Sara Grillo is a columnist for Rethinking65. Read more of her articles here.
Sara Grillo
If you’re giving away your financial planning for free, you are missing the opportunity to show your highest value to the client, differentiate yourself, and increase your ability to gain referral business.
I’m about to explain why.
But first, a word about the shift that is happening in our industry.
There has been an emergence of more transparent business models in our industry: Flat fee, advice only, and hourly practices are growing at breakneck speed. If you want to learn more about how to modernize your practice so it keeps up with what clients are demanding, join the Transparent Advisor Movement.
Are you worried about your clients using AI bots to create their own financial plans for free, instead of paying your 1% wealth management fee?
You should be.
Look at what is happening out there. Gen X and Gen Z, skeptical of all things Wall Street, are voting with their dollar signs. For example:
There is more aversion to doing business with commission-based brokers than ever before.
It’s harder to get 1% to have you manage someone’s money and provide full-service planning.
At the behest of online influencers, people are following social media personalities for guidance on their personal finances, and aren’t willing to pay you for it.
Clients are taking on more responsibility, assisted by technology, and asking less of their advisors than ever before.
“But Sara, I’m not interested in those broke people who don’t see the value in a professional like me,” you say
Au contraire, mon frere!
Ever since I starting publishing blogs about the Transparency Movement, I have heard from a ton of high-net-worth individuals looking to do business with flat fee, hourly, and advice only planners. Some of them are multi-millionaires with $5 million or more net worth — highly-qualified by most of your standards. I can remember one case where the flat-fee advisor’s fee was $30,000 less a year than what the client was paying his wirehouse broker.
So, yes, you are competing with emerging transparent business models and with technology.
Don’t Compete; Cooperate with Change
The data-gathering and intake process is typically rushed during financial planning. The focus is put on the action items that result from a brief data upload.
What if you focused on creating a truly “comprehensive” (because all of your websites say that) planning process?
What if it were more about the process instead of the output? Most plans sit there gathering dust anyway.
What if you use AI for the mechanics of the plan and focuses instead on bonding the client to you by carrying out a data gathering/intake process that was over-the-top full of conversations about their family, their dreams, their life? Conversations that shape their vision, and that they’ll remember having with you.
What if you maximized that part, so that you help them create a vision for the future that goes beyond executing some tasks in an eMoney report?
That is how you beat AI and compete in the modern world – because humanity, creativity, empathy and inspiration can’t be created by bots. These qualities only come from humans.
Increase the humanity of your financial planning process by learning from the people who are doing it now. The Transparent Advisor Movement is one place to start.
Sara Grillo, CFA, is a marketing consultant for financial advisors and the founder of The Transparent Advisor Movement, which has monthly meetups and an annual in-person event in Kansas City, Mo. She invites you to check out her services page if you want help with your sales process, want to get started on social media or need some copy for your website.
