The Current Market, North Central Florida
From: REAP
AN OVERVIEW: The Current Market, North Central Florida
I. The Market:
The focus of my firm has been on the less populated counties and cities (referenced also as “B” markets) and surrounding rural areas.
A. Primary: I-75 Corridor: Marion, Alachua & Columbia counties, which are populated primarily by Ocala, Gainesville & Lake City, respectively;
B. Primary: I-95 Corridor: Volusia, Flagler, St. John’s & Putnam counties, or Daytona Beach/Deland, Palm Coast, St. Augustine & Palatka;
C. Primary: I-4 Corridor: Sanford & Lake counties, or Deland, Mt. Dora and other small suburbs emanating from my Lake Mary office;
D. Ancillary: Developed deep allegiances in other contiguous counties to the aforementioned. These should have nearly equally net worth, Income Producing Assets, and age ranges, yet such rural clients are, by both inherent nature and demographics, necessarily longer in the overall marketing and sales development cycles;
E. Referrals: These have proven valuable, with past precedent generating (at least) one per, approximately, every 6 clients.
II. The Service & Product:
Integration of a truly holistic, comprehensive platform, since the myriad of advisors offer only a linear, myopic approach in services and offerings.
A. Registered Investment Advisor: Offered this platform to clients via independent 3rd Party strategists that supply the various models based upon both quantitative (i.e., Risk Tolerance Profile scores, other gradations) and qualitative profiling of each client.
B. Income Planning: An increasingly integral vestige of my advisory practice, with most clients expressing great ambiguity and large unknowns in this topical area. To most, they are unsure which source to tap:
i. Total Return (primarily from equities);
ii. Dividend-Producing funds from equities;
iii. Annuities: Lifetime Income Benefit Riders, SPIA’s;
iv. Alternatives: Custom models, others.
C. Traditional Offerings: Stocks, Bonds, ETF’s, Mutual Funds, and others offered, primarily via families of funds skewed specifically to meet said client’s particular goals, typically diversification, asset allocation, non-correlation, desired returns, risk tolerance or aversion.
D. Estate Planning: A very integral piece of comprehensive planning despite few financial advisors, in any market, have established partnership arrangements, formal or informal, with a premiere legal team or firm. However, any omission or reticence to embrace this discipline’s import often proves very costly to many clients, hence its importance need not be devalued or diminutive, over time. Such outsourcing has been most integral, forged through non-competing legal firm(s) & alliances in given markets;
Other niches can open the gates to advisory work, but are typically ancillary in both nature and substance, such as Estate Administration, Final Expense, et. al.
III. The Clientele
A. Demographics: Core focus has been ages 60-80, Home Owners, with Income Producing Assets of $250,000 or more, New Residents
B. Psychographics: The impetus to uncover new prospects and converting them to clients emanate from their 3 major camps of predisposition:
1. The Mindset of the Disenchanted
2. The Love of Self-Direction or Ego Gratification
3. No Advisor of Record
C. Three Core Foundational, Psychological Questions necessary to uncover core client needs:
1. Do you admit you have a problem or an issue with any part of your current portfolio?
2. Do you have the intent to correct or fix that issue or problem?
3. Are you then prepared to take the requisite action once we offer you specific strategies and viable tactics to correct or ameliorate that issue?
D. Critical Transition: Should any of these 3 queries result in a negative reply, we therefore have no qualified prospect. Similarly, their affirmation should unleash the solution to their challenges.
IV. Competitive Forces:
A. Institutional: Banks, brokerage firms, insurance companies
B. Personal: Other professionals such as CPA’s, EA’s, attorneys
C. Electronic: Social Media presence, Rise of the “RoboAdvisor”
D. Generational: Attrition of “Generation Y/X” to any independent advice, the rise of the disaffected to electronic dependence
E. Social: Societal malaise and distrust of financial industry overall
V. The Remedy: Development and Maintenance of your Unique Positioning Statement
A. Strategic: Traditional Branding, via TV, Radio, Print, Billboard, and newer formats, namely social media forums
B. Tactical: Primarily Direct Marketing, other Direct Response means, and now even Electronic campaigns
C. Client Appreciation Events: Thematic in both time and venue
D. Charitable, Philanthropic and other contributory campaigns
E. The Advisor, the Individual: Ultimately, the focus must be on the unique characteristics of the advisor, his team, his offerings, and his service & empathy both to the client and to the community.
A NARRATIVE: A Suggested New Paradigm, or Elixir
The financial services industry has undoubtedly become increasingly complex to the consumer, as recipients of that advice yet also to the various types of advisors, who purvey multitudinous strategies and tactics as solutions to those recipients. Juxtaposed with this heightened complexity and sheer volume of mass information in the financial services’ various sectors has been a concomitant crescendo of heightened mistrust by many consumers (with some even manifesting emotional angst) about the current malaise pervading the financial services industry and sectors, as the spate of recent major institutional financial debacles so manifest. Unfortunately, this chasm may only be heightened with the seemingly deluge of technology that can be confusing or overwhelming to many financial consumers while the financial advisor so often relies upon the same technology to support his or her mantra. Such reliance can be daunting to the wary consumer, or perceived as even misplaced. While the multiplicity of electronic communications and various forms of technological usage, particularly in its primal infancy, can and has been a wonderful tactical resource, its usage has also begun to steadily creep more and more into the basic fabric of those prospect’s lives, creating a form of dependency, sometimes a substitute, for what is sorely lacking, and that is the basic human interaction and connection. Thus, while the financial services sector triumphs its various technological advances, its ultimate target, the consumer, often feels that it has been left behind.
It is imperative to stress that technological advances, applications, etc. not be minimized, dismissed or eschewed in the least. The multitude of advances has offered a myriad of wonderful benefits to almost all consumers and to advisors alike. However, despite this influx of technological advances, our industry is also confronted with a paradox. Specifically, there
has been a crescendo of various industry studies, literature and White Papers by many noted authorities and a wide array of academicians that support this thesis: while the advancing technological explosion has accrued many superior benefits, and many consumers also laud and appreciate this onslaught of growth, they similarly bemoan this interpersonal vacuity. They sense a lack of innate human connection, and the objective of fostering a resolute fiduciary relationship with a financial services professional continues to remain elusive in both the overall context and interpersonally. Paradoxically, however, all parties staunchly desire that genuine interpersonal communication and resultant relationship, yet it often remains an enigma. This vacuum is often largely unspoken, yet its silence, or rarely discussed dimensions, creates unnecessary and onerous barriers to the requisite fundamentals of basic human communication. This disconnect is paradoxical, to be sure. For, on a macro level, the whole country and world are more electronically interconnected than ever, perhaps even dependent in some sectors of our economy, yet many of us would claim that we remain disconnected interpersonally. This lack of cohesive communication, then, may be a primary explanation for the chasm, on a micro level, between consumers and financial professionals.
A fairly simple, yet potentially onerous to execute, solution would be for the successful advisor to position the aforementioned factors in this paper—the market, the product, the company, and the advisor and team—with a keen “high touch, high touch” focus that is laser-like, its precision aimed at and on client relationships, from inception to ongoing servicing. Such a business model that would espouse and enact such core values would be very elementary, such as a handwritten ‘Thank You” note (my how we, as human beings, still love to receive those in our mailbox) to the personal phone call, even over a weekend, to the simple act of kindness and humility in both good times and bad. These small but significant gestures and acts of altruism should be core values of any superior advisor. Such a theme is often a common refrain but rarely becomes an ongoing stanza imbedded in our core beliefs in the orchestra of our daily, frenetic lives.
I propose that such a value proposition be espoused, embraced, then implemented fastidiously. The brave new world emboldens all.
David H. Morgan, MSFS, CEA
REAP in Wealth Management, LLC
A Registered Investment Advisor
