As the financial services industry becomes more crowded, it can be challenging to differentiate and attract new clients.
To overcome these challenges, financial advisors must focus on building strong client relationships built on trust and transparency. They also need to differentiate themselves and stand out from the crowd to achieve organic growth.
Konvergent Wealth Partner's CEO Homer Smith weighed in on another approach to attain organic growth in wealth management. Click on the video below to watch the full interview.
Transcript:
In the RA world that I live in, one of the biggest challenges for organic growth is the fact that we're also business owners. We're having to manage staff, run the business itself, deal with client service, everything going on and then we have to figure out how do we keep adding new clients. Many of us just get caught up in the day-to-day running of the firm and that just takes so much time away from business development. In talking to a lot of other founders and RIAs, that's the biggest challenge that I see out there.
What I've seen is CPAs, from an RIA perspective, they're kind of the holy grail; if you can find a great partnership with the CPA, you help bring value to their top clients. There's a huge opportunity for collaboration and [developing] new clients. I think most advisors approach it incorrectly. They approach it as a, 'Hey, let's work together so that we can refer business back and forth.'
What I have found is most successful is if we really approach it from truly trying to help those CPAs bring more value to their top clients – regardless of whether it results in a wealth management opportunity for us – they're way more open to really opening up their book and identifying opportunities that ultimately is going to lead the path to introductions. But it truly is about helping them first and helping their clients by bringing more value.
In order to get this started, you've got to find CPAs that want to be partners with you in growth. When I first approached a CPA, the questions I asked were, 'What's your goal for your business? Are you looking to grow? Are you looking to work with fewer and better clients?' And if they're just overwhelmed themselves – they're just barely hanging on and not interested in growth – the likelihood of you being able to really develop a partnership that's going to be collaborative is going to be difficult.
So for me, ask questions. What are they trying to accomplish? What's their ideal client? How are you bringing those clients in yourself? This is to identify whether they are really interested in growth because those are going to be the only partners that are really going to want to grow alongside you.