In this instalment of her regular series for paraplanners considering taking the leap to become advisers, Hayley Rabbets, Head of Evergreen at Calton considers what the first couple of years look like.
In my last article ‘Dropping the ‘para’ to become a planner’, I finished off with the statement that once you’ve landed the role, this will be your time to shine. Today, I’m going to cover more detail on what ‘shining’ actually entails!
What will the first couple of years look like? How will you find your style? And how will you develop strong technical and relational skills? Let’s dive in!
So, you’ve qualified, you’ve gone through the CAS training process and you’re ready to start seeing clients. The firm you work for may already have clients for you to start contacting.
This is often the case for larger firms, or those with legacy books – clients who typically have been assigned to an adviser who has left or retired. Or you may need to generate your own clients.
In this case, it’s important to consider how you will attract people, and to understand how much support you’ll receive with lead generation. There may be tools you can use to support you with this, Unbiased and VouchedFor being the most common ones, or your firm may provide marketing support.
Whatever the arrangement, the first step is to formulate your approach – where will you find clients, how will you communicate with them and what will you offer them? Sounds simple but being able to articulate that is a real skill and one that needs some preparation and practice.
A word of warning here, as with any kind or ‘sales’ or ‘marketing’, it takes time to find people who are interested in working with you (and who you want to work with too!) so be prepared to kiss a lot of frogs.
This part of the journey is notoriously difficult, and a lot of people underestimate how long it takes to get momentum. Even if you do have a ready-made client book, gaining the trust of someone who has historically worked with someone else can be harder than expected.
If I had to put an estimated timeframe on it, I would say the first three to six months will be spent on marketing and attracting clients, with up to a 12-18 months building them up to a decent level.
So, for your first year, you’re going to be focussing hugely on your marketing strategy alongside homing in on your advice style and developing your skills.
When I say ‘advice style’ I don’t mean going rogue and not following your firm’s advice process (compliance peeps, stand down!) I quite literally mean the style in which you deliver your advice.
Whilst the process remains broadly the same, different advisers will use different methods to present the advice itself to clients. For example, one adviser might send the recommendations in a suitability letter for the client to read and digest before following up with a meeting to discuss and answer any questions.
Another adviser might arrange a presentation meeting where they present the salient points via a PowerPoint presentation and then follow up with a full suitability report.
Others might conduct a meeting where they bring the report along and go through it with the client in one sitting.
None of these approaches are any more right, wrong, better, or worse than the other. They’re just different. And when you’re just starting out, that can be a gift and a curse.
It’s wonderful to have the freedom to find your own individual style, but it can also be really difficult to formulate it in the first place.
The wonderful thing about our profession though, is that so many people are so generous with their time and always happy to talk through their own approaches.
And most of them will tell you that it took time to figure out their own approach, and that it changed over the years. As the profession moves forward, regulation changes, technology advances and humans evolve.
We all must adapt so please don’t get too caught up on knowing everything at the start. It all comes together in time, I promise.
Let’s fast forward a little. You’ve spent some time finding the people you want to work with, you’ve got some clients on board, and you’ve got into the groove of delivering advice. Now it’s time to strengthen those technical and relational skills.
Within the first couple of years, you’ll have plenty of opportunity to tap into everything you learned during your studies and start developing your technical skills.
You’ll need to undertake CPD activities to keep your knowledge up to date and the likelihood is that you’ll go above and beyond this, learning with each and every case you work on.
You may even decide to undertake more qualifications and attend events within the profession to ensure you’re at the cutting edge of where we’re heading. Thankfully, there’s plenty of opportunity for you to develop your technical skills…
… but there’s not so much opportunity to develop your relational skills! Historically, this is an area that advisers have just had to put down to experience.
The more clients they worked with and the different circumstances they came across, they slowly learnt how to relate, communicate and gain trust.
Thankfully, there is more work being done in this area by people such as Emma Boardwell, Neil Bage and Dan Haylett. If you don’t already follow them on LinkedIn, please do so!
The good news is that unlike technical knowledge, relational skills can be developed without sitting yet another exam. It’s about being curious, being present with your clients, and being honest when you’re still figuring things out. Most clients appreciate that more than you’d think.
I’m getting dangerously close to breaching my already-stretched word limit (sorry Natalie 😇) so I’ll leave it there for now, but next month I’ll be looking at building your network, and why the support of a strong community might be the most underrated part of life as a new adviser. Have a great month!
Hayley Rabbets is Head of Evergreen, a new proposition and pathway for self-employed financial planners within Calton. Discover more at Evergreen by Calton’s LinkedIn page.
Main image: frog, leap, stephanie-leblanc-eAgPyYkFWA4-unsplash
