Those of us who have been in the industry a few decades have seen just how rapidly the business has been transformed by tech. There are more great tools than ever before that you can use for customer support, productivity, and other business aspects.

Here’s the challenge:

1. Advisors who are not leveraging new technology well tend to fall behind in client experience (and retention)
2. There are too many options available to financial advisors. The time it takes to research, vet, and implement new tech is substantial.

If that feels circular, we’re here today to plot a straighter course through the maze. We’re going to tackle the core tools the modern advisor should have in their toolbelt. Here’s an overview:

1. Financial Planning Client Portal
2. Risk Tolerance
3. CRM
4. Marketing + Growth
5. Compliance

1. Financial Planning Client Portal

The cornerstone of the successful advisor is the ability to communicate clearly with your clients. In the modern advisor landscape, this isn’t just your face-to-face communication skills. Your clients are increasingly accustomed to a consolidated view of their finances. The traditional “stack of statements” has been left in the dust.

Many advisors may use a few different tools to create a consolidated view (you can see an example here), but it’s good to have a central platform that your clients can use as their main platform. We currently recommend a tool like Orion or eMoney for this role.

Going the Extra Mile: You may want to find or create resources to help your new clients learn to use their portals effectively. As always, your job is to bridge the knowledge gap between them and their financial plan!

2. Risk Tolerance

Yes, financial planning is a multi-faceted discipline, and investing is only one component. Still, as most advisors may tell you, many clients focus on their investments (for better… or worse).

On the one hand, your investment strategy for a client is designed to meet your client’s financial needs. On the other hand though, the strategy – and how you communicate it – needs to reflect their personal comfort zone and risk tolerance. This can be especially challenging when you first bring a client into your firm.

That’s why we highly recommend using a tool to assess risk tolerance to give your conversation a clear starting point. For our advisors, we provide access to Riskalyze. Our clients take their risk assessment survey which points to a Risk Number. That metric helps them understand their own place on the risk spectrum, and it helps to show them how their risk tolerance aligns with the investing strategies we recommend.

Going the Extra Mile: If your client is a married household, have both partners take the assessment individually. Their differences in risk tolerance may be more likely to cause unrest than any market volatility!

3. Advisor CRM’s

Yes, a CRM is table stakes for advisors in the modern landscape. It seems unlikely that anyone still has an actual Rolodex on their desk…

If it’s such a common tool, why is it then that most advisors underutilize the platforms they use? Most CRM’s are not just a digital stack of contacts and addresses. They have robust marketing tools built in that often sit dormant for most advisors! If you’re only using your CRM for names, emails, addresses, and P.I.I., consider using tags to better segment your audience in ways that help you engage them more personally. We recommend using tags like:

• Age ranges (are they more concerned with 529’s or 401k’s in this season of life)
• Relationship status (can be targeted for topics like marriage, divorce, or aging together)
• Self-employed
• Stage of career

You may know these data points, but using your CRM tags to identify lists of contacts helps you address them and their lives more personally.

4. Marketing + Growth

If financial planning has an overwhelming buffet of tech options, marketing goes a step further. That is why marketing tools are among the most underutilized tools in the financial advisor’s tech stack.

For most advisors, they lean on a 2-tool marketing stack: your CRM and basic email marketing. These are essentials, but they may not be enough to actually drive new business beyond word of mouth. For those that are looking to accelerate their growth, here are a few pieces of marketing tech that you may be able to use: (please talk to your compliance officer first!)

Lead Magnets + Automation

Lead magnets are a great way to grow your prospect contact list (and add value to your current clients), but you need an automation tools to operate these call to actions (CTA). Here are a few of our favorites:

1. Salesforce + Pardot (more complex and may require a 3rd party in support)
2. Hubspot
3. MailChimp

Any one of these tools can give you the functionality you need to run successful lead-generating campaigns.

Content Marketing

While outsourcing your marketing efforts may be the right fit for some advisors, others are comfortable in the DIY space for budget or simplicity reasons. If that’s you, here are a few tools to keep your marketing strategy strong:

1. Canva (template-based graphic design + video)
2. Fiverr (a platform with low-cost access to services like video editing and design)
3. Repurpose.io (great for repurposing your content so you can get more mileage)
4. Buffer (makes social media scheduling easy and fast)

Remember, tech platforms like these have a very specific purpose: leverage. Using them should create value to your marketing–value like more time, exposure, or better conversion rates. And like a lever, it only works when you use them. Don’t invest in tech you don’t have time to use!

5. Compliance Portal

Have you ever met an advisor that loves compliance? Maybe not. Still, it’s a necessary part of ensuring our industry’s integrity and practices. The best you can do is have an easy-to-use experience with your compliance officer.

While this isn’t a piece of the tech stack that you provide, you want to work with a compliance office that uses a portal you understand and like. The better your team is able to use your compliance environment, the more you can save on time and (critically) mistakes.

Finding Your Tech Stack Sweet Spot

Like we mentioned, a well-oiled tech stack is an advisor’s best friend, but getting there is far easier said than done. Researching, vetting, and implementing new technology is clumsy, time-intensive process. That’s why new technology should meet the following criteria before you ever bring it on:

1. It needs to have a clear goal that your whole team (relevant users) understands.
2. It needs to streamline your processes (efficiency) or improve your output (value).
3. It needs to integrate with other technologies in your tech stack.

Want to know another way to find a great advisor tech stack? Work with a firm like WealthPlan Group that has already done the research and vetting of each individual technology. Plus, our support team is here to help you with adopting your new tools.

Our integrated tech stack is one of the best in the industry, providing independent advisors with the resources-at-scale they need to accelerate their growth. To learn more about what advisors enjoy when they work with WealthPlan Group, take a look at our tech stack or talk to a member of our team.