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Want to learn my “recipe” for success as a professional advisor? After all, I’ve been selling one product – my professional advice –since 1997. That’s 23 years’ worth of advisory business where the actual growth is up to my clients, not me!
What most advisors want – and a lot of what’s being marketed – looks a lot like a recipe for baking – just follow the guru’s steps and process precisely, and you’ll be successful. If you fail, it’s because you didn’t follow the recipe closely enough.
There is a recipe for advisory success, but it looks more like one for chili than for a cake.
In other words, advising is more cooking than baking.
How so? Let’s compare baking and cooking.
Baking a cake:
- There are very few “right answers” – the range outcomes is super-finite.
- There are a lot more ways to fail than there are to succeed.
- Ingredients are prescribed in specific amounts. You can’t decide, “I like eggs, so I’m going to add a few more. Plus, I’ll add some anchovies.”
- There are a lot of precise ingredients, with little overlap jn their functionality. For example, even though baking soda and baking powder both make things rise, baking soda needs acidic ingredients (like lemon juice) whereas baking powder contains its own acid. (Confession: I had to look that up on Wikipedia.)
- Sequence is essential. For proof, google “advanced baking techniques” and see how many of the results contain words like “tricky at first” and “with practice, you’ll…”
- Conditions have to be just right. If the recipe says “350 degrees,” they mean it!
- Messing with the recipe will most likely result in failure unless you have gone to baking school and/or spent countless hours trial-and-erroring things.
Cooking chili:
- There are many right answers.
- There are just as many, if not more, ways to succeed as there are to fail.
- Ingredients are more suggestive than prescriptive. How much? You get to decide more of that.
- Which ingredients? There’s a lot of overlap, which creates a lot more cook’s choice. Anchovies? Go for it. (I know one cook whose “secret ingredient” is Oreo cookies.)
- Sequence is flexible. Many of the things you do to chili can be done throughout the cooking process. Heck, you can add ingredients on the way from the bowl to your mouth.
- Conditions don’t have to be ideal. I have tasted chili cooked on an engine block in a stadium parking lot, and it was delicious.
- Messing with the recipe is just messing with the recipe. Anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of cooking can make chili, and most people do an okay job, while some are great.
Are you cooking or baking?
To tell whether the effort you’re engaged in looks more like cooking than baking, add the following conditions:
- Increase the amount of one core ingredient by 10%.
- Switch the order of two of the steps.
- Increase or decrease the recommended cooking/process time by 10%.
If you can still get a good result after applying these conditions, you’re cooking, and you can improvise a little. If not, you’re baking – follow the original recipe!
Building your practice is like cooking chili
Yes, there is a “recipe” for success as a consultant who gets paid on your advice. But it’s not the baking recipe most advisors think they want. It’s also not the sort of recipe you’re getting when you buy a “five-step lead conversion system” or “turnkey marketing” program – that’s someone trying to replicate their cake on your dime, not helping you cook up a thriving practice.
Building your advisory business is a lot more like cooking than baking. But am I right?
Here’s how you can tell: Look around at the successful advisors who you want to emulate, and ask yourself these questions:
- How many different types of personalities are represented?
- How many different sets of conditions led to success?
- What is the diversity of client demographics?
- How many different variations of success are there?
- How many advisors have failed in a similar set of conditions?
If the answer to these questions is “a lot,” it shows that succeeding as an advisor is like cooking chili. There are a ton of different ways you can do it, no way works all the time, and whether it works for you depends on you and your individual style.
How do build your own recipe for success
Ground yourself in general principles
Acquire general knowledge of all the areas where you need to succeed as a practice-builder. That includes at least an understanding of project management, customer service, marketing, and sales, in addition to your core technical knowledge.
Sample world-class chili
Who can you learn from who has been there? Whose lessons are available to you? I tell my new business accelerator participants that I teach nothing, I only channel the best practices of successful advisors.
Use fresh ingredients – not processed!
Don’t rely on someone else’s system, especially when it comes to client outreach and converting prospects.
Taste-test your own work
Look through the client’s lens at your communication, meetings and outreach. If you were the client, how much value would you see?
Get advice and input
Even better than taste-testing your own work is having others sample it. For advisors, sharing your chili with other advisors and getting feedback is invaluable. That’s why I don’t coach individual advisors – small groups work better.
Test and get market feedback
Two questions advisors don’t ask often enough, if at all: “How am I doing?” and, “How much value did you get?” Client answers help you make the chili better, faster.
Experiment and iterate
You’re never done perfecting your chili. You can always add a little more of this or that, or tweak one of your ingredients. That what makes cooks – and advisors – great.
Cook your own chili!
While there is no such thing as the perfect way to success, there are a bunch of great ways to become successful. You have to find out what works for you. Cook your own chili. Stir often. Add an Oreo. Good luck!
Dan Smaida curates the AdvisoryEDGE Forum and coaches growing advisors on practice-building and consultative selling. Email Dan at [email protected]
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Advisor Perspectives welcomes guest contributions. The views presented here do not necessarily represent those of Advisor Perspectives.
