From minimizing the costs of client experience delivery to tips and tactics for building advisors’ EQ, The VIP Forum tackled a variety of wealth executives’ top agenda 2012 items across the first quarter.

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With 28% of wealth managers reporting a lack of quality talent as their greatest hurdle to achieving revenue growth goals in 2011, firms are quickly trying to assess where and how to close advisors’ skill gaps.

The VIP Forum recognizes that firms struggle to prioritize the competencies that are most important to clients, which results in too many advisors that fit the ineffective “jack of all trades, master of none” profile. Firms should optimize their coaching and training efforts by focusing advisors on developing the competencies necessary for success in their role — rather than holding them accountable for a broad range of skills.

Murray Financial prioritizes key competencies and targets training and coaching efforts by:

1. Developing a Precise Framework to Prioritize Key Competencies
2. Creating Tailored Development Plans to Improve Skill Gaps

Forum members, see how Murray focuses advisors’ attention on key competencies and creates targeted performance development plans to improve their skill gaps.

The crisis created a momentary calm in the war for frontline talent. Now, global economic recovery and the upcoming retirement of baby boomer advisors are draining the advisor talent pool. Many firms have responded by poaching top advisors from competitors, driving an unsustainable inflation of advisor compensation. Moreover, VIP Forum research shows that advisors’ past performance and book size are weak indicators of advisors’ future performance at a new firm. Read More »

Today wealth managers strive to identify a segmentation strategy that will give them a competitive advantage in the market.  VIP Forum members often tell us that despite efforts they’ve made to target specific segments they struggle to drive adoption of the strategies on the front line.  Forum research finds that the most effective segmentation strategies are those that originate from the insights and expertise of front line advisors. Read More »

The VIP Forum hosted heads of wealth management from 25 leading financial services organizations across North America in its third gathering of The VIP Executive Circle on October 5-6 in New York.   Heads of wealth management convened to discuss upcoming challenges to revenue growth in 2011, solutions to tackle common strategic priorities, and most importantly, the industry’s opportunity to redefine the wealth management proposition for high-net-worth clients. 

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In recent conversations with VIP Forum members we have received a number of questions on how to up-skill advisors to engage post-crisis clients. The question we ask in response, “Well, which skills do you think are most important today?” usually receives one answer, “everything”. In fact, in a recent survey on boosting sales effectiveness we asked members to rank the relative importance of nine sales skills today compared to 18 months ago, and over 60% of respondents report that every skill is more important today.

Firms’ lack of skill prioritization results in a couple of problems. First, general role descriptions fail to focus advisors on the core skills needed to boost revenue performance. Second, a majority of advisors now fit the “jack of all trades, master of none” profile, evident by only 9% of executives who ranked advisors as “expert” at any of the nine sales skills previously referenced.

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