As a financial advisor, you may have helped your clients create and preserve wealth but have you ever wondered how your own advisory business is shaping up.
A white paper published by Kestra Financial titled ‘Five Ways To Grow Your Business Beyond Your Book’ show ways to maximize the value of your business. When evaluating the health of your practice, here are three key areas that will help you to jump-start your growth plan:
Strategy
Having a solid strategic vision is important for the firm. A sound strategy starts with a clear purpose that should help define the organisational mission. Creating smart goals that are assigned, tracked, and measured on a consistent basis should form the strategy.
To level up your game, the white paper mentions that is important to practice what you preach. You should have a strong understanding of your current financial situation. Then, define where you want to go, and create a plan that increases the chances you will get there.
Warangal-based Shiva Prasad Konduru says that he has a target to reach Rs.100 crore AUM by 2020 and create a SIP book of Rs.1.5 crore. His current AUM stands Rs.36 crore and his SIP book is Rs. 46 lakh.
“In order to reach my goals, I travel a lot to meet new potential clients. These prospects are mostly referrals from my existing clients. I try to meet young people wherever I can - in the gym and while travelling by train, youngsters come up to me with their financial problems and I welcome these opportunities,” says Shiva.
SEBI-registered investment advisor, Amit Kukreja of amitkukreja.com also plans to reach Rs.100 crore AUA by the end of 2019. “I focus on couples. I intend to add 100 couples over the course of time. In order to do that, I am planning to hire a few relationship mangers in the next six months who will help me in my job. These relationship managers will help me acquire clients as well as undertake financial planning,” says Amit.
A few advisors are specially keen in increasing their SIP book. Agra-based Shifali Satsangee, Funds Ved'aa says that she plans to increase her SIP book value by conducting investor awareness programs.
Marketing
The white paper states that it is important for financial advisory firms to stand out. In order to do that, you have to understand what truly makes you unique and then market it relentlessly. The first step in discovering what makes you stand apart is having a clearly defined ‘ideal client‘ profile. This allows you to focus your resources on that niche, gain more referrals, and better position yourself as a specialist. Next, it is important to spend more time talking about why you do what you do than how and what you do.
In the current scenario, most advisors say that media presence increases their credibility. Amit Kukreja says that media presence helps in increasing one’s visibility. “In order to increase my visibility, I try to appear on TV shows and radio programs. I also write at least one article per month for business dailies,” says Amit.
On the other hand, Shiva Prasad is planning to open branches in at least five districts across Telangana.
Operational efficiency
Use of technology can help save time, increase revenue and improve efficiency in your business. This allows you to expand your client service model and maximise the value of your business. When searching for the best technological solution, create a plan with achievable goals to help you pinpoint the best solutions to support your business growth.
Mumbai-based Vinod Jain of Jain Investments says that his firm takes the help of an IT company to give investors a better experience. “Some of the processes are automated and hence help to save time. These processes also provide investors a better experience, as they do not have to spend time filling forms. The company takes care that the processes are updated on a regular basis,” says Vinod.
Shifali says that she wants to scale her business through various processes such as adopting online methods. “Adopting online methods does help to on-board many clients quickly. However, it is important to understand what clients want. In a small city like Agra, people are comfortable interacting than taking the online route,” says Shifali.
