WE HELP THE NATION’S LARGEST RIAs SOLVE COMPLICATED GROWTH CHALLENGES

Financial advising with a

Break Free From the Slow Growth Trend

With a big firm comes even bigger growth challenges. Once AUM passes the $2BB mark, it’s hard to generate organic growth of even 5%. Referral rates slow down. Combine that with a disjointed marketing strategy, add a team of financial experts who are not naturally skilled at business development… And you get the makings of a growth crisis.

If nothing changes, large RIAs will soon face a perfect storm: Rising client age, declining cash flows, and an HR nightmare as their advisors leave for better growth opportunities elsewhere.

A recent survey conducted by Dimensional Fund Advisors identified the top 4 pain points for firms over $10MM in gross revenue:

  1. Finding or developing Rainmakers
  2. Recruiting and hiring qualified employees
  3. Developing employees
  4. Developing a marketing strategy

The firms that overcome these challenges will be positioned to capture market share. The rest will have to resort to aggressive M&A strategies — or get acquired.

Jumpstarting organic growth requires more than a bigger marketing budget. It means bringing on a Chief Growth Officer to help guide your business.

See how a Chief Growth Officer from Model FA can help your firm

BOOK A STRATEGY CALL

Our process

On-Site Marketing & Business Development Training

Managed Marketing Campaigns

Advisor Coaching

As your Chief Growth Officers, we will dive deep into your business, re-align your team, deploy effective business development systems, and back it all with a comprehensive marketing plan. The result is organic growth, accelerated.

Discover Your Team’s Advisor DNA

Your people are your most valuable asset. Our first task will be to guide you through our digital self-assessment tool called Advisor DNA. You’ll ensure that you’ve got the right people in the right positions for both business development and client service.

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Learn more about advisor personality types:

Connector
Connectors are the foragers of the advisory industry. They build trust quickly and get energized by social interactions. For optimal firm growth, Connectors should be positioned on the front lines, reaching out to prospects while being supported by managed marketing systems.
Rainmaker
Rainmakers are experts at converting prospects into clients. They are comfortable with creating emotional buy-in and constructive tension during the sales process. They are usually extroverted but can require time to recharge from business development activities.
Guardian
Guardians are quintessential financial planners and ultimate relationship managers. They thrive in a service environment that burdens them with few (if any) outside business development responsibilities. In order to help the firm grow, Guardians should be empowered to deliver a world-class client experience and encouraged to maximize referrals and introductions.
Architect
Architects are masters at arranging systems and simplifying complexity. At their best, Architects are free to think at the systems level, design processes, and execute. They have the ability to take a vision, turn it into a strategic plan, and translate that to a structured process that the rest of the team can follow. They are the glue that holds the business together.

Ready to discover your Advisory Team’s DNA?

Book a strategy call

Systematize Business Development

Many RIAs have developed systems, workflows, and processes to manage client service. Few have built a repeatable process for developing new business. As a result, they struggle to train advisors for success and fail to produce predictable business growth.

Our business development training platform, Model FA Accelerator, teaches firms to consistently hire, train, and properly support next-generation Rainmakers. The training is backed by one-on-one coaching to maximize adoption, facilitate learning, and promote accountability.

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Energize your firm with the Model FA Exponential Relationship System — the only industry model that teaches advisors how to expedite and strategically advance trust with clients and prospects.

Inside, advisors will find self-paced modules that cover the following fundamentals of business development:

  • Becoming the Next Generation Rainmaker
  • Sales Psychology and Framework
  • Feedback Marketing: A Comfortable Approach to Earning Referrals from the industry’s expert on client referrals, Dan Allison
  • The Exponential Relationship System and relationship stage training
Together, those materials will empower your team of advisors to deliver more value, connect with more prospects, and supercharge their growth potential.

Ready to meet your Chief Growth Officers?

Book a strategy call

Re-align Incentives and Accountability

Firms are often hesistant to invest in marketing, because they don’t have reliable methods for tracking results. Our custom accountability system eliminates that uncertainty. We collaborate with the executive team to re-align incentives and create clear goals for the firm’s advisors. Next, we create a KPI Dashboard that tracks individual advisor performance. This approach allows the firm to allocate resources and make better hiring and promotion decisions.
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Our first priority is to clarify existing incentives. Many large firms have inherited reward mechanisms that no longer serve them. From compensation structures to bonuses and non-monetary perks, we believe that a future-proof firm can’t afford to have sacred cows. Next, we identify clear points of accountability for the firm’s advisors. It begins with setting performance expectations and ends with giving your advisors a tool for effective pipeline management. Finally, we create a KPI Dashboard that tracks individual advisor performance. This approach allows the firm to allocate resources and make better hiring and promotion decisions.

Ready to Transform your KPI management?

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Build a Strategic Marketing Plan

With team members re-aligned according to their natural strengths, and with proper analytics in place, the executive team is positioned to create a strategic marketing plan. Our goal is to support individual advisors and invest in corporate brand awareness to boost enterprise value. The plan typically includes 3 phases that are rolled out over the course of 3 years. Each phase contains a series of 90-day “sprints” to facilitate streamlined implementation and tracking.
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While every firm is unique, we begin most strategic marketing plans with an 80/20 rule. 80% of the budget should be directed to the firm’s advisors. 20% should be spent on the corporate brand. As the firm evolves, more marketing dollars can shift to brand awareness. A customized strategic marketing plan is between 9 and 20 pages, depending on the needs and goals of the firm’s executive team. Want to get a feel for our capabilities? Click the boxes below to explore our marketing services.
On-site Strategy Session
A one-day gathering at your office to discuss top priorities and obstacles for your firm, identify initiatives that will move the needle, and create a strategic growth plan.
Brand Strategy
Typically conducted as a one-day facilitated workshop, a brand strategy session focuses on brand story, architecture, and core values. The outcome of the session is an assessment of your firm’s positioning in the market, the degree of “fit” between your service offering and ideal clients, and whether your marketing tells an intentional, truthful story about what sets you apart.
Fractional CMO Services
Fractional CMO services include the creation of a strategic marketing plan that supports the firm’s advisors and corporate brand.
Performance Coaching
Sustained growth requires a tight link between marketing and sales. Get access to the Model FA Accelerator, a performance and growth coaching system.
Business Development
Identify specific opportunities for growth based on your firm’s offering, ideal prospects, existing clients, and the strengths of the firm’s advisors. Set growth goals and build an action plan that will move your team forward.
Focused Marketing Campaigns
Implement social media marketing, workshops, webinars, targeted messaging campaigns, etc. Leverage our pre-built campaigns with a proven ROI, designed specifically for the financial advice industry.
Content Marketing
Create a content strategy based on the firm’s business development goals and target audience. Coordinate internal and external efforts to generate and publish regular content in the form of blog posts, white papers, checklists, videos, etc.
Client Events
Host live client events for each of the firm’s target niches. Assist the firm with event coordination. Boost the effectiveness of client outreach and post-event follow-up through best practices, checklists, and accountability systems.
Executive Mastermind Events
An annual Mastermind event brings together executive teams that run the nation’s largest RIAs and subject matter experts in business development, sales, marketing, coaching, and operations — to share best practices, top challenges, and inspiration to grow forward.
Web Design
Conduct a strategic analysis of the firm’s competitive positioning and brand alignment. Identify and implement structural and content changes to the firm’s website to better showcase its offering to ideal clients.
Local SEO
Conduct a Search Engine Optimization audit to identify necessary structural and content changes to the firm’s website. Develop an internal linking hierarchy. Coordinate an organic backlinks strategy to improve domain authority and ranking in search results.
PR and Media Relations
Create a media relations strategy to promote key members of the firm in the financial and consumer-facing media (TV, print, digital). Identify local and national award opportunities. Publish byline articles and columns to increase visibility and authority.

Ready to build your strategic marketing plan?

BOOK A STRATEGY CALL

Deploy Chief Growth Officers

Advisory firm growth is a function of careful planning, proper systems, and disciplined implementation. Running one-off campaigns, splitting marketing duties among team members, or hiring someone to “run” marketing for the firm is often ineffective and expensive. Chief Growth Officers can bridge the implementation gap by deploying tactical solutions in line with your newly formed strategic marketing plan.
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There used to be two ways for an RIA firm to invest in organic growth. The executive team could either hire a full-time Chief Marketing Officer or Director of Marketing, or they could find marketing consultants to solve specific problems. Both ways often missed the mark — because successful advisors are never just selling products or services. They are in the business of building human relationships. In order for an advisory firm to grow, it must first connect and coordinate its business development and marketing efforts. We envisioned a solution that would give a select group of large RIAs access to all of our business development expertise, growth systems, and marketing collateral — wrapped in a right-sized, fully customized package. To accomplish that, we had to create a new category: Chief Growth Officers.

Chief Growth Officers vs. other options

Explore what Chief Growth Officers can do for your firm

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Meet Your Chief Growth Officers

David DeCelle

President, Chief Growth Officer

Patrick Brewer, CFA, CPA

Chief Growth Officer

Dan Allison

Chief Growth Officer

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Find out how a Chief Growth Officer can accelerate your practice.

Ready to Grow? Let’s Get Started.

Schedule a free consultation today.

 

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