We don’t take success as chance and that’s why we are committed to sharing ideas proven by your peers to drive growth and elevate any financial practice or wealth management program.

Here are three great ideas for you to implement in your business today.

The plan

Let’s begin by taking a quick look at the basics of building and executing a successful business plan. Here are the key areas of focus:

• Begin with where you are
  Review your recent past, as this is the base you will build from
• Establish where you want to go
  Both short-and long-term
• Create a strong value proposition
  What do you want your practice to be?
• Define how you will achieve your goals
  Do you have a clear marketing plan, referral and client or member acquisition strategy?
  Is there a consistent, repeatable communication strategy in place?
• Monitor and measure your success
  Establish metrics that will help you measure success
  Have a solid tracking system
  Hold yourself accountable — in the end, you own your success

Truth be told, the primary differentiator of those who are successful is that they have the desire and passion for achievement. The details of execution follow. Find what drives you and focus on step one. You can achieve that same level of success through focus and effort.

If you are still working without a solid plan, reach out to us for input and support to develop one that will work for you.

For many of you who are working to execute a plan you’ve already developed, here is what we heard from your peers as the primary focus for their business. The number one goal was to improve personal production, but how they plan to get there is enlightening. Those looking to be successful have a strong desire to implement actions that build and solidify long-term relationships with their clients and members. In the past, differentiators were often about better returns. That’s not the case any longer.

The primary avenue for growth

It may come as a surprise, but nothing spurs growth better than a solid referral strategy. It has been and continues to be the top avenue for practice growth year-over-year. Just the other day, I had a conversation with a financial professional who told me that his practice could no longer take referrals!

My immediate question to him was, “How have you been so successful in generating referrals?” He shared a simple answer:

• Articulate your unique value proposition
  Have one, articulate it, train your team to understand it and share it with your existing clients or members.
  If everyone knows what to say when the referral opportunity presents itself, there are fewer barriers.
• Know your clients and members better than anyone else
  Leave nothing to chance.
• Replicate your top clients and members
  Work with those you like and who generate referrals.
• Define your referral process
  Communicate it with your team and your clients or members (those who refer) What is the referring experience?
  What is the prospect experience?
  Define internal tracking and communication of all referrals.
• Create raving fans!
  Develop uncommon service models and create unique touchpoints and experiences that cement the relationship.
  Go above and beyond expectations to create brand loyalists.
  Brand loyalists often provide unsolicited introductions to friends and peers without the need to ask for referrals.

Embrace technology to free up your $1,000/hour activities

For the last 20 years, we have worked with financial professionals and institutions to help them understand their true value and ways to align their most critical resource — time — to help build and scale successful businesses.

Many financial professionals, admittedly, do not embrace technology as much as they could in their practices. As a result, they spend more time on tasks that are operational and less client- or member-centric.

Embracing technology to build efficiency comes in many forms and ultimately allows you to spend your time engaging and deepening client and member relationships.

• Use a CRM system to maintain client, member and prospect data. At Atria, our Unio Advisor Platform has a fully-integrated CRM that handles this seamlessly.
• Use texting capabilities to create unique touchpoints with clients, members and prospects
• Own your brand in the social space
  Have a website that speaks to and illustrates your value proposition via Broadridge or FMG and integrate technology like Snappy Kraken to help automate communications and drive leads to your website
  Build custom models and efficiencies for the way you manage your clients’ and members’ portfolios. In the Atria family, we use Contour, our comprehensive advisory platform with the least expensive pricing in the market.

Your efforts will yield results

Driving change in your practice is 15% buying into the concept and 85% putting the work into the necessary change and ideas. None of the ideas we shared today are difficult, but they do require a level of commitment. Change is not easy, and we get that.

At Atria, we are tirelessly committed to helping financial professionals grow and develop the most meaningful client and member relationships possible. If you would like to better understand the concepts in this article or how a partnership with us might help you overcome your unique business challenges and opportunities, let us know anytime. Our doors are always open.