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Growth. When you’re a financial planning or wealth management firm, how do you do it right? From implementing a precise, uniform sales process to creating an annual marketing strategy, you need something – a game plan – that shows how you should grow and when you’ve actually succeeded.
A growth plan starts with our Kaleido Scope™ tool. By filling out the 163 questions about your firm, you’ll get a numeric score between 0 and 100 (the average being 67). In addition, the color-coded areas will show you exactly where you need improvement and what you’re doing right.
Based on the Kaleido Scope™ score and overview, your growth plan will target the following six categories:
- Management
- Client service
- Human capital
- Sales and marketing
- Operations
- Finance
Once you’ve completed your Kaleido Scope™, here’s how to fill out your growth game plan worksheet:
Step 1: Your company information
In this step, you enter the basics. Your client relationships (how many you have), estimated assets under management (AUM) and number of employees.
Step 2: Your Kaleido Scope™ competency score
If you haven’t taken your Kaleido Scope™, now is the time. Once you have your score, enter it on the sheet, and add the last date it was taken. Your growth game plan worksheet is multiple-use. You can enter in your newest score and date at any time you see fit.
Step 3: Your vision statement
Many financial planners make the mistake of mixing up their vision and their mission. These concepts are completely different. Your vision statement, which you’ll enter on the growth game plan, is an internal statement of where you want to be as a firm. Most of the time, only your leadership and employees know your vision statement.
I recommend adding a vision statement with a three- to five-year time frame. For instance, if your vision is: “To grow to $1.1 million in AUM in 2020,” that’s your primary goal. Not having a vision statement is like expecting your employees to get in a car when they don’t know their destination. That’s scary. When you create your vision statement and share it with them, you’re letting them know where you’re going as a firm, dissolving their fears.
Step 4: Your core values
As a company, what’s your culture? How do you want your employees to act? If you place a high value on putting clients first or solving problems, add these important cultural values in this space.
Step 5: Your mission statement
What do you do as a company? Do you offer retirement plans specifically for pilots? Help high-net-worth individuals develop charitable giving plans? Be clear about what you do. Unlike your vision statement, your mission statement should be shared with your customers.
Step 6: Your client profiles
Who are your clients, specifically? In this space, add the profiles of the clients you serve – or want to serve. Here are some examples:
- Private pilots who are age 25–80 at all stages in their careers
- Commercial pilots who are age 25–40, have an income of $24K–$100K and need help accumulating assets
- Retiring airline pilots who are 50–65+ and approaching retirement
Step 7: Your strategic goals
After taking your Kaleido Scope™, you should know your weak spots by the orange, red and yellow areas. Whether you need to implement a uniform sales process or review your client segmentation, add these strategic goals in their respective Kaleido Scope™ categories: management, client service, human capital, sales and marketing, operations and finance.
For instance, if you scored low in the employee recruiting area, you’ll need to work on developing an effective recruiting process. If you scored low in exit strategy, you should begin putting buy/sell agreements in place.
Your strategic goals in all six categories are the core of your growth game plan. They’re ultimately your keys to improvement on an individual, team and company level.
Step 8: Your 90-day objectives
What do you want to accomplish over the next 90 days, again, based on your yellow, orange and red areas of the Kaleido Scope™? You can use this area to be more detailed than in your strategic goals area. An example would be:
-
Create partnership compensation structure and career plan (strategic goals).
-
Research compensation consultants (90-day objectives).
Your 90-day objectives area should work toward your strategic goals but be more task-oriented.
Step 9: our idea gallery
Ideas. No company can truly grow without them. Think of this section as your wish list, something to be executed after you turn your reds, oranges and yellows into greens and blues. You’ll need to craft a solid foundation based on your improvements before you put your ideas into action, so go to this list once you’ve made progress in your trouble areas.
Hundreds of financial planning firms have taken the Kaleido Scope™, many developing their own growth plans based on their results. By crafting a growth game plan, you not only have a road map to success, but you see all the milestones along the way.
The outcome!
With a fully realized growth game plan based on your Kaleido Scope™, you’ll have all the milestones and benchmarks in place to track your progress and make massive improvements in six key areas. These positive changes will take you closer to your ultimate, overall goal: reaching – and fulfilling – your vision statement.
Kaleido Inc. is a practice growth agency helping financial advisory firms break through growth barriers to build brilliant businesses. For more information, visit www.kaleido.net.
Ideas. No company can truly grow without them. Think of this section as your wish list, something to be executed after you turn your reds, oranges and yellows into greens and blues. You’ll need to craft a solid foundation based on your improvements before you put your ideas into action, so go to this list once you’ve made progress in your trouble areas.
Hundreds of financial planning firms have taken the Kaleido Scope™, many developing their own growth plans based on their results. By crafting a growth game plan, you not only have a road map to success, but you see all the milestones along the way.
The outcome!
With a fully realized growth game plan based on your Kaleido Scope™, you’ll have all the milestones and benchmarks in place to track your progress and make massive improvements in six key areas. These positive changes will take you closer to your ultimate, overall goal: reaching – and fulfilling – your vision statement.
Kaleido Inc. is a practice growth agency helping financial advisory firms break through growth barriers to build brilliant businesses. For more information, visit www.kaleido.net.
Read more articles by Kristen Luke
