To keep our firm thriving, we need young advisors who share our investment mantra
It is always exciting to bring in a new, early career advisor to our office – to see the drive, the desire to learn and natural skills they bring with them.
But for new advisors to succeed at our firm, we need them to buy into our philosophy, one which is often at odds with the do-it-yourself attitude so many young investors follow these days.
If an advisor has not truly bought into our system, it will eventually show in meetings and interactions with clients. Conversely, if a new advisor sincerely believes in our strategy, they will radiate confidence to the clients that we serve. So while they may not agree with their peers’ portfolios, we think it’s crucial that young advisors buy into our ways of working. We’re not stock pickers, and we’re not looking for speculative investors to join our team.
Over recent years, we have shifted our approach to hiring, focusing mainly on young, early career advisors. In doing so, we are able to train them in our firm’s philosophy rather than recruiting older advisors who already have their own ways of operating ingrained into them. When new advisors join our team, they spend six to 12 months in the client service team, while also sitting in on meetings with clients.
When we look for new advisors, there is a specific personality type that we seek. Firstly, we need advisors to be likeable, an obvious trait for such a relationship-based profession. New advisors have to be comfortable speaking with clients, but should also have the confidence to take control and lead clients. It can be easy for new advisors to go along with everything a client says, but at the end of the day, clients are looking for someone to advise them, not a new friend. While this is not an easy balance for young advisors to achieve straight away, we look to develop those essential skills as early as possible.
Another key aspect of our training is the proximity young advisors have to senior advisors like myself. At our office, we have a room called the “bullpen,” where advisors all sit together. This helps keep new recruits close to our experienced team members, rather than simply seeing them a couple of times a week. Having this closeness allows for us to bounce ideas off each other, while junior advisors can soak up relevant information from us as well. It also gives new advisors a better idea of how we operate and why we adhere to our system so strictly.
As part of our training, associates sit in on our meetings, taking notes and getting to know our clients. We generally have advisors sit in on meetings for about a year while they work in the client service department, which allows them to truly get a feel for how we like to engage with our clients on an interpersonal basis. In the meantime, they also get to work with the children of our clients, who are usually around the same age as they are. Many of our clients are double the age of our new advisors, so we find it helpful to ease them in before we they begin working with our high-net worth clients. Once we see a certain level of confidence and maturity, we then feel comfortable passing clients onto these associates, which usually occurs after 12-18 months of training.
Communication is a huge factor that we look for with potential recruits and work on with the advisors we hire. We look for plenty of eye contact and positive body language when we first meet potential recruits, two indicators of confidence in advisors. In this digital age, it is also crucial for our associates to be extremely comfortable with both email and virtual meetings. We also put associate advisors in the office’s client services department when they start off, giving them ample opportunity to work phones and send emails. After the Covid pandemic, we hired a sales coach to ensure we were communicating effectively during virtual meetings, which helped advisors with little components of communication such as looking at the camera, rather than the screen to maintain eye contact.
All of these components are so important for new advisors to learn and to improve as they grow with our team. But no matter how skilled an advisor is, we simply cannot bring someone in that does not buy into our mantra.
Carlo Cansino is a Senior Financial Advisor at The McClelland Financial Group of Assante Wealth Management, where he specializes in pre-retirement planning and working with young professionals to assist in accumulating wealth during their high income-earning years.
