How To Benchmark Your Financial Advisor Practice

Are you a top financial advisors? A new quiz helps you compare your practice to a standard in operational performance.

The result? A better understanding of your areas of strength and opportunity in just a few minutes.

We are all creatures of comparison, constantly looking to find meaning by contrasting one thing against another. And while hard-and-fast or obsessive comparison can be detrimental (in life and finance), the value of benchmarking is that it provides a foundation for understanding one thing in relation to a reasonable, comparative standard.

The financial services industry compares investment products to their benchmark. Government censuses provide authoritative points of reference for household data, economic activity, and other measures. I mean, even my daughter’s swim class sets benchmarks before you can graduate from a guppy to a dolphin.

But what about financial advisors? How can they benchmark their practice to understand their strengths and weaknesses relative to a standard in operational performance?

Your Areas of Strength & Opportunity a Financial Advisor

Advisor practice management has long been part of our content cadence at Blueprint Investment Partners. But, the response we’ve seen to our whitepaper, “The Elite Advisor Playbook,” has left no question as to how we can continue to help advisors who are striving for excellence both in asset and practice management.

To satiate the apparent appetite, we just launched the, “Are You An Elite Advisor?” quiz.

This quiz will benchmark your advisory practice against the framework outlined in the Playbook. We believe this framework is the optimal picture of a top financial advisor, an assertion that’s based on extensive research and 10+ years of seeing what success looks like.

Upon completing the quiz, which takes only a few minutes, you’ll receive feedback about how your practice compares to the elite advisor framework, including a summary of your areas of strength and opportunity.

Knowledge, Then Action (Next Steps)

You may not immediately think that music and poetry have much commonality with running an advisory practice, but this quote from musician and poet Sonya Teclai seems to thread the needle:

“Self-reflecting is a humbling process. It’s essential to find out why you think, say, and do certain things…then better yourself.”

I believe this quote hits the nail on the head. “The Elite Advisor Playbook” and the “Are You An Elite Advisor?” quiz are part of the humbling process. Each gives you information that allows you to reflect on why you operate as you do, so the bettering process can follow.

There’s a good chance you’re thinking, “That’s great, Jon, but HOW do I make steps toward improving my practice?!” At Blueprint we believe that your success is our success, which is why we’ve developed tools to provide next-step guidance for financial advisors who want to improve in each of the four pillar areas of the Playbook — client service, practice management, investment management, and business development.