Life-Centered Financial Planning Essentials: Is Your Value Proposition Sustainable?
How can you tell if your value proposition is unsustainable?
- You cannot control the outcome.
- The value of your offering continues to erode, and the price being paid continues to fall.
- Your business model asks more and more of you but pays less and less.
If chasing a number is empty, chasing a relative investment performance number is emptier. Comparing your results to an index or a competitor is meaningless and an exercise in futility. In fact, not only is it meaningless, it is toxic to your client relationships.
Do you really want to be measured by factors you have no control over?
Do you really want to start at zero value to the client at the beginning of every calendar year?
Sitting down with clients and reviewing what they’ve already seen on a statement does not constitute advice—it is simply a review of something you’ve already done. What is the point of looking backward when you have the option of looking forward? None of us can change what happened yesterday, but we can do a lot about preparing for tomorrow. Try shifting your focus from reviewing to previewing. Try calling an annual get-together with clients a forward planning meeting or year in preview meeting and see if it impacts the quality and usefulness of the conversation going forward. I’m confident it will.
Save the reporting on last year’s results for the mail. This is about demonstrating value, not raising red flags around it.
Learn more in Life Centered Financial Planning: How to Deliver Value that Will Never be Undervalued, available at local or on-line bookstores as well as at mitchanthony.com.
