New research should have us looking over our shoulder. Even after the financial disaster of 2008… or maybe because of it, more and more investors are going it alone with online investment accounts.
In a recent study by Aite Group, LLC they found that online brokerages gained 3% over the year while retail brokerages lost 4%. That means that while online assets grew by over $1 trillion dollars… yep, that’s with a “T”… retail brokerages lost much more than that.
So what do you do to make sure this doesn’t happen to you? Make sure you have a “value ad” that has NOTHING to do with money. You have to become irreplaceable to a client for non-investment related reasons.
You cannot win if you try to compete on a financial basis only!
• Online is always going to be cheaper
• Online is always going to be cutting edge on technology
• Online is always going to be the favorite of every magazine article that your client’s read… remember, we are the bad guys of every reporters and book authors copy. (We are money grubbing thieves that have nothing of value to offer… not true, but they get a lot of mileage with that garbage point of view.)
So what are you doing to make your clients want to be with you for reasons in addition to your fine money management skills? Do you have fantastic client thank you gatherings? Do you provide services for free that they would have to pay for elsewhere? (One advisor I know has his client’s car washed in the parking lot while he is meeting with him.)
What non-investment services do you offer? (i.e. notary services, free tax prep, etc.)
It’s these types of things that both insulate you from your clients leaving and get clients to choose you over online investing.
I use what I call a 21-Point Checklist that helped me close 232 clients in two years without a single charge-back or free look. If you’d like to see a quick video on how it works, you can view it here.
