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Finding the Right Place for Your Professional Future: Four Key Considerations

Finding the Right Place for Your Professional Future: Four Key Considerations

As a financial advisor, whether you’re an employee or independent, the revenue you generate is your revenue. A critical question for your success is how your revenue stream is reinvested. For example, if you generate an annual gross revenue of $1 million as an employee, the firm determines how to allocate the majority of your revenue. Yes, you made $400,000-$450,000 in personal compensation—congratulations. The real question is where the remaining $600,000 is going and is it being reinvested in ways to help you service your clients and grow your practice? Many firms do a great job of re-allocating revenue into supporting advisors in their efforts to continually grow their business. However, some employee advisors are paying more in expenses but are operating with 50% less sales support today than what was provided in the past. Likewise, if you are an independent advisor controlling the majority of the revenue you generate, are you reinvesting in appropriate technology, compliance and customer support? To determine if you are in the best place for your professional success, it’s important to take the time to ask yourself some of the probing questions you would probably encourage your clients to ask if they were in your position. Is your business growing? It’s a simple question. If it is growing, are you growing steadily and efficiently? Is your current broker-dealer affiliation fostering this growth and translating your increased revenue into additional support? Take the time to analyze the financials, especially payouts, expenses and their services and capabilities. A key indicator when evaluating an opportunity with a different affiliation is whether it will help grow business and maximize margins. If so, it may be time to consider a change. Does the math make sense? Consider the following: • If you grow only to find the more revenue you gross, the less you actually net. • If your increased revenue goes toward corporate overhead rather than providing more

support to enable more time for prospecting. • If you don’t have the staff and systems in place to service existing clients. • If you only have the bandwidth to service existing clients, but not the time to prospect for

new clients. • If bringing on new clients would result in a decline in service standards due to lack of

support.

Finding the Right Place for Your Professional Future: Four Key Considerations

What are my options? After considering a change, it’s time to consider some probing questions to better understand your options. Should you go independent? If you want more control over deciding how and where to allocate your revenue, going independent may be the growth solution you are looking for. Finding a broker-dealer supporting your unique needs and client base will be your next step. Your broker-dealer due diligence should include analyzing which firms offer the appropriate technology, compliance, marketing support and responsive customer service to help you leverage your business. Should you change broker-dealers? If you’re an independent advisor, but are considering switching broker-dealers, where are the gaps in service? Are you running your business as efficiently as you could? Determine which factors are preventing you from growing steadily or preventing you from properly helping your clients. Four Key Considerations Whether you are thinking of going independent, changing broker-dealers or just want to confirm your current business platform is right for you, there are four critical areas to analyze. • Technology – Does your firm provide excellence in technology and embrace a philosophy

of continual innovation?

From email to databases to operations, your technology should be seamless and easy to use. A firm should offer an integrated technology platform that is highly efficient and responsive to your needs. Time-consuming processes—such as account opening and management, document imaging, transaction execution and account rebalancing— should be automated to improve efficiency and accuracy so you can focus on growing.

• Compliance – Does your current affiliation provide flexible and responsive compliance?

In this ever-evolving regulatory environment, keeping on top of the many diverse and complex compliance requirements is a challenge. Your firm should be able to provide an understanding of various regulations and how to work within them to achieve your goals—both for your clients and for your practice. Integrating compliance functionality into your practice and enabling many compliance procedures to be fully automated, allows you to focus on servicing current clients and prospecting for new, rather than on logistics.

Finding the Right Place for Your Professional Future: Four Key Considerations

• Marketing Support – Do you receive quality marketing and branding to help you build fruitful relationships and stand out in a busy marketplace? Does it help you enhance and deepen your brand and work to define your difference?

Your marketing should help grow your business with good prospecting practices and your firm should be able to provide a full range of expert communications. From customizable, logo-ready brochures to letters and seminar invitations along with other marketing materials, you should have the tools at your fingertips to make your practice stand out. In addition, does your firm help with strategic alliances to build your business and gain access to new clients with a developed networking alliance of associated professionals?

• Responsive Customer Service – Do you have a dedicated, committed customer service

team behind your practice?

It is vital to your success to have enough staff in place to immediately answer any questions and provide the back-office service and support you need. From assistance with technology to answering questions on products, an accessible, knowledgeable customer service team should make every process simple so you can focus your time and energy on clients.

Compiling this amount of broker-dealer due diligence can be daunting. But, breaking your search down to these four core areas provides a blueprint for evaluation. As a registered financial advisor, any of the associations you belong to will be able to point you to needed resources. Blogs, industry publications and conferences also offer a wealth of information. You may also want to check out The Advisor Center — the industry’s largest centralized, online community where you can explore and compare opportunities efficiently and at no cost, while remaining completely anonymous. From payouts and expenses to management and staff support, The Advisor Center provides in-depth data. If you have additional questions for a particular company, an anonymous direct messaging system facilitates direct engagement. Knowing your real cost of doing business may indicate it’s time to make a change or it may reassure you are right where you need to be. Either way, you are better off having the answers and the numbers in hand.

About The Advisor Center The Advisor Center is a revolutionary, dynamic online recruiting site empowering advisors to research objectively their career options and make targeted connections while maintaining their anonymity. The Advisor Center also provides firms with a powerful direct marketing portal and a roster of potential recruits with validated credentials. Founded by Tom Daley, a veteran financial services recruiter, The Advisor Center removes a number of obstacles from the recruiting arena to provide greater access, more confidentiality and accurate due diligence. For more information, please visit www.theadvisorcenter.com.