The Two Secret Weapons for Surviving Creative Destruction, Part II by Ron Carson

Secret weapon number two is something I have termed SPS — Seamless Proactive Service. Today, our firm provides asset management, financial planning, insurance services, estate planning, and tax services. In the future, SPS will mean providing as many as six or seven additional services to our clients. Can you imagine a process whereby a financial advisor team, in conjunction with all the other advisors, are integrated within the same workspace and have access to the same information, allowing the client to be the focus of all their activities? This means that it provides a hassle-free environment to the client; it is a one-stop shop.

Clients actually pay less for these SPS compared to the inefficiencies of the client trying to pull all theses other advisors together on their own. The other advisors are very busy, our clients are very busy, and rarely does a person repeatedly take the time to pull together all the information needed. SPS is about providing seamless services with all the other advisors tied to the same system within the same office. Proactive means that all the services that we decide to provide to our client will happen on a proactive basis without the client initiating the service. This will allow us to do what we do best, which is provide peace of mind through financial security.

Seamless Proactive Service naturally leads to an institutionalization of your office. Your clients will no longer be dependent just on you. It’s similar to buying a Lexus car. You don’t buy a Lexus because of the show-room salesperson. It is all about the complete experience you receive from the sales person, to the finance person, to the service manager to the person washing your car.

Today, most of us are the rainmakers of our firm. People do business with us because we are the center of activity. However, the intrinsic value of advisory firms is tied to the sustainability of our client relationships when we are out of the picture. Once you institutionalize the client relationship, you are at far less risk of losing your clients. Institutionalizing the client relationship assures maintenance and growth of that intrinsic value.

The choice is yours. You can continue down the path that many financial advisory practices are heading or you can incur some short-term pain for some long-term progress. In order to be competitive, changes must be made. The opportunity in front of us is great, but so are the risks. Creative destruction is going to destroy a lot of firms, but those that can be creative and who don’t mind the work and don’t mind being out of their comfort zone will thrive in this age of the Investing Generation.