I am willing to bet that as a financial services professional, you show up every day and work hard for your clients. You make phone calls, have in-person meetings, and do quarterly and annual reviews. You crunch numbers when required; you get in your car or on the plane when you need to be somewhere important for your clients; and you do your homework, reading the financial papers, the tax code, and new industry regulations. You tell your team, if you have one, what to do and how to operate to ensure success for the client and the firm. Youâre working hard and doing everything right. Or are you?
That is the question. As much as work and life are busy, and as easy as it would be to give a quick nod of a yes, if you are really and truly honest with yourself as a financial services professional, the answer has to be âmaybe,â because you canât really know how you are doing until you take the time to assess.
Have you asked yourself lately how you are doing with your financial services business? Not just in terms of top-line and bottom-line numbers, but in terms of everything that leads to a truly successful career, business, and client community? Here are some questions to consider as you contemplate how successful you really are today.
- Do you have a clear understanding of your firmâs unique value, and have you documented that value for yourself and your clients, so that the business not only thrives but also can be replicated, scaled, and sold if desired?
- Are you providing your clients with the comprehensive wealth management services they deserve, or do you just focus on those products and services that you can and care to offer? If you donât offer them, are you willing and able to connect your clients to other respected professionals?
- Have you learned to truly partner with your clients, or are you stuck in the old model of just selling to your clients or telling them what they should do, rather than inviting them to co-create in the process?
- Do you have a team of capable folks who work well together and whom your clients trust, rely on, and value?
- How clear are you about how you charge for your services and the true value that the client finds in what you provide?
- Are you and every member of your team clear about what differentiates you from other financial advisors and the many choices your clients have today?
- How are you working to be relevant in the lives of the heirs of your clientsâ wealth?
- Do you have the ability to step away from your business to take an extended vacation or a break or, if need be, to deal with a personal or family illness?
- Do you have the desired amount of workâlife balance on a day-to-day basis, allowing you to eat right, exercise, spend time with family and friends, and enjoy life however you like to do best?
- Do you have a rock-solid succession plan in place for how your business will continue after you choose to move on to something new or to retire? When put to the test, will that succession plan really work?
These are just some of the questions to explore if you are ready to assess how successful your financial services practice is todayâquestions that will be explored directly and implicitly in this book.
In the process of asking these questions, you may discover that you are right on track with your business and find greater peace of mind, motivation, and energy in that. Or you may discover itâs time for a major reframe. Alternately, you may discover that you simply want to recalibrate your business and your approach to bring greater satisfaction to the work that you do and to your clientâs satisfaction in the support you provide them.
Whether you simply want to get your numbers up, you have some doubts about where your business is going right now, or you are a lifelong learner, this book has something for you. It will take you on a journey of assessing the state of your financial services practice today, and it will provide you with all the tools you need to reframe for the future if you discover that this is necessary for greater success or more satisfaction.
Like it or not, weâve all been framedâwhether weâve framed ourselves or allowed others to frame us. You are about to become conscious of the way you are framed todayâby your team, your clients, the public, and the mediaâso you can make intentional decisions to ensure that the frame others see you within is the one you meant for them to use. By learning to frame yourself intentionally, you will tap into the fullest degree of your and your firmâs potential. Letâs look deeper at what it means to be framed.
Whatâs a Frame?
The perspective through which people view advisors is the frame: the set of beliefs through which others see and define you, your team, and your business. The frame is constructed of those words the client, the media, your team, or anyone else uses to describe what it is that you do and the way in which you do it. The frame may be accurate or it may be false. It may be positive or it may be negative. Do you have a clue how others are framing you?
Wealth management advisor Charles Prothro, CFP, CLU, ChFC, and AEP of Charles Prothro Financial, describes the frame as follows: âWhen somebody frames me, they put a wall around me. They put me inside something and they donât necessarily let me out of itâjust like a picture frame.â1 Prothro knows all about what it means to be framed, as he was in the life insurance business for 22 years before expanding his business to offer other financial services. âEveryone knew me as a life insurance man. They knew what that meant. They understood that. I would walk into [. . . a clientâs] life and I was a life insurance policy walking into the room.â2
Then one day, Prothro gave an insurance check to one of his clients whose husband had just passed away, and a look in her eyes told him that she had no idea what to do with all that moneyâwhere to put it or how to invest it. He didnât have a Series 7 license and wasnât in a position to be providing financial advice. Prothro explains, âThatâs when I walked in the office and told myself, âIâm never going to have that happen again.ââ3
Prothro decided then and there to reframe his business to be about more than insurance. He hired an experienced credentialed investment planner and Certified Financial Planner, and he augmented his own credentials to include those of Certified Financial Planner and Chartered Financial Consultant. Prothro also changed his company name from that of his flagship insurance company to Charles Prothro Financial to help him convey the reframe to his clients. Just as important, he made time to educate his clients on the new services he and his team could offer.
Clients responded well to the reframe, with comments like, âCharlie, Iâm so glad to know this. I always wanted you to get in this type of business . . . it just adds to the things youâre doing for us.â4 Another grateful and appreciative client noted, âCharlie, you treated me the same when I was sending you $50.00 a month for a life insurance policy as you do now with all of our investment dollars.â5 For Prothro, itâs all about serving the client fullyâand stretching, growing, and reframing to make that happen effectively.
KEY CONCEPT
People tend to view financial advisors through a particular perspective or frame. The frame is made up of the set of beliefs through which a person sees, defines, and understands the advisor.
Sometimes the frame gets created by what people see and hear in the media. In the first two decades of the twenty-first century, the media brought to the public news of some nasty events in the finan...
