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If you’re an advisor that is three to seven years out from retirement, three realizations may start beginning to come into sharp focus:
- You’re the main “rain maker” or driving force of your practice’s ability to generate new clients;
- The day-to-day operation and managing of your book of clients, still requires your energy and your time; and
- Your personal presence is mandatory to keep the flywheel of your business spinning.
Discovering these realizations towards the end of your successful career can be a wake-up call that requires a strategic solution.
A peaceful retirement, including the knowledge that your business will survive long into the future without needing to be sold, can quickly evaporate if you’re still the central rain maker of your business.
Ask yourself two core questions if you’re the main or sole rain maker in your business:
- Does my business have a replicable sales system that is not dependent on me?
- Is the majority of my client base built from clients getting to know me personally over the years, based on my personal relationship selling skills?
If the answers are “no” and “yes” respectively, then you’re the center of your business, the personal lifeblood of its income – making its continuance of survival untransferable if something were to happen to you.
There is a path out of your situation, but it requires you to challenge the traditional sales thinking that has built your business.
Personal relationship-building (as a lead generation source) is not a replicable sales system. Your options for retiring or freeing up your time from your business depend on your ability to replicate, not scale yourself. Those are two different concepts.
If you shift your business’s income-generating ability to not be dependent on your existing relationships or your ability to build them, it’ll have the structural flexibility it needs to evolve and adapt without you. The question is, what does that look like?
One word: Trust
Your business needs the ability to build trust with its new potential clients, consistently and predictably, without a pre-existing relationship required. The replacement advisor or advisors you bring on will likely not have the same long history of relationships that you have. This begs the question: How can you transfer a “sales system” to your replacement advisors without them having to depend on building their own long-term relationship-based networks as a lead source?
Bringing in new clients without a deep network of long-term relationships may sound foreign to you. It’s an understandably difficult concept to grasp when everything you’ve been taught about selling as an advisor is about building relationships first, onboarding second.
But consider this: doctors do it every day.
Doctors don’t build relationships with their patients and they don’t “do coffee,” because they have a process and system in place that isn’t built based on a foundation of personal relationship building. They create instant trust – not slow-to-build trust – in a completely different way than advisors have been taught.
If you’re intrigued to learn more about how to replicate yourself through a repeatable sales process, and you’re open to a different way of thinking about how to free up your precious time, order your complimentary book and consultation below.
Ari Galper is the world’s number one authority on trust-based selling and is the most sought-after high-net worth/lead generation expert for financial advisors. His newest book, Trust In A Split Second has become an instant best-seller among financial advisors worldwide – you can get a Free copy of Ari’s book here and, when you click the “YES” button in the order form, you’ll also receive a complimentary “plug up the holes” lead generation consultation. Ari has been featured in CEO Magazine, Forbes, INC Magazine and the Financial Review. He is considered a contrarian in the financial services industry and in his book, everything you learned about selling will be turned upside down. No more chasing, no pressure, no closing.
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Advisor Perspectives welcomes guest contributions. The views presented here do not necessarily represent those of Advisor Perspectives.
