Advisor Perspectives welcomes guest contributions. The views presented here do not necessarily represent those of Advisor Perspectives.
To buy a copy of Bev’s book, The Pocket Guide to Sales for Financial Advisors, click here.
Beverly Flaxington is a practice management consultant. She answers questions from advisors facing human resource issues. To submit yours, email us here.
Dear Bev,
My partner “Paul” and I work for a firm that is in the process of buying a number of smaller advisors. The focus is on growth and revenue – increasing AUM and fees at all costs. We were acquired back in 2022 and joined the firm because we appreciated the vision and the senior management in place. Since that time, a number of C-level people have turned over from the firm.
The woman who is now President – “Ann” – is very different in a number of ways from her predecessors. While Ann is extremely smart and very successful, she got here by micro-managing and keeping her finger on everything her staff was doing when she ran her own RIA. I had previously known Ann, by reputation, as someone who is a firm leader but also difficult when things don’t go her way.
Paul and I continue to run our firm the way we’ve always run it and we are one of the fastest growth teams within the organization. Lately, however, Ann has decided she wants to know everything we are doing. She asks for reports which we have to mostly create by hand because our organization doesn’t have great systems.
Ann has now asked to come to our office and spend a day or two observing. I am quite uncomfortable with this, but Paul says I am overreacting and we ought to let her tell us what we need to be doing differently and then essentially ignore it. He says as long as we are bringing in revenue and contributing to the bottom line, no one is going to care.
My question is whether there is a best way to prepare for her visit? What things should we be focusing on and considering? What can I do to mitigate my fear she is going to do nothing but criticize us? I should add we have three support people (two admins and one financial planner) and I’m worried about how she will interact with them as well.
I.U.
Dear I.U.,
When I run sessions on dealing with difficult people one of the things I consistently point out is the gift that difficult people give us: they are known and their behavior is repeatable and can be anticipated. There are few surprises with TDOs (The Difficult Ones). They do the same things over and over again. The insane part is that we expect something different from them! They are known to us – we know what they will do, often how they will do or say it and how we will respond.
Use this gift and prepare in a different way for Ann’s visit. You might expect to be having a normal business day, doing the things you and your team always do and thinking she is simply going to observe. This is a dangerous proposition. You know she is a critic and that she is someone who likes specific data, likes to micro-manage, wants to understand the information behind the information and doesn’t care how you go about getting it.
Get in front of this with her. Before her visit, spend some time preparing materials you can walk through with her while she is there. Prepare your team to talk about specifically what they do for clients, how they do it, what their onboarding program is, how many clients transition and in what time frame they do so. Consider all of the aspects of the business she might want to know about from her presidential seat and then gather the data to show and tell before she even asks for it.
Your style of communicating and managing is probably very different from Ann’s, and it sounds like Paul has more of a blasé, “things will all work out,” approach. Neither of these is going to serve you well when dealing with Ann. It would be good to acknowledge her need for data, facts, and information and rather than wait until asked, show her you care about giving her what she needs in advance.
Yes, it is a lot of work to get this organized. Yes, it should be unnecessary. Yes, it will take a lot of energy and focus. Your alternative is that you wait and see what happens and possibly run the risk of creating more of a need, on her part, to watch over your team and observe what you are doing. If you want her off your back, so to speak, prepare a plan to help her to get there.
Dear Bev,
I hope to retire soon, at 58 years old. I’ve had some health issues over the last five years and my wife wants to travel and do things while we are still young and healthy enough to do so. We don’t have children and have more money than we could ever spend so I made the difficult decision to transition out.
I have a great junior advisor – “Thomas” – who has worked with me side-by-side for three years. All my clients know and like him. While I call Thomas “junior” this is actually his second career. He isn’t terribly young, about 36 years old. He is very confident and presents well. Clients are happy with his work.
The question is, when do I step out completely? How do I know when it is time to say a final goodbye to clients and to the firm? How does a senior person who has been doing this for well over 30 years say, “Okay, I am ready!”? I am really struggling with this.
Thomas has said he feels completely comfortable stepping in and would be in a position to take over and only call me when there are questions he can’t answer. However, I don’t know if this is true. Clients have my cell and call me on weekends and in the evening and send me emails that are pseudo personal updates about their lives. I don’t know how to create a plan that gives me confidence and supports Thomas, too.
P.S.
Dear P.S.,
I wish I could outline a roadmap for you here saying you need to do something 18 months in advance, then something else 12 months, then six months, etc., until it is time to walk out the door. But the truth is there are as many effective succession processes as there are advisors. I have been called in to help when an advisor is two months away from walking out and when they are five years away from it, so there is no magic number.
You and Thomas need to sit down and review the client list. See where you are both fully confident Thomas could step in without your help or engagement. Then consider which clients still need you and what they need you for. Do they just like to update you about their family (more like friends)? Do they believe you have knowledge that Thomas doesn’t in a specific area so they lean on you? What is the nature of the attachment for each and every client? If you can identify this, you can then create a plan to move them away from dependence on you.
Once you know what needs to happen, then you and Thomas can construct a timeline. You can start letting clients know about your plans. He can return phone calls that come into you to show he has the information they need. You can work together to implement a plan that could take weeks or months (but probably not years given what you have put in place with Thomas to date). Once you do this, set a date with your wife to plan your first trip. Have this organized and paid for, so there is no going back once you commit to leave.
You have done the right thing by developing Thomas and engaging him as you have. I’m going to guess this process won’t take long once you focus on it and make a plan.
Beverly Flaxington co-founded The Collaborative, a consulting firm devoted to business building for the financial services industry, in 1995. The firm also founded and manages the Advisors Sales Academy. The firm has won the Wealthbriefing WealthTech award for Best Training Solution for 2022, 2023 and 2024. Beverly is currently an adjunct professor at Suffolk University teaching undergraduate and graduate students Entrepreneurship and Leading Teams. She is a Certified Professional Behavioral Analyst (CPBA) and Certified Professional Values Analyst (CPVA).
She has spent over 25 years in the investment industry and has been featured in Selling Power Magazine and quoted in hundreds of media outlets, including The Wall Street Journal, MSNBC.com, Investment News and Solutions Magazine for the FPA. She speaks frequently at investment industry conferences and is a speaker for the CFA Institute.
A message from Advisor Perspectives and VettaFi: To learn more about this and other topics, check out some of our webcasts.
Read more articles by Beverly Flaxington
Advisor Perspectives welcomes guest contributions. The views presented here do not necessarily represent those of Advisor Perspectives.
