Blog

At some point in your organization’s lifecycle, you will have a team member(s) who underperforms. Underperformance comes in various sizes and shapes, but is most likely a deficiency surrounding getting things done quickly and/or accurately.  If not addressed properly, underperforming team members can wreak havoc on an organization’s work flow, service standards, and ultimately profitability. Here are some do’s and don’ts to help guide you in getting an underperforming team member back on a ...

Read more +

“You’ve got to find ways to demonstrate value… [Bosses] don’t care what the salary surveys say. If you feel like you deserve more money, you need to write up a plan.” Listen to the entire episode here ...

Read more +

When firms set out to hire a non-experienced financial planner, they can choose to hire a new college graduate who will have a degree in financial planning, or a career changer who will have a certificate in financial planning. The differences between a certificate and a degree program can be substantial, and should be an important factor in deciding what candidate type to pursue. In this month’s article, we will look at some of the other advantages and potential challenges in deciding ...

Read more +

In last month’s article, we reviewed several places online you can go to find potential new financial planners for your firm. In the end, though, getting candidates to want to work for your firm still requires a marketing effort. And just like any other marketing effort, it is essential that you have a strong ground game as well, to support your online presence. Here are several additional areas we suggest firms focus, when trying to attract good young financial planning talent: ...

Read more +

Until the financial planning profession begins to become more of a profession of choice for the younger crop of new talent, finding candidates to interview for roles within your firms will continue to be challenging. As a recruiting firm for financial advisors, the question we are asked frequently is “how do you find your candidates?” The short answer is that a lot of them find us, thanks to our strong reputation as a firm that matches the best candidates to the best financial planning ...

Read more +

In some parts of the country, lack of local talent has compelled advisory firms to hire employees who work remotely. As the overall talent market continues to tighten, we see this as an increasingly prevalent strategy for firms to utilize in order to gain access to the best talent (wherever it may be). However, the already-recognized challenges of managing Millennial advisors can become even more complex when trying to manage them as remote team members in a virtual work ...

Read more +

In last month’s article, we introduced the Soft Skills Gap that can sometimes exist with newer financial planners and shared some ideas on how to identify and address this gap from Bruce Tulgan’s new book Bridging the Soft Skills Gap: How to Teach the Missing Basics To Today’s Young Talent. This month, you will hear from the man himself, Bruce Tulgan Founder and CEO of RainmakerThinking, Inc., in our very first guest post on the specifics of how to talk to your team members about their soft ...

Read more +

Sometimes firm owners contact me to express frustration over a younger member on their staff who is not professional enough, is unable to think critically, and does not respect authority. While it’s important not to over-generalize a Millennial generation totaling 80 million people, we do recognize that there is some validity to the concern that younger planners lack certain soft skills to succeed in the profession and develop into a solid succession plan for existing advisory firm ...

Read more +

As many of you prepare to hire summer interns, you may find yourself considering hiring from iGen – the next generation after the Millennials. These new kids on the block, born around the turn of the millennium, are teenagers now and are poised to make a major impact in the workplace. Here are some takeaways from a recent research study on things to consider when adding an iGen to your firm. Sourcing – Campus visits and social media continue to be useful ways to locate and connect with ...

Read more +

When most advisory firms are founded from scratch, the common business development approach is to take every prospect you possibly can. As the saying goes, “If they can fog a mirror, they’re a prospect.” This is a logical approach when starting out, and you’re just trying to get enough revenue to keep the lights on! As firms grow and develop a recurring revenue stream, this pressure to constantly bring in new clients dissipates somewhat. Eventually, the firm becomes established enough, the ...

Read more +

2015 will soon be in the books and for the most part it seemed to be a pretty good year for a lot of you, so congrats! To continue to build upon these successes and avert the challenges facing our profession, it is increasingly necessary that you continue to fully utilize every asset at your disposal. And by far the biggest lever you can pull to increase the value of your assets is to improve your firm’s human capital. From this perspective, you need each member of your team to be at the top ...

Read more +

Firms who contact us are sometimes struggling with the dilemma of whether to hire a planner who will stay in an Associate role permanently, or the more traditional planner hire who will progress along a career path to an eventual Lead Planner role. Below are a few of the opportunities and challenges for the permanent Associate hire to consider when contemplating how and where your next hire might fit within your organization. Opportunities for Long Term Associate Hire: Management – ...

Read more +