Delivering Your Extraordinary Business

Delivering Your Extraordinary Business

Together with industry experts, LPL leaders, and financial advisors, we’ve explored how advisors like you define and build your extraordinary businesses. Now, we’ll look at the ways you can deliver that extraordinary experience to your clients.

I’m Matt Enyedi, managing director of LPL’s Business Solutions. Welcome to the third and final installment in our Running an Extraordinary Business Series.

As we were diving in to what it takes to deliver extraordinary for your business, your clients, and the communities you serve, I took the opportunity to sit down with two LPL leaders—Aneri Jambusaria and Greg Gates—to better understand how we’re learning from you, our advisors, so that we can provide the support you need every step of the way.

I’m also excited to share a story of how one financial advisor leveraged her passion for the value of community and personal connection to deliver an extraordinary experience for her clients.

If you’re new to the series or looking for a refresher, check out our first installment, Defining Extraordinary, and our most recent post, Building Your Extraordinary Business.

From strategy to planning to execution

Before any of us can deliver on anything—whether that be extraordinary results, an uptick in growth, or a more rewarding relationship—we need to have a plan or a strategy around what we’re trying to do.

As the executive vice president of Strategy, New Ventures & Analytics, Aneri Jambusaria has spent years understanding the needs of investors, and translating those needs into the solutions that financial advisors can leverage to best serve their clients. Aneri talks about “the power of the financial plan” as a key element in the evolution of our industry, moving from a focus on traditional investment advice to holistic and comprehensive advice. As Aneri says, “it reinforces how great the financial advice industry is—and how well it’s positioned to grow.”

We’re committed to helping advisors meet those changing needs—and supporting their ability to deliver extraordinary experiences for their clients. Aneri recapped a few ways that LPL is thinking about those experiences and strategizing for the future—and I encourage you to watch the full video to hear more:

• Technology: Understanding the importance of technology in the advisor and investor experience.
• Flexibility: Creating flexibility in the ways that advisors can work with us throughout their careers and their evolving journeys.
• Personalization: Helping advisors design their perfect practice—making sure that we’re investing in the right capabilities to help you run your business.
• Experiences: Exploring the services that can really help advisors execute at the practice level. 

Technology, a key enabler to extraordinary

While Aneri and I touched on the role of technology in advisor and investor experiences, I had the opportunity to speak with Greg Gates, managing director of Technology and our chief information officer about LPL’s approach to technology.

“The customers are at the center of everything we do, which is easy to say, but it’s actually a lot of work to put that into practice,” said Greg. “You have to understand all the different personas and actually organize teams of people around those personas and end customer journeys.” 

That’s why the first part of LPL’s strategy when it comes to technology is the people—the teams of people working together to build the technology, and the ones we’re building it for. 

And for Greg and team, the value of technology is far greater than the impressive capabilities themselves. It’s about asking essential questions like:

• How well do these things integrate with each other?
• How do we take friction out of various experiences?
• How do we simplify the overall experience with the tools?
  

Watch this video of my conversation with Greg to learn more.

I like to think that our approach to technology—starting at that foundational level all the way through the end user experience—also aligns with the ways we’ve been thinking about building and delivering extraordinary. First you define it, then you start the build out the processes, and ultimately you deliver that experience to your teams, clients, and everyone you interact with.

Personal touch and community ties, an extraordinary combination

Marci Bair and her team at Bair Financial Planning strive to work with clients who need genuine financial planning work—but also people they can connect with, building relationships for the long term.

This approach has served her well, as she is a well-known staple of her community. She’s also positioned herself as a go-to financial professional in a niche market for the LGBTQ+ community, which has helped her deepen her client base and the guidance she’s able to provide.

“If other advisors really got to know their clients more on that personal level, and not just the financials, it makes for a richer relationship,” said Marci. “Then, we also really understand how we need to look ahead. See where some things are that we need to be aware of.” She also touches on the balance of looking ahead and staying in the moment. “We do those long-term projections, but we still have a short-term look things as well. And so that way we can pivot and adjust as needed.”

Because of her personalized approach, Marci has worked with some clients through many phases over the course of their lives—from buying a home, to changing jobs, to traveling around the world—making herself invaluable to their future plans, far beyond their investment decisions. 

LPL advisors can hear more about Marci’s experience by logging into ClientWorks.

Wrapping up our series—for this year

Thank you for tuning in to the final installment in our 2021 thought leadership series. We look forward to doing even more of these in 2022—so be on the lookout for more great content, expert interviews, advisor stories, and more in the year ahead!

The views and opinions expressed by the LPL Financial Advisor(s) are as of the date of the recording. These views may not be representative of the views of other Financial Advisors and are not indicative of future performance or success. Neither LPL Financial nor the LPL Financial Advisor can be held responsible for any direct or incidental loss incurred by applying any of the information offered.

Bair Financial Planning and LPL Financial are separate entities.

Throughout this communication, the terms “financial advisors” and “advisors” include registered representatives and/or investment adviser representatives affiliated with LPL Financial LLC, an SEC registered broker-dealer and investment adviser.