Download Dan Allisont's "Current COI Feedback Scripts" and "New Potential COI Scripts" below, and check out "Getting A Healthy Flow Of New Clients From Centers Of Influence By Addressing The Referral Risk They Fear The Most: #FASuccess Ep 447 With Dan Allison" on how he coaches advisors to generate more leads from Centers Of Influence (COIs) such as CPAs and attorneys by building trusting relationships to reduce the professional risk that the COIs take when referring one of their clients to a financial advisor.
Current and New Potential COI Feedback Scripts
It is often said that "the only thing constant is change", which pairs well with the common financial advisor philosophy, "if you’re not growing, you’re dying". The end result of this dynamic is that even when advisory firms are successful and clients are well served, we’re constantly on the lookout for what we could be doing differently to serve clients better, and have to remain constantly vigilant to threats from the changing landscape (from volatile markets to the rise of AI).
And the same holds true for Kitces.com and our Nerd’s Eye View blog as well. Even as our readership (and listenership, and viewership) has grown over the years, and our reader retention remains incredibly high, we remain ever vigilant about the changing landscape and how we can still improve further, whether it’s refining how we deliver the articles, podcasts, and videos that we do, exploring alternative content formats or approaches, or figuring out how to best leverage AI ourselves, to better serve all of you, our advicer readers.
And so every year, we ask you – our readers – for feedback about what you want to make this website even better for you, to ensure we stay on the right track in adding value to the advicer community and making financial advisors better and more successful. And especially after the amount of change over the past few years, from expanding our podcasts to YouTube (and creating a new "Best Advisor Podcasts" list), to building an AdvisorTech Directory to complement (and provide more information than) our popular AdvisorTech Map, to the rollout of our Annual IAR Ethics CE Day… we’re more eager than ever for your feedback about how we’re doing, where we can improve, your thoughts about some new ideas we’re considering, and your feedback about what else we could be doing to help the advicer community.
Because we really do take your feedback seriously. Over the years, Nerd’s Eye View reader feedback has shaped everything from the visual design of the blog (from its original dense small font!), to the ongoing expansion of our Members section from offering CFP to now CPE credits for CPAs and IAR CE for RIAs that can be earned by reading Nerd's Eye View blog articles, the launch of the Financial Advisor Success podcast, our popular "Master List" of all the major Financial Advisor conferences and Best Books for Advisors, and now the coming rebuilding of our Members Section by the end of this year (to be followed by a design refresh of our Nerd’s Eye View blog in 2026!).
So regardless of what kind of reader you are: an advisor or someone who works in an advisory firm home office, an individual consumer who reads this blog for your own benefit, a CPA, attorney, or another related professional that works with financial advisors, or you're associated with a vendor who serves advisors... I hope you'll participate in this year's survey. It's only 13 feedback questions, should take no more than a few minutes, and will remain open until the end of next week.
Thanks in advance for taking a few minutes to access our Reader Survey below, and share your feedback! 😊
Launching a new business venture is often a creative – and somewhat vulnerable – act. Whether it's opening a new firm, publishing a book, or even just posting on social media, each public-facing offering reflects many hours of ideation, refinement, and effort. When preparing to launch, advisors must typically answer two core questions: "Who will show up for this?" and "Will the people who do show up like it and get it?" A good way to address both questions is to ask for feedback – but the real challenge is knowing who to ask, and when.
In the 161st episode of Kitces & Carl, Michael Kitces and client communication expert Carl Richards discuss how and when to ask for feedback, how to use it constructively, and when it's better to simply act and launch.
As a starting point, gathering a sufficient volume of responses is crucial when asking for feedback. Negative feedback often feels ‘louder' than positive feedback, but a single critical opinion may not reflect a broader sentiment – people simply have a variety of preferences. Advisors can mitigate overreacting to one-off responses by ensuring they collect enough responses to identify real patterns, which can also prevent an advisor from rebuilding everything in response to a single opinion. Furthermore, ensuring that feedback is coming from the ‘right' people is just as important. For example, if a firm launches a new offering for its core clientele – dentists near retirement – then it may not be helpful to ask newly minted doctors what they think of the offering. The doctors may not find the offering helpful or relevant… and that's okay. Feedback from outside the target audience may be interesting, but it isn't always relevant!
In some cases, behavioral data may also be a helpful source of useful feedback. Observing the topics and offerings that clients actually engage with may offer better clues about what they find valuable. Doing more of what connects – and less of what doesn't – can be an easy, effective way to refine offerings over time.
Finally, there may be times when the best audience to build for is the advisor themselves. Many advisors build firms with fee service models that resonate with them. At times, what's needed isn't feedback – it's confidence. For example, there may come a point where an advisor may not need feedback as much as a rallying cry to move forward. Then, once something is launched, the advisor can watch for how prospects and clients react to their offerings and take that as implicit (or explicit) feedback.
The key point is that feedback can be a powerful tool to refine offerings and creative ventures, but only when it comes from the right people at the right stage of the process. When thoughtful feedback comes from a core part of the audience, it can be a helpful resource for advisors to shape services that resonate with their target audience. And, ultimately, those points of feedback can help advisors build a stronger, more relevant product – amplifying their impact in the long term!
Financial advicers often market their comprehensive financial services as a way to differentiate themselves from other advisory firms and to stand out in the broader landscape of financial advice. These services may range from 'standard' offerings like retirement planning to less traditional areas like credit card consulting. In a firm's early years, there tends to be more room for experimentation, with advisors adding new services to provide value and attract clients. However, as a firm's capacity grows and its list of services expands, the focus often shifts – from asking how to do more for clients – to "How can I regain control of my time without reducing the value or quality of my services?"
The best roadmap for focusing an advisory firm will reflect how to do more of what clients value and scale back on what they don't use or appreciate. While advisors may make educated guesses about client preferences, this approach has its limits. Advisor often have different skills and perspectives than their clients (because if clients share the same inclinations, they might just be advisors themselves!), and it can be difficult to fully eliminate personal when evaluating clients' needs. One-on-one client calls can offer insights, but they're hard to scale and may unintentionally lead to biased responses.
A more efficient solution is an asynchronous client engagement survey, allowing clients to rate how much they value specific offerings. These surveys help advisors identify what to improve, what to reduce, and what to keep doing because clients enjoy it! Advisors can also gauge interest in potential future services, using that feedback as a compass for what to build next.
Beyond assessing service offerings, client engagement surveys provide advisors with an opportunity to gather feedback about other aspects of the business. Advisors can ask how much value clients feel they receive for their fees, how they perceive about the firm's overall responsiveness, and what the firm should stop or start doing. This detailed feedback can reveal unexpected insights into where clients are truly finding the most value!
In most cases, two weeks is enough time for the clients to complete the survey, with a few reminder emails sent while the survey is open. After the survey closes, advisors can evaluate the responses – what can they do more of? Where can they scale back? And which new business opportunities would clients value most? After some preliminary analysis, it's important to follow-up with clients, expressing appreciation and sharing at least one change the firm will make based on the survey results.
Ultimately, the key point is that client engagement surveys can be a powerful tool for advisors to identify what matters most to clients. They provide valuable insights not only on what to streamline but also on where clients are receiving the greatest value. Beyond improving efficiency, surveys demonstrate that the advisor values client input, strengthening relationships and enhancing satisfaction – which can lead to better retention and more referrals!Read More...
The traditional financial advisory firm is blessed with incredibly high client retention rates. Which doesn't change the fact that each and every client loss that occurs is still very painful. But mathematically, most financial advisors only have to add at most a handful of clients every year to maintain positive growth momentum. To the point that most advisory firms don't really need to worry "Am I providing enough value to my clients?" and instead can focus on delivering the value they already provide more efficiently and effectively.
Yet the reality is that client preferences can and do change over time. Sometimes services that were once valued highly (delivery of quarterly performance reports) are no longer so valid (I'll just check on my accounts from my smartphone when I feel like it). Other times the evolution of the client base makes new services more relevant (e.g., from accumulation planning to decumulation planning). You never really know… until and unless you ask!
Every year, we ask you – our readers – for feedback about what you want to make this website even better for you, to ensure we stay on the right track in adding value to the advicer community and making financial advisors better and more successful. And especially after the amount of change over the past few years, from the rollout of our Virtual Summits on Marketing and Advisor Value to our Kitces Courses on Tax Returns, Insurance, and Estate Document Reviews, and most recently, the launch of IAR CE in our Members Section… we're more eager than ever for your feedback about how we're doing, where we can improve, your thoughts about some new ideas we're considering, and your feedback about what else we could be doing to help the advicer community.
Because we really do take your feedback seriously. Over the years, Nerd's Eye View reader feedback has shaped everything from the visual design of the blog (from its original dense small font!), to the ongoing expansion of our Members section from offering CFP to now CPE credits for CPAs and IAR CE for RIAs that can be earned by reading Nerd's Eye View blog articles, the launch of the Financial Advisor Success podcast, our popular "Master List" of all the major Financial Advisor conferences and Best Books for Advisors, and turning our AdvisorTech Map into an entire AdvisorTech Directory that you can use to build your own tech stack.
So regardless of what kind of reader you are: an advisor or someone who works in an advisory firm home office, an individual consumer who reads this blog for your own benefit, a CPA, attorney, or another related professional that works with financial advisors, or you're associated with a vendor who serves advisors... I hope you'll participate in this year's survey. It's only 12 feedback questions, should take no more than a few minutes, and will remain open until the end of next week.
Thanks in advance for taking a few minutes to access our Reader Survey below, and share your feedback! 😊
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A few months ago, many of you were kind enough to complete a series of two reader surveys - one for the Nerd's Eye View blog, and another for The Kitces Report newsletter. In the coming months, I'm excited to announce that you'll be seeing the fruits of those survey results, in the form of a number of upgrades and improvements to this platform. The visual look of the blog will be modernized (yes, including an increase in the default font size!), the comment system will be replaced, and several enhancements will be made to the members section for newsletter subscribers. In addition, we will begin to offer periodic webinars for continuing education credit, and later this year the written content of the blog will be complemented by a new podcast.
You'll see these changes roll out incrementally in the coming months. For the time being, this is just an announcement of changes to come, with an important note that if you're using an RSS reader to follow the content of this blog, there's now an updated RSS feed link to use (as the details of this post explain, you just need to complete a simple update to your blog reader software to ensure you continue to receive new content in the future).
In the meantime, thank you to all of you who voted Nerd's Eye View as #1 in the recent Zywave survey of the top news sites and blogs for financial advisors!
As I come up to speed on the world of blogging, it is my goal to make it easier for all of you to read the content on this website. Accordingly, I have configured this blog's content to publish via FeedBurner, so that you can conveniently using any number of blog reader programs to keep up with new content.
Enjoy the current installment of "Weekend Reading For Financial Planners" – this week's edition kicks off with the news that with a December 3 deadline for large RIAs to comply with new amendments to Regulation S-P related to client data protection and incident responses (as well as a June 3 deadline for other firms), some firms are working with their third-party tech vendors to change language in their contracts to ensure timely notification of data breaches, allowing the firms to fulfill their responsibilities to their clients. Which (alongside the reaction to this week's Amazon Web Services [AWS] outage, which hindered the performance of several cloud-based software tools) could provide an impetus for firms to review their incident response and business continuity plans to ensure that internal and external lines of communication remain open and client data remains available and secure in a variety of contingencies.
Also in industry news this week:
- How this week's AWS outage could lead some firms to assess their reliance on a particular cloud provider (including their exposure from third-party software tools)
- A recent survey found that 90% of Americans plan to claim Social Security benefits before age 70 (when they would receive their maximum benefit), creating an opportunity for advisor-client conversations that discuss the full range of considerations that inform this decision, from evaluating the various risks involved (e.g., mortality and longevity risk) to discussing the client's personal preferences (e.g., whether to front-load their retirement spending)
From there, we have several articles on investment and tax planning:
- An analysis of the upsides and downsides of different tools (including Section 351 ETFs, exchange funds, and 'side portfolios) that can be used to diversify a client's portfolio with large embedded capital gains while deferring taxation
- A quantitative evaluation of whether to sell highly appreciated (but underperforming) assets and how the availability of a basis-step up affects this analysis
- Tax strategies that can help investors to get comfortable with unwinding investments with large capital gains, from establishing a "capital gains budget" for the amount of capital gains to be triggered each year to engaging in a "donate-and-replace" strategy that leverages the tax preferences of contributing appreciated securities for a tax deduction
We also have a number of articles on practice management:
- Four unconventional KPIs that can measure a firm's productivity, including revenue per hour worked and an impact score to measure the value of different client touchpoints
- How firms and employees alike can get the most out of annual performance evaluations, from the value of tying employee objectives to firm goals to the benefits of getting upward feedback
- How investments in training, including hard-dollar commitments and the creation of formal development plans, can help firms boost employee retention and ensure a strong pipeline of next-generation talent
We wrap up with three final articles, all about workplace flexibility:
- While flexible work arrangements (both in terms of location and work hours) appear to have staying power (and can boost employee satisfaction), taking a consistent approach to implementing these programs and taking steps ensure team cohesion can help firms maximize their benefits while minimizing potential downsides
- Why maximum work schedule flexibility can sometimes lead to burnout for busy professionals and how a more structured approach (that still allows room to balance priorities inside and outside the workplace) could lead to greater satisfaction
- How declaring "meeting bankruptcy" to evaluate which meetings are truly needed (and which might be shifted to an asynchronous approach) could create greater time savings for a firm (and perhaps allow employees to shorten their workweeks)
Enjoy the 'light' reading!
Welcome everyone! Welcome to the 460th episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast!
My guest on today's podcast is Stephanie Hughes. Stephanie is the CEO of Wiss Family Office, a multi-family office based in Florham Park, New Jersey, that oversees approximately $1 billion in assets under management for 220 client households.
What's unique about Stephanie, though, is how she has established the operational systems required to serve Ultra-High-Net-Worth (UHNW) clients efficiently and securely as her practice has grown beyond $1 billion in AUM in just seven years.
In this episode, we talk in-depth about how Stephanie and her firm are able to provide clients with a "one-stop shop" for their financial, legal, and tax needs (reducing the stress clients face when personally managing stakeholders across several different firms), how Stephanie finds that integration across the firm's different services (and active communication amongst team members across the business) is a key driver to the firms success (and a differentiator from firms focused on one primary service area), and how Stephanie prioritizes having strong internal controls in place given the volume of high-dollar client transactions her team processes that (if mishandled) could create significant tax burdens or expose them to fraud.
We also talk about how Stephanie encountered challenges hiring for positions in her multi-family office environment because of how her practice's processes differ from what candidates might have experienced at other wealth management firms, why Stephanie looks beyond a job candidate's skills to take a deep dive into their personality and motivations to ensure they'd be a good fit for her firm's culture, and how Stephanie finds that gaining experience in client service is valuable for aspiring advisors at her firm because it exposes them to the complex nature of UHNW clients' service needs and the importance of diligence when managing money movements and other transactions.
And be certain to listen to the end, where Stephanie shares how her clients can use a dedicated email address that goes to several members on their planning team (given that a question might require tax, wealth management, and/or legal expertise), why Stephanie's firm is creating an internal workflows tool to manage its robust approvals process (as well as another tool to monitor accounts and communications to detect signs of fraud, such as changes to their phone number and address), and how Stephanie finds that being linked to an accounting firm not only provides her practice with a steady flow of good-fit clients, but also fosters an immediate sense of trust given new clients' years of experience working with the firm on business and personal tax issues.
So, whether you're interested in learning about what it takes operationally to serve ultra-high-net-worth clients, the importance of internal controls when handling these clients' high-dollar transactions, and how proper staffing can ensure a high-quality experience for these clients, then we hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast, with Stephanie Hughes.
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