Lesson 1 | Develop a Strong Strategy

Transcript: Welcome to the first Lesson and Goals to Outcomes. In this Growth Lab course, you're going to learn how to develop and define your business strategy and goals to drive the right outcomes. This is the first of four lessons. In this lesson, I'll share how to think like a consultant when business planning, specifically the three things that should inform your business strategy and goals. Each lesson short and interactive, we're going to help you get started to take action right away. In order to make the most of this lesson, make sure you have the one page business plan handy, either electronically or in hard copy. You can access the one page business plan in the goals to outcomes course page. I'm Shauna Mace, head of Practice Management at SEI. My mission is simple. It's to help you and your team grow. At SEI, we're focused on creating better braver futures.

Together, we want to help you do what you do best. We do that by offering curated investment solutions, custody and technology solutions, and of course practice management. Let's get started. When I work with advisors, specifically when we're business planning, I ask a few key questions. The first one I want you to consider is what do you need to accomplish this year to consider it a success? Next, do you have documented business goals, and if so, how are you progressing towards your goals? In my experience, about half of the advisors I work with have written down their goals and a plan to achieve them. Many are not happy with the results that they're seeing. My guess is if you're watching this video, you're not progressing quickly enough.

According to investment news, research 2021, pricing and profitability study update advisory firms a UM growth in 2020 largely came from market performance, followed by assets from existing clients, then referrals, and finally, development efforts. According to the same study, revenue at participating firms grew 8.4% in 2020. I'd ask you to think about, does that sound like you? Are you largely growing from market performance and your existing clients and not through organic growth? Now, your growth goals may not be a UM or revenue based. You may be looking to grow with the right ideal clients or through increased efficiencies. Regardless of how you define success, there are a few specific drivers of growth and three essential components that I want you to think about and consider when you're developing your strategy and goals. At SEI, we see three main drivers of growth for firms that are between lifestyle and large ensemble or mega firm, those firms that have the resources to build out custom infrastructure, so if you fall between that lifestyle and mega firm, these are three opportunities I want you to think about as you're developing your strategy for growth.

The first is by specialization, and by that I mean focusing on an ideal client profile or persona. We have an entire course dedicated to educating on why this matters and how to develop and implement personas in your business. The second driver is partnership. How can you gain scale with third party partnerships and affiliations? SEI is a great example of a strategic partnership. The advisors we work with outsource aspects of their business to us, such as investment management, back and front office, technology plus more. What are the areas of your business you love and have the time and expertise to do well versus those areas that may be better outsourced? There are compelling statistics that show the impact of outsourcing aspects of your business, such as investment management. In my experience, advisors that outsource report benefits such as significant time saved, stronger client relationships, retention, profitability, revenue, and more.

The third driver of growth is integration. How can you gain scale and efficiency in your business through operations and technology specifically by defining processes to leverage your technology to help you accomplish the goals that you have and to deliver on the personalization, the experience and services that your clients and your future clients expect. If specialization, partnership and integration are key drivers or opportunities to grow strategically, how do you determine the right growth strategy and tactics in your business? This leads us to the three essential components that inform strategy and tactics. Effective business strategy and tactics are built on three things. I'm going to put my consultant hat on. When I work with advisors and their teams, I start by getting to know their business and really I'm listening for the three essential things to inform the recommendations I make. The first essential component are your goals.

What do you want to accomplish or said another way? What does the ideal future version of your business look like? In the next lesson, I'm going to walk you through an exercise to help you gain clarity of goals if you don't already have them, we're also going to help you prioritize your goals. In my experience, when we focus on too many things, nothing or very little happens and it can be incredibly frustrating, so I advise on having no more than one to three main goals in a year. If you already have clarity on your one to three goals, you can skip the second lesson and move straight to the third on commitment, where I teach you how to define effective goals to drive action and outcomes. The second aspect that should inform your strategy are your ideal clients. If your goals provide direction on where you're going, your ideal client is who you want to grow with.

If you have clarity on who your ideal clients are, great If you don't, we can help you with that in the persona course. And last but not least, your strength and opportunities. They're the third leg of the stool that helps to inform your strategy and tactics. When we put these three components together, your goals, your ideal client and your strengths and resources, it should inform your strategy, where you want to go, whom you want to go with, and how to leverage your strengths and resources to help you get there as effectively and efficiently as possible. Your strengths are the things that you and your team are great at. Strategic Coach calls them your unique abilities. For example, you may be a great writer or you may have a specific planning expertise. Maybe you have a partnership that can add value to your ideal client in a specific way that's relevant to them.

So strengths can really be almost anything. Opportunities are situational. You may have an opportunity because of where you are geographically or who you choose to serve. There are always opportunities in your business. Sometimes what seems like a constraint is actually an opportunity. It can be challenging to evaluate your own strengths and opportunities, so I'd recommend you get input from your team, a trusted peer or professional partner. The more inputs, the better. The more perspectives, the more you're going to start to understand what are the true strengths and opportunities in your business to leverage. When you think about growth, what I want you to do is to leverage your strengths and opportunities in alignment with your ideal client to support your goals. If you have a current growth strategy you're using such as event marketing, ask yourself, is my current strategy and tactic supporting my growth goals?

Ideal clients? Am I taking advantage of our greatest strengths and opportunities? If the answer is yes to all of these questions, great. If it's no, you may want to reconsider your approach. It's time for your first assignment. Take out your one page business plan. I want you to identify your goals, your ideal clients, and strengths and opportunities by completing the highlighted sections. Start by identifying your top goals, your one to three goals. Make sure that you are writing down what is your current situation and what is your ideal future situation? Where are you today and where do you want to ideally go in the future? Who do you want to go there with? Who are your ideal clients? And on the back page, complete the SCOT analysis, specifically focusing on the strengths and opportunities. When you triangulate what you want to your goals with who you want to accomplish it with, your ideal clients and how to best accomplish those goals.

By leveraging your strengths and opportunities, you can start to gain clarity on what is the right strategy and tactics to meet your goals. One of the greatest challenges is not having clarity of goals. Clarity provides the direction and focus needed to accomplish big things and empower others to help. If you need help gaining clarity of goals to make the greatest impact in your business, proceed to the next lesson. Again, if you already have clarity of your one to three goals, you can move on to lesson three, which is focus on commitment. In this first goals to outcomes lesson, we reviewed the key drivers of growth, which are specialization, partnership and integration. Then we focused on the three essential components that should inform your strategy and tactics to help you think like a consultant in your business and drive the right outcomes. Those are goals, your ideal clients and strength and opportunities to gain clarity and prioritization of goals and commitment from you and your team. Continue on to lessons two and three. Thanks for joining me. Great job showing up to work on your business, not just in your business. Let's grow.