Mentoring has become a hot topic in the industry as boomer advisers prepare to pass the torch to younger advisers. Clearly, adviser/business owners need to mentor junior advisers to ensure that they’re ready to accept that torch. But what, specifically, are you mentoring the junior to do?

Often, senior advisers have very different ideas about the skills they want a junior adviser to develop. For example, a busy established adviser may not want a junior to learn rainmaking skills nearly as much as he wants the junior to take responsibility for some of the firm’s smaller clients, giving the senior more time to make rain. That’s a far different situation from the parent/child relationship, in which the junior is the heir apparent and will be taking over the business.

Some common reasons for developing a junior adviser include:

Supporting the senior adviser with client meeting preparation and follow-up, and perhaps delivering a specific segment of the client review meeting.

Taking on the senior’s smaller “C” clients and becoming their key contact and financial adviser. Beyond assuming responsibility for the relationship, the junior might focus on mining those clients to discover unmet needs and possibly new assets or business for the firm.

Actively rainmaking to bring new clients to the firm. The senior may or may not stipulate the type and size of new clients the firm will accept and the junior adviser is allowed to bring on board.

Spearheading special projects for the firm, such as introducing new presentations, investment models, marketing programs and technology—from financial planning software to client contact management systems.

Gearing up to take over business management and leadership. Responsibilities could include creating or updating the business plan, assessing profitability, managing human resources, conducting technology audits, and reviewing the firm’s client classification system and service matrix.

Once you’ve defined your priorities, be clear about the role or roles you expect the junior adviser to assume. From there, you can set specific goals for the competencies the junior needs to develop. Defining your expectations up front will help the junior calibrate his or her activities accordingly and set the tone for a fruitful mentoring relationship.

Joni Youngwirth
Managing Principal of Practice Management
Commonwealth Financial Network
Waltham, Mass.

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How do you develop a junior adviser into a full-fledged producing adviser? With more senior advisers thinking about succession—and fewer junior advisers entering the business—that’s become a pressing question in our industry.

Unfortunately, there’s no quick and easy way to transform a junior into a senior or even mid-level adviser. After all, think of everything a senior adviser masters over the years, including:

• How to manage the financial lives of hundreds of clients simultaneously
• How to sustain and deepen relationships with those clients
• How to make rain and attract new clients to sustain the firm’s growth
• How to run a thriving business

That wisdom and expertise simply can’t be developed overnight.

Of course, it’s not just a question of how quickly junior advisers are able to absorb all they need to know. Seniors, too, face numerous hurdles as they assume the role of mentor.

For advisers who have been practicing for decades, one often overlooked challenge is translating the specifics of their activities into words. They may not realize how much of what they do every day is “in their bones,” and it can be difficult for them to explain how, exactly, they carry out their sophisticated responsibilities. If asked how he or she approaches client management, for instance, a seasoned adviser may well reply, “It depends.” Those words aren’t particularly enlightening to a junior adviser.

To ensure a fruitful mentoring relationship, the senior adviser needs a clear, specific language to describe key activities to the junior. For technical knowledge, the CFP^® program provides an excellent six-stage framework for the financial management process. But what about critical areas like relationship development, rainmaking and business management? For these activities, seniors will probably need to draw on various resources to develop a vocabulary suited to their particular practices. For example, the 20-point system can be a helpful tool to introduce a junior to the rainmaking process and your revenue-generating activities.

Given the senior adviser’s responsibility to explain what he or she does, and the junior adviser’s need to learn multiple languages at once, it’s easy to see why the mentoring process works best when undertaken over a period of years. If you plan to train a junior adviser to take over your business, why not get started today?

Joni Youngwirth
Managing Principal of Practice Management
Commonwealth Financial Network
Waltham, Mass.

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