A thought leader is a financial advisor whom prospects, clients, centers of influence and even competitors recognize as a leading authority in selected areas. It’s also someone who is able to significantly profit from being recognized as the expert. Without question, the benefits of being an industry thought leader are substantial and include tremendously greater and more lucrative business opportunities and exceptional high-net-worth client retention.
A mountain of data definitively shows that becoming a thought leader leads to a multiplier effect that results in your practice becoming significantly more successful. And it’s important to recognize that just about any financial advisor can become more accomplished by becoming a thought leader.
We repeatedly find in surveys that a solid majority of financial advisors and other professionals will periodically refer to themselves as thought leaders. The catch is that if you’re the only one calling yourself a thought leader, you’re not a thought leader. Prospects, clients and other professionals have to think of you in those terms for you to derive the many benefits of being a thought leader.
The foundation of thought leadership is offering high-value content, which is information and insights that help clients become wealthier or more successful or live a better life. It is also information and insights you can provide to other professionals, who can then refer their high-net-worth clients to you.
With content being so critical to becoming a thought leader, there are basically two ways for financial advisors to be able to provide the requisite high-caliber information and insights. They can create the content, which entails developing the concepts as well as effectively packaging them. Content creation tends to be outside the areas of expertise of most financial advisors.
A more viable approach for almost all financial advisors is to curate high-value content. Here, financial advisors are pulling together erudite opinions, viewpoints and solutions that clients and professionals will find very useful.
In order to be a thought leader and garner a competitive advantage, you’ll need to provide insights and information to your audiences on a fairly regular basis. A high degree of consistency is essential. For the great majority of financial advisors, the solution is to curate the content, which may entail subscribing to information-based and professional development resources.
