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Written by: Jamie Shilanski
Are you a good Financial Advisor?
Do your clients value the work that you do?
This next billing cycle, you’re going to suspend charging your clients. Instead, you are going to send them an invoice for your services that reads,
“If I have provided value to you this quarter, please send me what you think that value was worth in the form of payment. Thank you!”
How many checks would come rolling in immediately with amounts that make you feel fulfilled and humbled?
Worried that belts might be worn a little tighter this winter? Could you afford your lifestyle if clients only paid you what they perceived your worth to be? Could you afford payroll; your mortgage; your car payment; food if clients only paid you what THEY thought you were worth?
How terrifying is it to question the value you provide clients on a regular, ongoing basis?
You’re Great At What You Do – Or That’s What You Tell Me Ad Nauseum.
Listen, I have grown up in the Financial Advisory world. I started attending Million Dollar Roundtables when I was ten years old. By attending, I mean accompanying my dad to a dinner to learn how to shake hands and network, but you get the point. I have talked to hundreds if not thousands of financial advisors that serve every niche and run every type of practice you can imagine.
Without fail, every financial advisor I have ever chatted with has had one thing in common: they are always the best at what they do.
No one has ever once told me, “I am a mediocre financial advisor.”
Even guys who never hit their benchmarks still think that the following year they can. They still believe that they’re very good at what they do.
Until we start talking about charging for financial planning and collecting an AUM fee or raising fees, the scariest two words every financial advisor in the world fears.
That is why every breakout session entitled “How to increase your fees” is packed every time you go to a conference.
Everyone wants to; everyone knows that they need to… no one wants to do it.
Why? Because when you sit down with a client to discuss an increase in their fees, that is the moment of truth.
You have been weighed. You have been measured. Will you be found wanting?
Can You Deliver Value Every Single Quarter?
Not performance, value. If the money deposited in your bank account is dependent on how much value you provided your clients instead of how well the markets did, would you still be in business?
Delivering Massive Value (#DMV) is the biggest buzzword in financial planning since “surge meetings” started trending in 2019, and it all started with Value Adds.
Matthew Jarvis of Jarvis Financial began sending his clients a “Value Add” two weeks before their accounts debited their Asset Under Management fee. Jarvis wanted to ensure that clients were receiving value for retaining his services at the exact period they were paying his fee.
A Value Add is defined as an action, process, or report generated for a client as an added value of working with the financial advisor. Value Adds go above and beyond a standard report of investment performance or risk analysis and provide them with the financial information they can understand and use in their lives.
When Jarvis shared his first value add with us, his beloved Guardrails report, we immediately told ourselves what most top financial planners would… “Oh, we can do this better.”
Add collaboration between our offices, systemization to provide value adds at scale, and a robust fintech platform, and INVICTUS was born.
Truly a fintech solution designed In Victory For Us, the Financial advisors who want to Deliver Massive Value to clients routinely.
Deliverable, Scalable Value Adds for Clients
The beauty of INVICTUS is that it allows Financial Advisors to deliver clean, concise value adds to clients with the click of a button.
The genius is committed to providing real-life testing in the trenches. The value adds to INVICTUS members is that each value-added is rigorously tested in our respective offices: Jarvis Financial Services and Shilanski & Associates Inc.
Oh, and by “tested,” we don’t mean whether or not the report will run from a technology standpoint; we mean how it does go over with clients.
We take each value add and test it with our clients before it is offered to the INVICTUS members. We rely on our social clout to know if the value add is well received or if it is a dud. Then, we batch to test it with clients and modify it if needed.
Each fall, just before families start getting together for the holidays, we run a beneficiary report from INVICTUS.
We identify all of the clients’ assets, and not only do we report on what the known benefit is and what percentage they’re going to receive, but we also report the dollar amount.
It’s easy for a client to verbally tell us,
“When I die, just split everything between our two kids 50% / 50%.”
But when I show them,
“Mr. and Mrs. Client, to quantify that, you want to leave your 19 year old $1,500,000 and your 22 year old $1,500,000 with no stipulations if you were to pass away.”
Imagine how the conversation changes when we stop talking about percentages and start talking in dollars?
Who else is helping guide their estate planning conversation that allows them to stop and reflect on whether or not it is a good idea to leave their “adult” children millions of dollars? It is helpful that now we can have a candid conversation about proper estate planning while people learn financial maturity.
Or what about when we can identify if an asset does not have a beneficiary designation on it? In our office, we strongly encourage clients to have a primary and a contingent beneficiary designation, and we ask them to provide evidence of both. Every fall, we run a report and give the client the opportunity to go and check their beneficiary designations on file.
Since running this value add for our clients, we have identified missing designations that would have otherwise gone to probate. Helped clients update their estate planning to more accurately reflect their wishes and identified assets we didn’t know the client had.
This is just one quarter’s example of what we do, how we do it, and why it matters. Now imagine running a value add on net-worth, long-term care, identify theft, tax calculations, death worth, and more – one per quarter rotating every few years as needed. Have you now delivered massive value to your clients and provided them with a value they will not receive anywhere else?
If you are routinely providing clients with value adds in a consistent, efficient, and deliverable manner, the fear and doubt surrounding whether or not you’re worth what your charge begins to dissipate.
Knowing your worth means understanding your value.
Happy Planning!
Related: The Benefits of Joining a Mastermind Group, Even if You’re Skeptical