Antoinette Rodriguez, MBA
Due to their outsized role in wealth accumulation, business owners are a top target market for financial advisors. In order to market to business owners, wealth managers should know what makes them tick and just as importantly, what keeps them up at night. Four key worries include - revenue and profit, hiring and retaining talent, economic environment uncertainty and making the “right” business decisions.
1. Revenue and Profit
It’s an unusual business owner who isn’t worried about increasing revenue in their business. Whether it’s because of natural client attrition, economic uncertainty or a hot product with a limited shelf life, business owners are always looking for other ways to capitalize on what they offer. As a wealth manager and business owner yourself, perhaps you can suggest ways for them to market better or differently?
Also, regardless of the total revenue of the business, it’s a tale as old as time that too high expenses are unsustainable. If there are no profits in a company, the investors, sometimes the owners themselves, will find it unpalatable to continue. As a financial advisor, budgeting and cutting costs should be up your alley. Can you offer business budgeting expertise as a value add?
2. Hiring and Retaining Talent
With very few exceptions, it will be difficult to grow and/or maintain certain businesses without other people. Many business owners, used to doing everything themselves, struggle with hiring talent they feel will do an excellent or just good “enough” job. Due to the upward mobility limitations of small businesses, it can be difficult to attract and retain top talent. As a small business owner yourself, can you share hiring lessons learned and or provide a trusted recruiter referral?
3. Economic Environment Uncertainty
If we’ve learned anything from the 2008 stock market crash, or the recent presidential election, it’s that perception greatly matters to business owner decisions. When there is a large amount of uncertainty in government regulations, taxes, consumer sentiment, employee benefit costs, availability of credit or cost of goods, business owners generally exercise an overabundance of caution. By occupational necessity, you are in tune with the external economic environment. Can you use your macro expertise to advise or ameliorate business owner concerns?
4. Making the Right Business Decisions.
And finally, if a business owner owns a small firm, many decisions could be made easier with professional feedback. Not only can a financial advisor provide business advice, but he/she can do so without the tricky family dynamics. Can you offer business consulting as part of your service offerings?
RSS Feed