Is Consolidated Planning Best For Me?

There are dozens, if not hundreds, of firms you can choose to partner with as a financial advisor. Determining the best firm to help you build your practice and accomplish your career goals is a daunting task. From the outside looking in, most financial services companies appear to fall into one of two camps – insurance based or investment based… and they all look the same.

So how do you choose the right firm for you?

Consolidated Planning offers unique advisor resources to allow advisors to experience exponential growth through refined processes and unmatched efficiency. Our new financial advisors earn over $250,000 annually by their fifth year and experienced advisors triple their income in that time frame when they partner with us.

Whether you are an experienced financial advisor or just getting into the business, this article will help you determine if Consolidated Planning is a good fit for you. You’ll learn about our planning focus, our unique advisor support, and the reasons we wouldn’t be a good fit. By the end of this article, you’ll be ready to make an educated decision on whether Consolidated Planning is the right fit for you, or not.

How Will I Obtain Financial Planning Clients?

One of the biggest challenges you’ll face as a financial advisor is acquiring new clients. As a financial advisor, your income will be largely based on your ability to close business. If you don’t have clients, you don’t get paid. So getting clients and getting them quickly is a big deal.

At most financial services firms, new advisors are asked to create a list of people they know that could benefit from their services. After compiling this list of 50, 100, or 200 names, you’ll be told to pick up the phone and start setting up meetings. And that’s it. That’s the entire business plan for growing your planning practice. Call everyone you know and hope it works out.

If you’re thinking that doesn’t sound like a very good plan, we agree.

That’s why Consolidated Planning created our Marketing Administrative Practice Management Solutions Team, affectionately referred to as MAPS. Our MAPS Director works with all new advisors to our firm to create a 90 day transition or onboarding plan that focuses on the two or three key focus points for your first 90 days. The four person team then assists you in executing your business plan.

After your initial onboarding, our MAPS Director will help you create a 12 month business and marketing plan based on your vision. We help you run your practice like the business it is and provide key support for your marketing initiatives. You’ll receive training to dive deeper into your niche markets, turn key webinar/seminar support, and training on the marketing tools you’ll need to drive client acquisition.

How Will I Do Financial Planning For My Clients?

After you get a client, your next task as a financial advisor is figuring out what to do with those clients. Consolidated Planning has several teams focused on answering this question for you.

Team #1: Advisor Performance Group

The Advisors Performance Group (APG) exists to help you bring CP’s planning philosophy to clients. APG will take the client data you provide and build out the client’s personal planning site using our planning tool, the Living Balance Sheet. From there, APG consultants will share their observations and coach you through the next steps with the client.

Using APG is not required, but strongly encouraged for new advisors. APG frees up your time to focus on revenue producing activities like prospecting and meeting with clients. Using APG ensures that your clients are receiving guidance based on our tried and true planning principles. Advisors who partner with APG have an average case size double that of those who don’t.

Team #2: Business Owner Strategic Solutions

Consolidated Planning’s Business Owner Strategic Solutions Team (BOSS) provides similar support services as APG, but with a focus on business owner planning. Business owners have more complicated financial situations than your average Joe type of client. The BOSS team will coach you to identify the considerable planning opportunities this creates.

Our BOSS Team is made up of advisors with decades of experience working in specific planning niches within the business owner market. They are available to consult with you on cases and even work jointly with you if desired. For advisors looking to get into the business owner market, working with the BOSS Team helps to build confidence and allows you to learn by working with some of the most experienced experts in the county.

Team #3: New Business Hub

You didn’t become a financial advisor to do paperwork. At Consolidated Planning, you won’t have to.

Yes. You read that right.

At Consolidated Planning, you won’t have to do paperwork. Our New Business Hub will handle that for you. Obviously, having a team handle your new client paperwork is huge. You’ll save tons of time that can be better spent elsewhere, and since we have a team that is solely focused on paperwork and new client onboarding, you’ll know that your paperwork will be done correctly the first time.

What Will My Salary Be As A Financial Advisor At Consolidated Planning?

Financial advisors with Consolidated Planning receive a salary from Guardian Life Insurance. This salary is a draw against your life insurance commissions. An increasing percentage of this salary must be validated or covered by commissions on a quarterly basis and fully covered by the end of your contract year. When your commissions exceed your salary, you may request to have the excess paid to you as incentive compensation.

For inexperienced advisors, this salary is typically set at $3,000 to $4,000 per month. Experienced advisors can set their salary higher based on their production at their previous firm.

Don’t let the small salary numbers scare you off. The salary only makes up a portion of your compensation. Your investment and planning income is not taken into account for your salary. Here at CP, the average inexperienced financial advisor earns $72,000 in their first 12 months per our most basic Playbook for practice building.

What Support Will I Receive As A Financial Advisor At Consolidated Planning?

You can find dozens of firms that allow you to sell the same or similar products and services to your clients. What differentiates Consolidated Planning from other firms is how we deliver those products and services to our clients and how we support our advisors’ efforts.

Brand New Advisors

As a new financial advisor, you’ll find yourself regularly drinking from the proverbial fire hose. There is an endless amount of information to consume as you get licensed, learn our planning philosophy, and start prospecting. Your success is our success and we are invested in you as a firm.

All new advisors participate in a 13 month take off program that is strategically designed to launch your practice and career. You’ll have regular training opportunities, one on one time with a mentor, and the full support of our APG, MAPS, and New Business Hub. From prospecting and marketing to paperwork and planning, there isn’t an area of this business that you’ll have to do alone.

Seasoned Advisors

As an experienced advisor, you’ve built a practice the hard way… on your own. We provide our seasoned advisors with the same support offering we give to our inexperienced advisors. Offloading some of your planning and administrative workload combined with a true business and marketing plan is a playbook for doubling or tripling your practice revenue.

We provide additional support to experienced advisors to help you reach your next level goals. Maybe you want to start doing more advanced work in the business owner market. Our BOSS team is here to help. Or perhaps you are looking to add an associate advisor to your team or even sell your practice, we have the resources and experience to help.

What Financial Planning Tools Will I Be Using?

At Consolidated Planning, we use a financial planning tool called The Living Balance Sheet. This interactive tool forms the basis of our work with clients and is built specifically with our firm’s planning philosophy in mind.

While the Living Balance Sheet is full of robust calculators, its heart revolves around a single page that provides a consolidated view of the client’s entire financial picture. This page is based on the asset and liability domains that make up a typical balance sheet with the addition of protection and cash flow domains. This single page view allows us to guide our clients toward financial balance.

The Living Balance Sheet App is often the first place that clients go to access their complete financial picture.

We use Envestnet, NetX360 and Orion to help manage our client’s investments in concert with the Living Balance Sheet.

Which Financial Planning Firm Is Best For Me?

Choosing the best financial planning firm for you is a personal choice based on your wants, needs, and goals. There are hundreds of firms that will allow you to sell insurance and investments to clients while earning a great living.

If that is all you want to do, then Consolidated Planning isn’t the right firm for you.

There aren’t many firms that will encourage you to lead with a planning oriented, client first approach and even fewer that will help you every step of the way as you build a planning practice. Consolidated Planning will. We best support advisors in the following career paths:

● Associate Advisor – No experience as a financial advisor, but great at sales. Desire to partner.
● $250k In 5 Years Advisor – Limited to no experience as a financial advisor. Great at sales and has a great potential market. Desire to be planning process based.
● Greater Than $250k In 5 Years Advisor – Some experience as financial advisor. Understands $250k in 5 Years but wants and is capable of more.
● Investment Advisor with $20 Million of AUM – Experience as financial advisor limited to investments. Desire to incorporate planning into their practice and earn either $500k in 5 years or triple their income within 5 years.
● Investment Advisor with 3-8 Years To Exit – Same qualities as Investment Advisor above, but also have retirement in sight. Concerned about their clients, staff, and practice monetization with a normal retirement path. Need associates to succeed them and a counterparty with the dollars they need to sell practice.

If one of these paths sounds like you, reach out to our team today to learn how Consolidated Planning can add the rocket fuel your practice needs to blast off to the next level of success. We’ll give you a custom playbook for your practice goals and answer your questions about next steps.

 

 

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