As we said in Parts One and Two, if you are finding it difficult to scale advisory ACROSS your practice then the first thing you need to do is avoid making it niche and separate – everyone needs to see, experience and understand Advisory. Just like accounts and tax preparation – everyone needs to know that this is what we do, why we do it and how we do it.
We’ve looked at onboarding and creating process and SOP’s or standard operating processes, and we’ve looked at Prospecting to win new advisory led clients , now let’s look at scaling your core primary advisory offering to create recurring advisory income streams.
Remember, when we talk about primary advisory we are talking about being paid to meet with your clients on a regular basis to help them clarify and confirm their goals and ambitions, and then to create a plan to improve both their personal and business affairs – note that if you don’t feel comfortable getting involved in business advisory then start with personal advisory.
Primary advisory and the clients plan will reveal what additional help and support they need to implement the plan and achieve their goals and ambitions.
This additional help will either be services you provide yourself – secondary advisory – or services you provide via introducing them to others – tertiary advisory – such as specialist tax advice, legal, marketing, regulated financial services, and so on.
Forgive me for saying this but recurring means it happens again and again – it is a repeatable process.
Your standard operating process for how you develop and manage your relationships with your best clients is to help them create their plan and meet with them monthly or quarterly, or as a last resort annually, to review and manage progress and keep them on track. This creates a recurring income stream for you.
If you are starting with just personal advisory then it may be that the review meetings are less frequent.
With CAS Complete Advisory Solution we have apps designed to enable accountants do exactly this – for personal affairs WealthTracker and for business affairs Strategic Planner. Take a look at www.completeadvisorysolution.com
In summary the clients plan will be reviewed in depth annually with regular meetings during the interim. And you will of course identify additional help and support – secondary or tertiary services – that will spin out from all the primary meetings.
If you feel you lack capacity in your practice then think about this. Can you find one hour per week to spend with clients helping them plan to improve their personal affairs?
Even allowing for holidays and sickness that will be at least 40 client sessions. Can you find two or three hours per week?
And if there are several fee earners in your practice?
