12 Traits Of Your Preferred Advisor Profile

Have you thought about who your ideal client is?

When you’re trying to wade through an enormous number of potential advisors that you want to add to your list of best prospects, because there’s 2,000, 3,000, 4,000 possible advisors to call on your territory, how do you skinny that universe down to size?

We suggest that you develop your Preferred Advisor Profile.

Consider the attributes of your advisors such as:

1. What are the advisor’s assets under management?

2. What size office do they have?

• number of employees
• work from formal office versus home
• number of staff members

3. Who’s their end client?

• retirees
• c-suite executives
• retirement plans
• small business owners
• high/ultra high net worth
• union employees

4. Where are they physically located within your territory?

• outlying areas
• core zones within rotation

5. What product preferences do those advisors have?

6. What fee preference does the advisor have?

• traditional commission
• wrap fees
• other

7. How much tenure do the advisors have in the business?

8. How do they go about making their product/investment decisions?

• team consensus
• individual decision makers
• other influencers

9. What’s their investment/product decision making process?

• spreadsheet/screens only
• relationship driven

10. Where do they fall in the pecking order?

• ‘corner office’ producer
• ‘moveable middle’ producer
• rookies

11. Are the advisor’s values and interests aligned with yours?

• hobbies
• ethics
• partnership mentality
• business approach/etiquette

12. Is their personality a good fit with yours?

• open to new ideas
• willingness to dialog and share information
• aloof or down to earth?

Clearly we don’t always have the luxury of choosing the advisors we have the opportunity to business with.

That said if you begin your prospecting efforts with the end result in mind, in this case developing a stable of producers that fit your Preferred Advisor Profile, you’ll likely find yourself with a book of business that:

• rewards you with more production
• allows you to engage each meeting with the best possible attitude
• make the sometime arduous task of running a wholesaling practice a lot less arduous

Did we leave any items off of the list?

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