A little help can go a long way.
Business Development Coach: You may be an experienced financial advisor. There’s no doubt about that; however, running a financial advisory business needs a completely separate set of skills if you want to work on Business Development.
If you’re not happy with where your business is right now, a coach, such as myself, can nudge you in the right direction to overcome your short and long-term roadblocks.
To learn more about the sure signs that it’s time to hire a finance business coach and how a coach can help you, read on below.
1.You Haven’t Been Achieving Your Financial Advisor Goals
One of the telltale signs it’s time to hire a business development coach is that you’re not achieving the goals you’ve set out for yourself. Often, the problem is that you’re too close to the situation. A third party, such as a business development coach, can bring an outsider’s objective opinion to the situation and offer new insights.
If you find yourself a good coach, it’s likely that they’ve already achieved what you’re setting out to do. So, they can help you reach your goals more quickly and avoid common mistakes that tend to stump financial advisors.
If your goals aren’t realistic, a coach can help you re-evaluate them. If they are realistic, but you don’t know how to make them a reality, a coach can help. In more concrete terms, a business development coach can lay out a step-by-step plan to keep you on track and to hold you accountable moving forward. All in all, achieving your goals is far easier with the help of a finance business coach.
2.You Want to Grow Your Financial Advisory Business
The case may be that you’re enjoying small-scale success and would like to take things to the next level. As with our bodies, a business can also experience growing pains when scaling up. If this is the case, a business development coach will be able to ease your business’ growing pains and smoothen your transition to a larger-scale business.
How a business development coach will help you grow your business varies from coach to coach; however, most coaches will use a combination of asking you diagnostic questions, providing advice, as well as giving you homework and checklists. The homework portion is essential as most coaching is action-oriented and will only work if you put in the work.
3.You are Overwhelmed About Where to Start
Running a business is like taking care of a well-oiled machine – it’s a lot of hard work. If you’re starting to feel overwhelmed and burned out, it might be time to hire a business development coach to help you identify and solve your problems. If you find yourself wishing you had more time each day to get through your to-do list, it’s definitely time to hire a coach.
Your business development coach will come in, look at how you run your business, and suggest changes. What’s more, your coach can also look at how you use your time and identify the time-wasters you can get rid of.
Aside from all the fires you’ll need to put out, opportunities can also be a source of stress. Opportunities that come your way can overwhelm you. It’s important to remember that you can’t do everything. So, a business development coach can help you identify which opportunities to take and which to turn down, depending on your short-term and long-term goals.
4.You Need Someone to Run your Ideas Past
If you need someone to run your ideas past, you need a business development coach. A good coach can act as your own personal sounding board for ideas and will push all unnecessary thoughts out of their mind to be present and listen closely. Through focused listening, a coach will be able to ask questions and probe deeply into your ideas, catching any possible flaws.
A good business development coach will also be able to listen to any of your ideas without any judgment. Of course, they may give their advice and input regarding your ideas, but they’ll never coldly shut down your ideas or give harsh criticism.
5.You Need a Guide to Developing a Marketing Plan
It’s likely that your prospective clients are comparing you to other possible financial advisors. So, you’ll need to do your best to put your best foot forward and attract loyal clients. To do so, it’s important to develop a Marketing Plan. This plan will allow you to expose your business to your target market in an effective and efficient way.
Unfortunately, creating a proper marketing plan involves several steps. These steps include researching your industry, conducting market research, defining your target market, conducting a SWOT analysis and more. If you haven’t already noticed, creating a marketing plan is a process. What’s more, you may need to update your marketing plan regularly. A business development coach can help you with all of these steps.
6.You Want to Create a New Financial Advisor Brand
As your target market evolves and changes, so does your brand. It may be that your brand as a financial advisor no longer gets you the results you want. When that happens, you could change a few things here and there or rebrand entirely. If you don’t take action and allow your personal brand to stagnate, that can leave a bad impression on potential clients. So, it’s important to keep things fresh and relevant.
Refreshing your brand can put you on the radar of potential clients; however, a full rebrand may take a lot of time and effort. Rebranding may involve a web design overhaul, a new logo, a refreshed philosophy, modified market placement, and the like. It can be a lot of work, so having a business development coach by your side can provide much needed relief and support.
7.You Need to Prospect for New Clients
The fact of the matter is that finding new clients is not as easy as it’s cracked up to be. You may have heard a success story of a man who claims it’s easy and can land dozens of clients with some cheap paid advertising online. But these success stories tend to be the exception – not the rule. In reality, as you may know from your experience of running a financial advisory business, locking in new customers and keeping them loyal can be difficult.
Despite it being difficult to get new customers, it’s still very much important to do so. Your clients are the foundation of your business; not only do they give you revenue, more clients also build your brand recognition.
If you feel like you’re able to retain your current client base but aren’t able to reach new clients, then something you’re doing isn’t working. A good business development coach can help you identify what obstacles you’re facing and help you get unstuck.
How to Find a Business Development Coach
It’s important to take time to find the right finance business coach for you. There are a ton of financial advisor coaches out there, but not all of them are equipped with the skills and knowledge to help you and your financial advisory business grow. That means there’s a risk of you finding a coach that won’t help you reach your goals.
To help narrow down your choices and find the best finance business coach for you, consider the following:
Does the Coach Listen and Ask Questions?
If you just want to be told what to do, you’re better of buying a book or enrolling in a course. If, however, you want a personalized plan based on your specific goals and needs, you’ll want to look for a coach who listens and asks questions to learn about you and your situation.
Does the Coach Have Experience?
Now, of course you’d want an experienced coach. In many cases, a finance business coach with general experience may be fine. But, if you need more specific assistance with regard to your business, you may need to look for a coach who has experience dealing with the particular issues you face.
Do You Click With Your Coach?
Clicking with your coach doesn’t mean that your coach is always nice and agrees with everything you say; in fact, the best coaches will challenge you and push you beyond your current limits. Clicking with your coach means that you should feel comfortable working with them and opening up to them.
Does the Coach Have a Plan?
A good business development coach will be able to come up with a plan or strategy to help you get to where you want to go with your business. If your coach is any good, they’ll be able to lay out short-term and long-term specific actions for you to take in order to succeed.
Contact Me
If you’re in need of a knowledgeable business development coach, contact me today. Since 2004, I’ve been working with financial advisors, investment executives, and finance career professionals in order to help them succeed and achieve their goals. Contact me today, as I’d be more than happy to help you overcome your business challenges and come up with effective solutions.
