Making the Difference When It Matters Most

Advisors Mark Miller and Janet Walker on how LPL Business Solutions helped their businesses thrive

Though many things have changed during the last several months, one constant is your commitment to your clients. While you’re working hard to provide guidance and a sense of stability for your clients during challenging times, we want you to lean on LPL Financial when and where you can.

As your partners, we’re here to make things easier for you, so you can focus on your business and your clients.

The services offered as part of LPL Business Solutions target four areas where we can make it easier for you to run your financial practice by taking some of your daily operations off your plate.

We spoke with two LPL advisors who told us how two of these services brought peace of mind and gave them back time in their day.
 

Take stock of your financial health

When you look at the financial health of your business there is a lot consider. A few questions you could ask yourself are:

• Do you have a defined business plan and goals?
• Do you know the value of your business and your profitability by client?
• Are you staffed properly?
• Do you have growth and exit strategies?

As recent events have shown us, having that clarity around the true financial condition of your business will help you make informed decisions for your practice, in both the short and long term.

The greater your understanding of your overall financial picture now, the better prepared you will be to navigate with confidence through tough markets and financial challenges in the future.

LPL Business Strategy Services was designed to help advisors achieve that level of financial clarity for their businesses. And, while it’s a way to outsource a certain aspect of your business, the financial specialists supporting you are fully integrated into your business.

Janet Walker, owner and advisor at GenWealth Financial Advisors in Bryant, Arkansas, has built a valuable partnership with her LPL business strategist, Kevin Pollard.

“Kevin is part of our team, he just happens to be employed by LPL instead of us. He takes our profit and our future personally, as though he truly were part of our team.”

Janet says that like many financial advisors, she and her partner were not experts in business. From their early days, they’ve grown to six office locations in two states, with 34 team members and counting.

Pollard has helped them to run the business like a business, in many ways.

“We have someone in house who handles payroll and other responsibilities, but Kevin takes us to a new level. He helps us to step back, think outside the box, and see things from a different perspective,” she says.

And that’s exactly why this program was designed—to help advisors optimize their practice and maximize profitability. Your business strategist can help hold you accountable to your business goals while also helping with execution.

Janet can attest that having Business Strategy Services has been such a help in recent months.

“Kevin helped gather information for us to apply for the Paycheck Protection Program, but I think the most beneficial thing he helped us with was to look forward and plan for what we would do if things got way worse,” she says.

“He helped us go through the process to solidify our thinking about the prioritization of what we would do under different scenarios,” she added. “Frankly, it's kind of like having a financial advisor. We always tell our clients that it's emotionally dangerous to handle your own money. This is really no different.”

Just like you bring that expertise—and reassurance—to your clients, we want to ensure you have greater peace of mind knowing your business is structured in the most opportune way.

For anyone considering Business Strategy Services, Walker says, “It has been our experience that the program pays for itself.”

She adds that it’s also important to consider what your time is worth, or where it could be better spent.

“I recently talked to someone whose wife was doing the bookkeeping,” she says. “We talked about how she could utilize her time in other ways to grow the business if she could offload some of this responsibility.

“Many times people just look at the cost, but you have to consider the value of your team’s time as part of the benefit. It’s difficult to measure, but it's a game-changer,” she added.
 

Growing through uncertainty

You know the importance of proactive communication with your clients and prospects to deepen and retain those relationships. During times of uncertainty, people are looking for even more information, guidance, and reassurance—making this communication even more valuable. But during those challenging times is also when your time may be even more constrained than normal.

LPL heard from several advisors who are leaning on the services of Marketing Solutions to create and execute automated emails, social media posts, and other means of digital advertising—freeing up their time to focus on their client relationships one-on-one, and of course, to run their business.

Mark Miller, founder and CEO of North Oaks Financial Services, North Oaks, Minnesota, has been leveraging Marketing Solutions since February 2020 but has already seen good results. He notes the good timing with adding this solution to his practice before a very challenging time ensued.

“Even before the crisis, my rationale was that I wanted to be thought leader for our client base. As things evolved, we were able to execute advanced communications through Facebook, Twitter, and email. With Marketing Solutions, we had the resources and power to do all.”

His business had already been seeing positive growth, but he identifies his marketing efforts as bringing in referrals and new business.

Also, although he and his team were using many of these tactics already, now his Marketing Solutions consultant, Madison Miller, is taking care of it all so he doesn’t have to worry about it anymore. They’re able to maintain this communication on a more consistent basis, so clients know that his team is there for them and always communicating.

Like all the Business Solutions consultants, your marketing consultant is an extension of your team, doing all the work on your behalf, including:

• Building a marketing calendar
• Developing content
• Sending emails
• Managing social media
• Providing video scripts
• Posting digital ads
• Tracking
• Reporting

“Madison’s expertise in all of these areas has taken our marketing to a whole new level that we could not achieve on our own,” says Mark.

Along with staying in touch with current clients, opportunities to connect with prospects are still there, perhaps now more than ever as investors realize they need professional financial guidance. This is evidenced by the new business Miller has taken on in recent months.

But implementing a consistent marketing strategy requires planning, content, marketing know-how, and of course, time. Our marketing consultants enable advisors to stay close to clients with timely information, while freeing up time in their day to increase personal, meaningful contact with clients and new opportunities.

Plan for the future

We can never predict the future, and all the added uncertainty we’ve been experiencing in the last few months can make planning ahead feel even more daunting. But you do have the power to determine the direction you want to go, and you can make a plan to get there.

Whether you’re thinking about optimizing a certain area of your business or strengthening your business overall to help ensure that you’re positioned for future success—no matter what comes your way—LPL Financial can help. The robust team of consultants and experts in LPL Business Solutions would be honored to be your partners. 

If you think that our Business Strategy Services, Marketing, Admin, or Technology Solutions could be right for you and your business, visit www.LPLBusinessSolutions.com.

The views and opinions expressed by the LPL Financial Advisor(s) may not be representative of the views of other Financial Advisors and are not indicative of future performance or success. LPL Financial and the Advisor firms mentioned are separate entities. This material is intended for Financial Professionals.