Strategy Highlights
Week 8
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Strategy 2: Implement Wealth Management
The four major business models
There are four major business models in use by financial professionals today.
- Investment advisor. If the foundation and focus of your practice today is delivering investment management expertise, you are classified as an investment advisor.
- Financial advisor. If you are an investment advisor who has incorporated limited planning services into your practice, you are a financial advisor.
- Wealth manager. Wealth managers take a holistic financial approach to their affluent clients. This requires a comprehensive client discovery process—one you will adopt during this program.
- Elite wealth managers. These financial professionals mirror wealth managers when it comes to practice orientation and client discovery process. However, they are incrementally superior when it comes to their deliverables. Whereas wealth managers can deliver basic advanced planning capabilities, elite wealth managers can provide complete advanced planning.
In today’s hypercompetitive environment, if you’re not moving forward, you’re probably moving backward. The good news is that no matter where you are now, you already have the foundation in place for moving to the elite level. And The Elite Wealth Manager will support you at every step.
The wealth management formula
To truly differentiate yourself, you must be able to clearly articulate the unique wealth management experience you deliver to your clients. You should be able to succinctly describe your process so that they instantly understand the value they are receiving from you.
To do so, use this simple formula:
Wealth management =
investment consulting + advanced planning + relationship management
The easy shorthand for the formula is this:
WM = IC + AP + RM
Investment consulting addresses the top concern of affluent clients: preserving their wealth.
It is the primary offering of most financial advisors.
Advanced planning addresses the four primary financial concerns beyond investment consulting: wealth enhancement, wealth transfer, wealth protection and charitable giving.
Relationship management has two parts. First, it means building and fostering client relationships over time through a consultative process. Second, it involves managing other professional advisors—both the ones in your network and your clients’ other advisors—in order to address advanced planning concerns.
Wealth management enables you to do something that few other advisors can do: You will become your clients’ personal chief financial officer. In this capacity, you will help them make informed decisions to maximize the probability of achieving all that is important to them. We know of no value promise that is more compelling.