The Impossible Profession to Succeed In, or Not!

The financial service profession is never an easy “industry” for newcomers (advisors in their first 2-3 years) to succeed in. The heading says it all, but "Nothing is Impossible", the word says it all with a bit of manipulation and with believe and support, it becomes "I'M POSSIBLE"

I have over the years, and through many of my mentorship programs, found some essential components to the mix to enhance the success rate for newcomers going forward and would like to share them. 

Although I refer to newcomers, some of the advice below can be implemented by long-standing advisors in our profession as well. For the newcomers, you do not have to re-invent the wheel, if you want to become true financial professionals while working in a changing regulatory environment.

I hope this will enhance your success rate and guide you to become professional planners while contributing to professionalise our industry into a profession over many years to come and make us all proud.

The points below are in no order of priority and come purely from experience and having many successful aspirants under my mentorship, achieving their goals and objectives.

• Decide upfront or immediately after joining the profession if this is a job, career or a passion. If it is a job you are in the wrong place and you should join a corporate company where you can clock in and out and know you will earn a salary at the end of the month.
• Understand and appreciate your countries financial services regulations, compliance and the general code of conducts and ethics.
• Understand the products you will be working with and always first give advice and inclusive of financial planning. Only use appropriate products for your clients’ needs and not commission driven or personal gain. It has to be a consequence of advice.
• Educate yourself and ensure continuous professional development on an ongoing basis. Learn from your mistakes and amend and adapt quickly to the best advantage of your clients and our profession. If you are uncomfortable or have any uncertainty, make use of joint-field work through support systems available and experience senior advisors.

Find a mentor within your company, our profession or through affiliation mentorship programs. You may be surprised by how willing fellow advisors are to help and support.

• Financial planning should take priority at every opportunity, and the use of reputable financial needs analysis tools should be adopted early on. Never become a life assurance salesman selling or flogging policies with no regard to the long term needs of your clients. It will not sustain your longevity within our profession and especially with regulations in countries like the UK, Australia and South Africa who are already involved or embarking on regulatory-driven changes like RDR, Popi, TCF, COFI and even more to come. The main objectives are to ensure our clients get the most appropriate and fit-and-proper advice with due skill, care and diligence, but with a win-win for all stakeholders.

Keep advice simplistic and straightforward. Drop the bells & whistles to impress clients, as you will go over their heads and lose the real impact of financial planning. Technical jargon is a no-go always.

• Get away from cold calling soonest by building a network with centre of influences by doing the right things, for the right reasons with the right outcomes always. A client will not introduce anyone if they are not comfortable that you would treat their friends, family and colleagues with respect and without force selling. Do to your clients what you would expect people to do to you if you had the other shoe on. If you are not getting introductions regularly, you will find it could be due to force or aggressive selling techniques which never is sustainable, or you are not putting in effort and time with conducting FNA’s, or you are selling and not advising, or you are not listening and having the wrong conversations with your clients.

Stay away from emotional business at the beginning (people you feel must support you to get over the first couple of months of your career) as this business will impact on your quality and persistency of business.

• Do not build your business on “churning” (replacement of policies) as it would never be sustainable and such practices will, either way, be eradicated by regulations like RDR and other going forward. Most investment products could never justify churning and should preferably be maintained through servicing and portfolio management while negotiating lower ongoing fees. Remember, there is a difference between conversions from an old generation conventional legacy product to a new generation platform product with the same FSP. Still, it certainly would not be valid with churning between different FSP’s. Risk policies and especially legacy products can sometimes be justified to be replaced. Ask yourself first if you are willing to replace rather than upgrade an existing product, and if you were to replace it , are you ready to do it without charging a commission. 
• After you get going and have the basics in place, you need to identify your niche market and work with a strategy to build a large percentage of your practice around it. Segmentation must not become an administrative nightmare, and I suggest it becomes part of your daily operation to control if you want to segment clients. I for one do not believe in the principle as I think any client can move between segments for many reasons, but many advisors I know are using it with success where they have a controllable client base and time on their hands.
• You will also have to decide if you want to become a specialist, e.g. investment, risk-, estate-, retirement specialist or generalist. A generalist on its own is also a specialist field if you want to do holistic financial planning. If not a generalist, I suggest you surround yourself with a team of specialist to provide shared services to your clients to ensure ring-fencing clients.
• To further ring-fence clients while building your value proposition, you should consider offering services through associations like legal, accounting, tax and similar. It would ensure that Financial Life Planning is taken care of during all life stages and with life-changing events, e.g. divorce, marriage, business interest, estate planning and similar.
• Branding is an essential part of your value proposition to put in place from early on to ensure differentiation. Your introductions will be boosted with strong branding, thought leadership and a presence on social medial. With your branding and value proposition, you would have to decide on your advisor category status you want to hold as a restricted or non-restricted advisor. If you need to change, you need to choose as early as possible to have the least disruption for you and your clients. You also need to decide what professional status you would want behind your name, e.g. registered-, associated- or certified financial planner. Branding yourself is still the most crucial objective as your clients buy from you and not from product providers or FSP’s. Personal relationships, trust and respect, are still and will stay a key ingredient to success as a financial professional. 
• Credential and Affiliations/Associations, as part of branding, has to become part and parcel of your practice. You need to accredit yourself, and the highest is CFP (Certified Financial Planner) or similar credentials depending where you are in the world. Set yourself a pathway to achieve a qualification and designation to ensure differentiation and enhance your value proposition.
• While you at it you will have to join specific affiliations, associations or professional bodies e, g The Financial Planning Institutions or similar, to take up professional status. You will have to enter some premier international associations, and I cannot think of any better association than the Million Dollar Round Table (MDRT). In South Africa, where I operate from, we have many local bodies like the FPI, FIA, FISA, SAIT, IISA to name but a couple. The membership fees must be an investment in your future as the return on the investments are excellent. It will allow you to grow with continuous professionals’ development by attending seminars, conferences and using web resources from them on an ongoing basis.
• With the combination of qualifications and designations, you will achieve over the years, and with joining affiliations, it will allow you to offer a great value proposition to your clients. It will help you to stand out from the masses while ensuring you are educated and well experienced with knowledge allow you to become a genuine financial professional with an office- and virtual based practice. Your clients will be happy to engage with you at your office for professional advice and pay you for advice in various ways. 
• To ensure your practice and your clients and their financial plans have stability and sustainability; you have to develop continuity- and succession advice partnerships. Without it, how could your clients have peace of mind that if the proverbial bus drives over you, or COVID-19 gets you, that they and the family will be taken care of? 
• Finally, but by far the most important, always work with the highest ethical standards and conduct, and never compromise under any circumstances. Still, practice what is in the best interest of your client and families. Always take a long-term view and not look for short-term gains. Never feel that you were not successful if an introduction does not become a client, or if they do not do business with you immediately. By persevering it will happen eventually either way if you keep at it and service the prospect or client no matter the income streams. If you take this view, you will find your money works for you, and you do not work for your money as you will create passive income through annuity income with your value-proposition and service levels.

I hope I have been able to share ideas with you to help you become successful in our noble profession while contributing to help transfer our industry into a fully-fledged Profession.

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