The Supernova Multiplier

7 Strategies for Financial Advisors to Grow Their Practices

Robert D. Knapp

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781119539803
• eBook ISBN: 9781119539773
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Wealth Management
• Index: Business

Take your Supernova practice to even greater heights of performance and profitability

The Supernova Multiplier provides expert guidance to the revolutionary wealth management model that has transformed the lives and businesses of financial professionals worldwide. The innovative Supernova method enables financial advisors to rapidly grow their business, efficiently manage time, and maximize client satisfaction. The Five Stars of the Supernova model—Segmentation, Organization, Planning, Acquisition, and Leadership—provide financial advisors with the tools and knowledge to propel their practices to new heights of performance.

The acknowledged pioneer of the Supernova model, author Rob Knapp offers in-depth examination of every aspect of the Supernova model, from client experience to leadership development. This invaluable resource addresses significant issues facing disciples of the model, including areas of chronic underperformance, and delivers proven solutions that financial advisors can integrate into their practices. Detailed coverage of core elements, such as the Rule of Reciprocity, Gap Analysis and the Five Star Model, promotes critical analysis of advisor performance and builds the foundation for precise alignment to the essential Supernova principles.

This indispensable book empowers current and prospective Supernova practitioners to:

• Build and optimize an efficient and profitable Supernova advisory practice
• Structure your practice around high-value activities that increase revenue and grow your business
• Maintain a predictable schedule of meaningful client contact
• Develop and implement proactive planning strategies with your team and client base.

The Supernova model is not complex, but requires sustained and disciplined effort to achieve best results. The Supernova Multiplier: 7 Strategies for Financial Advisors to Grow Their Practices is the key to unlocking remarkable results and sustained achievement in advisory practices across the financial management industry that will differentiate you and your practice from the ordinary into the extraordinary.

CHAPTER 1
Hitting the Wall: The Why Behind The Supernova Multiplier

Supernova coaching was initially delivered in a 12-week, or 90-day course. Essentially, the program consisted of three months of weekly calls, with plenty of content to consume and learn in the days between each call. It broke down like this: four weeks of segmentation, four weeks of organization, four weeks of acquisition. The teams we coached were almost uniformly ready to be coached. They had any number of problems—chaotic offices, angry clients, plateaued production, on and on—but they were willing to show up and willing to change. And for the first two coaching phases, they usually did.

Financial Advisor teams with books that were bloated with accounts that had been haphazardly accumulated or were not governed by a minimum number of assets or a maximum number of households took to Supernova segmentation like a drowning man grabbing a lifeline. Supernova was, in many ways, saving their professional lives. Teams that operated like an emergency room on a full-moon Saturday night knew they needed a bullet-proof organizational system, and Supernova took them through every step. Some teams were so ready they grasped the logic behind the program and ran ahead excitedly. Nearly every team we coached embraced Supernova's segmentation and organization practices regardless of what ailed them. However, when it came to setting the stage for acquisition the results from many teams were disappointing.

Team after team, year after year, went into acquisition with a lot of momentum and a lot of confidence. Team after team, year after year, essentially ignored the Supernova suite of acquisition tools, or failed to sustain an early commitment that actually delivered results.

The problem was sustainable growth. We were able to get a big lift by giving better service and getting organized. Other FAs were able to double their business. But, it wasn't sustainable.

There were often teams that already spent a good portion of their day in acquisition growing faster. It was the teams that hadn't been growing. Once they got their initial growth spurt from Supernova, they typically stalled out. They were delighted by Supernova, but we weren't. Try as we might, the formula for growth was not being adopted. We could see that these teams needed us to reinforce the process and keep them on the right track but they didn't seem to realize they had fallen off the wagon. Supernova moved on to new teams that needed us and we were sadly forced to leave those other teams behind.

Maybe a longer training program is the answer?

We went from three months of coaching to a one-year program. Sure, a longer program of three months of weekly coaching followed by once-a-month follow-up accountability sessions helped the teams focus more on growth. Still, the problem of keeping on track after coaching persisted.

The breakthrough came when we realized that we had the emphasis on the wrong syllable.

Wait, what?

It was baffling. It was maddening. It was throwing a dark shadow on of the extraordinary legacy of Supernova. If we couldn't consistently and repeatedly help our clients grow, maybe the legacy wasn't actually that extraordinary! Sobering stuff. I was truly baffled by the response I was getting. Until an extraordinary team engaged us. What this team presented to us awakened something in me I had been carrying for decades but had just stopped seeing in my day-to-day life. An extraordinary team proved something to me that I already believed in and had somehow forgotten the spirit living inside it.

It's all about giving.

Giving to give—not merely giving to get—is the key that unlocks everything. Personal satisfaction, professional accomplishment, income growth and passion; I'm going to tell you stories of teams that were hitting the ceiling. Now with Supernova coaching, they have broken through their barriers and are streaking higher in their production, enjoying elevated morale, increased client satisfaction levels, and improved quality of life. I'm going to walk you through what it takes to move your practice forward with Supernova while never letting go of this powerful human truth: to give is to experience joy.

It's also important to note that I'm not a social worker and neither are you. I'm not going to preach commercial abstinence or personal redemption. I'm simply going to show you what I've rediscovered about what I already knew and show you how to awaken it in your career—and your life.

These are big promises from a little book. But read on, and hang on, because everything could be changing soon, and I want you to enjoy the ride. I sure have.

Indulge me as I rewind the clock. It was 1994 and our team was winning. I was District Director for Merrill Lynch and my FA teams were embarrassing the other districts. Year after year, we brought back the top awards for gathering assets. The Masters, as it was called, was the program Merrill Lynch had in place to drive our FAs and their teams to increased production by increasing managed assets. I absolutely refused to lose. When I say I was embarrassing the other districts, I mean it literally. I heard some version of “So, what, you take pleasure in making us look bad?” many times. With a quiet smile I thought, “No, that's your issue.” My issue is winning. This period of my management career is when I learned a lot about how to motivate and how to reward. I was laser focused on winning, and winning meant bringing in more new money than any other district. This is not to paint a picture of me as a work-obsessed take-no-prisoners boss. I was living a full life with a beautiful wife and two special children. You may see me as a singularly focused accomplishment machine. That might be closer to the truth. And then I got dinged.

“Rob, your production numbers are impressive as always, but your service scores stink. You're last in the entire organization.”

OK, that wasn't a ding; it was a gut punch, an enormous ego hit. And from that single sentence Supernova was born.

Customers Are Always Right

What hurt even more than being at the bottom of the list was knowing we deserved it. Clients were marking us down on surveys—or leaving Merrill altogether—because we were falling down on the basic aspect of good customer service: responsiveness. In survey after survey, they told us they didn't like how we handled their phone calls and their requests. We were so busy hunting new assets that we were ignoring our existing clients and their concerns. Without attention, when they shifted from complaining to leaving, we really didn't have an answer. They were getting lousy service but it was the best service we could offer them, not because we were inherently deficient in servicing our clients but because we had too many clients to begin with.

We were asset-gathering champs and gathering meant grabbing and holding everything and everyone. If only success was measured in the number of clients, we would have been succeeding. It wasn't. Client service involved delivering what we promised to everyone in our books; we were miserable failures. We had deluded ourselves into denying one of the eternal truths in business: 80% of our business comes from 20% of our clients. The 80/20 Rule, and indeed it is a rule, like gravity is a law. But we just kept shoving new money through the door with no real thought to how we were going to service the people attached to it. More was better until it wasn't. We were winners in raw numbers but were losing the battle with time. Time for the attention our clients believed they would get from us and certainly deserved.

Our FAs and our Client Associates (CAs) were stretched to their very limits by the never-ending torrent of obligations—everything became an emergency; real emergencies never elevated above the cacophony of the everyday. A client calling with a time-sensitive question or an immediate problem got tossed onto the big stack of urgent calls to return. When I said above we were miserable failures, I mean on every level. We were experiencing misery—in client contact with delayed responses, in our team's morale because they were tossing water overboard with Dixie cups as the boat sank. There wasn't enough time in a day to handle the workload. Instead of streamlined and efficient, there were log-jams and so much backup it was raining stress. Unfortunately, the burdens followed some home.

An FA lost her father to cancer, and blamed herself one minute and Merrill the next, all because she was too overwhelmed with work to help him in his final few months, even though they lived just minutes apart. She left the firm in tears of shame with teeth clenched in rage. Marriages were failing and health issues were escalating, but hey, we won The Masters again. And still the clients fired us, or fired off feedback filled with disappointment and indignation.

Our growing service failures coincided with the rise of many independent and boutique advisory firms. These firms offered a more holistic level of service, which included a whole lot more than, say, impressive returns on a large cap fund could overcome. Our investment model couldn't keep clients, and discounts weren't buying their loyalty for long, if at all. If we were committed to getting back on top—and you better believe I was—then we had to improve. We had to deliver not just better service, but exceptional service. Next question: How do you deliver exceptional service?

Planning and Contact

Exceptional service emanated from creating a financial plan and then following through on implementing it. This was an under-appreciated and underused step in client service. We sure weren't doing it with any consistency, and I don't think anyone at Merrill was. Who was? The independents were. They sold planning before they sold returns, and in doing so they were building a wall around their clients. A wall that made their clients feel secure and kept us on the outside. It wasn't just good business for the advisors, it was a good practice for their clients.

A client's defined financial plan determined the decisions about where to invest their money and their time. So, what was the solution to poor service—hiring an army of CFPs (Certified Financial Planners)? Even if we did (and we didn't) there was no model for turning a plan into a sequence of purposeful actions. We were losing clients because we didn't offer them a plan, but that wasn't the only reason clients were defecting.

As you read above, clients were not happy with how we handled their calls, and once again they were right to be angry. A question or a problem just went into the return-call vacuum and took too long to be addressed. Our FA/CA and client contact was inconsistent or worse. Often the calls were intrusive. Yes, we had migrated most of our clients to a fee model, but that didn't stop us from calling when we had some...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• CHAPTER 1: Hitting the Wall
• CHAPTER 2: Organize and Operate
• CHAPTER 3: Giving More and Keeping Score
• CHAPTER 4: 90 Days 90 Prospects
• CHAPTER 5: Using Centers of Influence to Grow Your Practice
• CHAPTER 6: Niches
• CHAPTER 7: Mastermind Groups
• CHAPTER 8: Niche Mastermind Groups—A Radical Idea
• CHAPTER 9: Giving to Give
• CHAPTER 10: Leveraging Social Media
• CHAPTER 11: Leveraging Debt to Your Client's Advantage
• CHAPTER 12: The Art of Asking for and Getting Introductions
• CHAPTER 13: The Branch Manager's Role as a Supernova Multiplier
• Enthusiastically Endorsed Resources
• Index
• End User License Agreement