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(June 16, 2005) Elite advisors rise to the top of their industry by focusing on managing their client relationships and by delegating as much as possible to others, according to one of the top professional coaches for advisors.
“One of the biggest secrets to success is focus,” said John J. Bowen, founder and CEO of CEG Worldwide. “The challenge we have in the financial services industry is that there’s opportunity everywhere — most of us have never met an opportunity we didn’t like. That lack of focus can get us into trouble.”
Bowen, who was one of the top financial advisors in North America before selling his practice to Assante, was speaking earlier this week at AdvisorLive’s Taking Your Practice to the Next Level: Maximize Your Bottom Line with John J. Bowen in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario.
Bowen’s firm studied a group of 1,200 advisors who net more than $1 million a year to discover the best practices of these top performers.
“We’ve done detailed studies in Australia, the U.K., Canada and the U.S. and the same business model is winning in all four countries by a huge margin,” Bowen says. “One of the things we see time and time again with the most successful advisors is they’ve narrowed their opportunity tremendously. They’re right in the middle of their niche.”
Bowen says the really high-end advisor is not any more technically skilled, but that they excel at managing their relationship with the affluent client. They understand that not all affluent clients are the same — that there are distinct personality groups within their market.
He says the key steps in taking a practice to the next level are:
“Everyone in the room has more than enough clients,” Bowen said. “What don’t we have? In most cases we don’t have the right clients for the practice we want to have.”
Bowen points out that focusing on the higher end of the book allows the advisor to give these more profitable clients the level of service they want. The Millionaire Advisor, a 2003 study by Russ Alan Prince and Brett Van Bortel, found that 87% of affluent clients who fired their advisor cited the quality of service as the reason.
In fact, the same study found only 26.7% thought their service level was excellent. Bowen interprets this as meaning 73.3% are just waiting for a reason to leave their advisor.
While most advisors know they should segment their book to winnow out their less profitable clients, many remain reluctant to do so. For some, it’s the sense they are abandoning the clients that got them where they are today. For most, there is resistance to cut any revenue, no matter how small.
Filed by Steven Lamb, Advisor.ca, steven.lamb@advisor.rogers.com
(06/16/05)
|
(June 16, 2005) Elite advisors rise to the top of their industry by focusing on managing their client relationships and by delegating as much as possible to others, according to one of the top professional coaches for advisors.
“One of the biggest secrets to success is focus,” said John J. Bowen, founder and CEO of CEG Worldwide. “The challenge we have in the financial services industry is that there’s opportunity everywhere — most of us have never met an opportunity we didn’t like. That lack of focus can get us into trouble.”
Bowen, who was one of the top financial advisors in North America before selling his practice to Assante, was speaking earlier this week at AdvisorLive’s Taking Your Practice to the Next Level: Maximize Your Bottom Line with John J. Bowen in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario.
Bowen’s firm studied a group of 1,200 advisors who net more than $1 million a year to discover the best practices of these top performers.
“We’ve done detailed studies in Australia, the U.K., Canada and the U.S. and the same business model is winning in all four countries by a huge margin,” Bowen says. “One of the things we see time and time again with the most successful advisors is they’ve narrowed their opportunity tremendously. They’re right in the middle of their niche.”
Bowen says the really high-end advisor is not any more technically skilled, but that they excel at managing their relationship with the affluent client. They understand that not all affluent clients are the same — that there are distinct personality groups within their market.
He says the key steps in taking a practice to the next level are:
“Everyone in the room has more than enough clients,” Bowen said. “What don’t we have? In most cases we don’t have the right clients for the practice we want to have.”
Bowen points out that focusing on the higher end of the book allows the advisor to give these more profitable clients the level of service they want. The Millionaire Advisor, a 2003 study by Russ Alan Prince and Brett Van Bortel, found that 87% of affluent clients who fired their advisor cited the quality of service as the reason.
In fact, the same study found only 26.7% thought their service level was excellent. Bowen interprets this as meaning 73.3% are just waiting for a reason to leave their advisor.
While most advisors know they should segment their book to winnow out their less profitable clients, many remain reluctant to do so. For some, it’s the sense they are abandoning the clients that got them where they are today. For most, there is resistance to cut any revenue, no matter how small.
Filed by Steven Lamb, Advisor.ca, steven.lamb@advisor.rogers.com
(06/16/05)
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