What’s Your Game Plan in 2025?
January 16, 2025
By Steve Kulesza, CFP® Chief Business Development Officer
Yogi Berra said it best and often, “If you don’t know where you’re going, you might end up someplace else.”
As 2025 kicks off, we know that having a plan for where we want to be at the end of the year — or at the end of five years — is a prerequisite to achieving our goals. And at Dynamic Advisor Solutions, we know that the financial advisors who plan are the ones who grow. Why? Because they are intentionally taking the time to focus not only on their growth goals, but also their plans on how to reach those goals.
But 2025 has already started! Is it too late? Not at all. We believe it’s never too late to get started. So, if you don’t have a plan yet, don’t worry. There’s still time, and we are here to help.
Create Your Vision
For most advisors — and most businesses in general — the top goal of any year should be growth. What kind of growth is both ambitious and at the same time realistic for your practice? Where would you like it to be in the next 12 months? (Twelve months is a solid timeframe for most business plans but be prepared to adapt as your practice grows and conditions change.)
Your growth goal may include targets for new client acquisition or growing your assets under management. Once defined, make sure your goals are clear and measurable. How will you reach those goals? What components of your services will fuel that growth? Answering those questions may involve enhancing the services you currently provide, changing up your business model or fee structure to better support different types of clients, or incorporating new services not currently offered to your clients.
On a Dynamic webinar, “Planning with Intention,” we spoke to Urban Adams, an independent advisor representative at Dynamic Wealth Advisors, about his plans to execute his topline growth goal for the year: To improve the discovery meeting approach with prospective clients. He shared with us his top strategies:
- Improve the process of asking for referrals from existing clients. Don’t be shy to ask for referrals! While many advisors worry about the awkwardness of asking for referrals, planning these types of conversations can make them a lot smoother. For example, telling a client how much you enjoy working with them and how you’d love to be able to work with more people like them can not only strengthen your current relationship, but also build new ones. Referrals are one of the most important ways to grow your business, so make sure you’re maximizing this opportunity.
- Increase the adoption of Dynamic Managed Portfolios. Partnering with Dynamic’s dedicated Asset Management team can help to free up time for nurturing relationships with clients. These experienced professionals possess the institutional knowledge and know how to strategically design and manage global, well diversified, balanced portfolios focused on the long-term, helping clients achieve their financial goals.
- Conduct an introspective assessment of current clients. Reviewing the clients you enjoy working with can help you determine what you’re looking for in a client and your business. What makes working with your best clients enjoyable? Why does the process work better with them as opposed to others? A thoughtful examination can help you incorporate your client preferences into your plan.
- Segment current clients based on the complexity of their needs. Some clients require more time from their advisors, so it makes sense when assessing your current client list to determine whether you are pricing your services accordingly.
- Review current communications and look for improvements. Is the frequency and timing of your emails, blog posts and other communications to your clients working? Sending out effective communications can be time-consuming. What’s more, clients like to hear from you, so make sure you mix in original content with any externally produced communications. At Dynamic, co-branded content resources are available. Also available is assistance with original content creation, website development and design, branding and other services to help you stay in touch and engage with your clients.
Track Your Success
With a vision and strategies to achieve it, the next step is to establish tangible metrics to measure your success. At Dynamic, we routinely measure our progress, whether that’s the number of requests we get from advisors to service their accounts or the amount of assets we manage. We call them key performance indicators, or KPIs. So, what are the top five or 10 KPIs for your practice that will help to drive your goals for the year? Here are a few considerations:
- How many times are you reaching out to your existing clients?
- How many new centers-of-influence relationships have you established throughout the year?
- How many client meetings are devoted to tax or estate planning instead of investments?
Creating a scorecard with meaningful metrics that relate to the growth of your business can help you stay disciplined and on track. Remember: We make our living by planning for our clients. We owe it to ourselves, and to them, to plan for our business.
Hold Yourself Accountable
Whether through monthly or quarterly conversations with your team or an external partner, it’s important to hold regular check-ins on your progress. Dynamic can be a great partner in this step. We thrive on these kinds of conversations and are happy to schedule check-in calls to see how you’re doing on achieving your goals and what we can do to help.
We’re here to partner with you in your planning endeavors. That also means introducing you to a host of tech tools and resources through the strategic partnerships with whom we’ve aligned to help your practice thrive. Watch a short video on the Dynamic core services that provide freedom and success to a growing number of wealth advisors across the U.S.
Do you have the tech tools and resources at your practice to navigate 2025? For more actionable insights on planning with intention, contact Dynamic for a complimentary consultation at (888) 997-4212 or joinus@dynamicadvisorsolutions.com.
Investment advisory services are offered through Dynamic Advisor Solutions, LLC, dba Dynamic Wealth Advisors, an SEC registered investment advisor.