Our Clientele
As our high-net-worth client’s wealth has expanded dramatically over the past 20 years, it has created a level of financial complexity and expectation on financial advisors, their practices and teams that is virtually unprecedented. This has given rise over the past 25 years to an explosion of large, diversified, and sophisticated financial advisory teams. While our industry has never been “easy”, it was much simpler in the past. Today top advisors greatest challenges aren’t just managing assets and clients but managing extremely complex and dynamic enterprises. These businesses demand a solid foundation of systems, processes, technologies to create exceptional client experiences while simultaneously keeping the “trains running on time”. This requires a level of leadership and management, that previous generations never had to grapple with.
With a front row seat to this evolution, I decided over 30 years ago to dedicate my focus and ultimately my career to helping Elite Advisors build structurally sound, systemically driven practices and integrate, manage and lead a sophisticated team of financial professionals. As a result, I built, trained and developed the first team of business consultants with a major wirehouse firm back in 1999. Then again in 2011 created the first team of business consultants within a major mutual fund company. My team of coaches simultaneously consulted with top financial advisory teams across all channels and worked with our wholesalers in their territory to help them evolve from “wholesalers to business consultants”.
Crossroads Professional Consulting Clientele
1. Elite Advisory Teams
My north star has and always will be to help top financial advisors with the challenges and complexities that come with running large enterprises. I believe that our profession when done well, can have extraordinary societal impact and great nobility. However great success brings its own burdens:
- Being responsible for the financial health and stability of multiple generations of clients
- Architecting a structurally sound, systemically driven and technologically sophisticated practice
- Leading and managing a sophisticated group of skilled professionals
… all while navigating unpredictable and often volatile markets. Very few professions are as demanding, nor as potentially rewarding as ours.
2. Branch/Complex Managers
Field leaders have many of the same challenges that face elite advisory teams ie. managing and leading their own teams, with the added responsibility of creating a culture of cohesion and performance within the greater enterprise for which they are responsible. Whether branch/complex managers, regional or divisional directors the culture you establish, the strategic and tactical insights you provide and the personal and professional council you give, can and will have a profound impact on the performance of those to whom you are responsible. Leveraging the core structural components that we use when consulting with our Elite Team clients, we can help you create a structurally sound, systemically driven enterprise, while enhancing your ability to lead those for whom you are responsible.
3. Field Trainers
Field trainers are expected to bring valuable insights and solutions to practitioners that run the gamut from they’re greenest of rookies to the most sophisticated Elite Team Leaders. The range of skills, content knowledge and professional insights to address this range of challenges, can be truly daunting. The systematic framework, structure, tools, and templates we provide for top financial advisory teams are the foundation we use to help field trainers dramatically expand their skills and insights. The ultimate goal is for a field trainer to be able to walk into any corner office in their territory and ask,“so where does it hurt”,and no matter what the response provide important insights and potential solutions.
4. Wholesalers
The day of the wholesaler as product sales person died years ago, and in too many cases we simply failed to pronounce last rites. Competition and technology have turned investment products into pure commodities (and AI will radically accelerate this trend). The greatest challenge facing financial advisors is not “running money” but “running businesses”, which have become increasingly complex over the past 25 years. If you can help them create a sound business structure, incorporate coherent and elegant systems, while managing and leading a diverse group of high performance team members, they will beat a path to your door. Walking into an advisor’s office with a research report, mountain chart and marketing brochure may occasionally work with rookie advisors just learning about the industry. But for elite advisors today, it’s all about consulting; walking into their offices without an agenda and simply asking, “where does it hurt”and being equipped, no matter what the answer, to offer important insights and potential solutions. This approach and capability will be the key to remaining relevant both now and into the future.
