the firm for almost two years, her new associate adviser is still relying on her a lot. Plus, her administrative assistant is resistant to adopting new technology for fear that it’ll replace her job. This continues to slow down processes and growth.
In order to free up her capacity, Fiona knows that something has to change. Unfortunately, she’s not sure how to get herself out of the current situation she’s in. She’s juggling growing the business, managing her team, developing her own client relationships, and trying to help her associate adviser find the confidence to step out on her own. In the next few years, Fiona wants to 10× her business but doesn’t see how that’s going to happen given how her firm is currently being run.
The Solution: Even though Fiona feels as though her team is letting her down, the truth is that she is at the root of her problem. Because Fiona isn’t using workflows to delegate to her team, she is finding herself too deep in the operations of the firm and impacting her client’s experiences.
Her first step is to remove herself from the equation and step into her role as a leader. Rather than overseeing every step in the process, Fiona needs to take a step back and empower her associate adviser to start fully managing client relationships—from preparing plan recommendations to implementing workflows for client service.
Fiona is also working on creating workflows and spending time working through a delegation plan for both of her team members. This frees Fiona up to approve work in a timely manner, develop her staff, audit her tech stack, and continue focusing on the growth of the business. Finally, she’s able to work with her A-list clients, work “on” the business, and enjoy a reasonable schedule that allows her to enjoy life outside of work.
Problem 3: I’m the CEO—Chief of Everything Officer! Help!
Having a large firm but still feeling like you’re the “chief of everything officer” can be a sticky situation. If every managing partner of the firm has their fingers in everything you’re working on, it can feel difficult to get things done.
Eddie Executive is the managing partner of his firm. He’s mired in technology projects that seem never ending, and it feels like he’s always working with a new consultant on a project that should be completed in-house. The firm is losing clients, and it feels like no matter what he does, he can’t seem to help his team level up to the place he wants to be as a firm.
The constant hiring of consultants is preventing the firm from getting anything done and is pulling lead advisers away from client work, causing a disruption in service and client turnover. Although the firm is large, there isn’t a clear back-office delegation system, and with no HR strategy or career path development, employee turnover is also high.
The Solution: Eddie hasn’t surrounded himself with leaders in his firm. Even though his firm is 20 people strong with four managing partners, everyone is trying to manage everything all the time. There is no clear delegation plan, and responsibilities aren’t clarified across different roles and departments. In working with an operations consultant to build an accountability chart and service calendar for internal processes, Eddie realizes that hiring a fractional COO instead of partnering with many expert consultants in different niche areas of his business would solve many of his firm’s problems.
Eddie brings in a fractional COO to help take control of the business. The fractional COO assists in implementing the firm’s accountability chart to create consistency for the different roles that support the business, including lead advisers, managing partners, and back-office staff.
The fractional COO also serves as the operations leader and Eddie’s business coach. Ultimately, Eddie recognized that lack of leadership in the firm was a problem, and his lack of time was limiting his ability to take control of the firm. In this case, bringing in the right people was critical—he needed someone to act as an interim leader and fully integrate into the firm. An outside consultant wouldn’t have helped because they wouldn’t have had enough connection to the daily operations.
Problem 4: How Do I Offer High-Net-Worth Clients Exceptional Service with a Lifestyle Practice?
Sally Solopreneur has a lifestyle practice and a big family. She’s highly active in her community, serving on several nonprofit boards, and participating in local organizations as a volunteer with her kids. Her clients are all high-net-worth individuals, and she’s doing a phenomenal job of converting prospects. She’s concerned that as her firm continues to grow, her service level will decline. She also has a big heart and is interested in helping smaller clients—but doesn’t want to sacrifice her work–life balance or her revenue.
The Solution: Sally needs to create a range of better systems that allow her to reduce her manual tasks and create workflows to build consistency. She works to maximize her meeting scheduling software to send out standard information to potential clients before and after meetings, and to organize her surge meeting season.
She also looks into outsourcing her administrative tasks to an executive assistant. Prior to hiring her assistant, Sally evaluated her tech stack and set up new automation that leveled up the business and freed up her capacity. She also empowered her assistant to take on tasks that truly needed delegation. Sally already had an associate adviser on staff, and these automations also helped to free up their time to focus on client service—and effectively build a scalable model.
Finally, she creates two ideal client avatars that allow her to maintain a high revenue and profit percentage (even with her two new hires). This allows her to clearly see who she will and won’t work with going forward and empowers her to refer non-ideal clients out to wonderful colleagues in order to keep her organization lean.
Problem 5: How Can Our Multi-Adviser Firm Sort Prospects?
Multi-adviser firms tend to struggle with how to assign prospects to advisers. Advisers in these situations often feel as though they’re wasting time with screening conversations and feel frustrated when they’re spinning their wheels.
Multi-Adviser Matt has a relatively large firm. He has many advisers at the firm he leads, across several different offices. Every time a prospect comes in, they’re routed to a random adviser using a round-robin calendar scheduling link. Unfortunately, this often leads to advisers talking to non-ideal clients and prospects getting passed around to different advisers in the firm.
The Solution: Matt decides to remove the lead advisers from the screening process entirely. The introduction call is intended to help prospects understand your approach, why you’re unique, and to qualify the potential client. There are several ways to do this without including lead advisers in the process.
First and foremost, Matt sets up an automated form when prospects schedule a call. The form helps to identify key details that determine whether a prospect is a good fit, and tags prospects according to which adviser would best fit them based on their needs.
Next, he trains the firm’s operations team to hold screening calls. They work from a script and the information provided in the prospect scheduling form. Now, once screening calls are held, the operations team can determine which adviser fits them best and can help to coordinate a follow up call with a warm lead for an easy close.
Remember: You’re Not Alone
These five operations pain points are all too common among advisers. More often than not, the underlying problem is that the leadership team in a firm needs to be able to give support, freedom, and empowerment to their team. There are many different ways to go about this, but as is evidenced in the fictionalized case studies above, a few common ways to find success are:
- Hiring a professional. Be it a fractional COO or an ops consultant, sorting through workflows, processes, accountability charts, and more is easier with a pro.
- Delegating more. As counterintuitive as it may be if you’re having team problems, delegating more off of your plate as the leader and setting up a clear responsibility chart can work wonders.
- Assessing your processes. Lack of efficiency can be a true Achilles’ heel. Assessing your processes and your technology regularly can help you to keep moving forward as your firm grows.
Regardless of the pain point you’re facing in your business, know that there is a solution out there for you—and that you’re not alone in solving it. It can help to reach out to colleagues, team members, and operations consultants to get feedback and advice from people who have been in your shoes.