Wealth managers who are thought leaders are many of the most successful (as measured by income) advisors in the industry. They are more easily able to source new investment clients and consequently build substantial practices.
Essential to becoming a thought leader is consistency. A good way to think about becoming a thought leader is to look at the effort as a campaign as opposed to a one-off action or even a series of discrete initiatives. If you really want to be a thought leader, a campaign is optimal.
What is a thought leadership campaign? It is an extended discourse between you and your desired audiences of wealthy prospects, clients and centers of influence.
You want these audiences to recognize the knowledge, capabilities, information and insights, and value-added expertise you provide. This usually takes some time and a steady flow of new, high-value, thought leadership content. By approaching thought leadership as a campaign, you are intensely and perpetually burnishing your professional brand. A good way to understand this point is to compare a campaign to episodic thought leadership
Effectiveness: While an episodic thought leadership initiative can, and many times will, result in new wealth management business, it is noticeably more limited compared to a campaign. Meanwhile, the business boost from a well-executed thought leadership campaign can provide significantly more assets to manage, opportunities to provide additional financial services and products, and new and significantly wealthier clients.
Content requirements: By definition, a campaign is predicated on delivering high-value thought leadership content on a regular basis. Based on evaluations of various effective thought leadership campaigns, you should be distributing your high-value content at least every other month, keeping in mind that more often is better. Doing so requires a very strong commitment to becoming and maintaining your status as a thought leader because it certainly requires a great deal of high-value content.
Distribution issues: It takes real effort to build out a quality distribution system for your high-value thought leadership content. Professionals who are taking an episodic approach have to “rebuild” their distribution system each time they want to share their high-value thought leadership content. In contrast, by approaching thought leadership as a campaign, your distribution system perpetuates and continues to expand, making sharing your high-value content comparatively easier and easier.
Closely related to consistency is persistency. The wealthy make decisions when it best suits them, if they even decide there is a matter they want addressed. While an objective assessment might indicate a need to take action, unless the wealthy feel determined the matter is important enough, they will not move forward.
Since you never quite know when affluent investors, be they your clients, prospects or the clients of centers of influence, are cognitively primed for considering new wealth management services and products, being top-of-mind while building your distribution capabilities results in you, over time, getting significantly more business.
Becoming a thought leader takes time—sometimes a great deal of time. But if you are persistent and continually upgrade and refine your campaign, the results can be spectacular.
Russ Alan Prince, president of R.A. Prince & Associates, is a consultant to family offices, the ultra-wealthy and select professionals.
