Three Musts for Recruiting Advisors

How much does it cost your firm to recruit, hire, and train an advisor?

How many advisors do you hire a year?

How many advisors do you retain in year one? Year two? Year three?

How many advisors do you lose in a year?

Do the math and determine how much money your firm is losing throughout the course of a year.

Here are the three “musts” to be more effective at recruiting and retaining successful financial advisors to your firm!

There must be a formal recruiting and retention process in place

What would happen in your firm if you had a seminar, meeting, or some other initiative that was on the calendar every month? Like every first Wednesday or something like that? A recruiting director or other manager could be responsible for promoting, managing, organizing, coordinating, confirming, and following up on the meeting. Advisors could refer friends, colleagues, prospects, and even clients to the meeting. Provide bagels and coffee and you’re in business! The focus shouldn’t be completely about your firm and recruiting. It might be best to have a speaker that shares a valuable message depending on the audience.

Managers must organize a formal hiring committee for their firm

If a hiring committee was in place with a minimum hiring standard, you would be hiring with retention in mind – depending on the standard. The standard shouldn’t be a, “we need to hire four more advisors to hit our numbers,” standard or a standard around a candidate’s network, database, or natural market. The standard should be around experience level, background, professionalism, personality, vision, desire, purpose, intelligence, image, drive, and intention to succeed and help others. What type of candidate would make you proud and make the brand of your firm look good?

Training for new advisors must be awesome

This goes beyond an advisor, rep, or broker simply learning about products and services. All firms train on products and services. But I know a lot of advisors that are product experts and don’t have clients to help with all that knowledge. The training should be around networking and how to effectively meet and talk to people in business settings. Think about how successful your advisors would be if they were confident about “working a room” and having a professional conversation with other business people. Do you think those new advisors would be able to generate referrals, sales appointments, and perhaps other recruiting opportunities for your firm?

Of course, there are more than just three musts, but this is a great start!

What are you doing in your firm to successfully recruit and retain topflight talent?

Michael Goldberg has helped financial advisors, brokers, agents, reps, wholesalers and other sales producers generate hundreds of thousands of dollars to their bottom line. His firm Knock Out Networking, LLC is renowned as a speaking and training resource in the financial services industry. Described by clients as a “spark plug”, Michael is a master at invigorating and engaging audiences. His “knock-out” style is “in your face” and high energy. His content is “real world” and can be applied immediately. Michael speaks at conferences and associations, runs sales meetings, and delivers “results driven” programs on networking, referral marketing, and sales presentations.

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