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A lot has changed in the past few months. Our team has pivoted hard into the digital world. We've created a new weekly newsletter and podcast called The Way Forward. One consistent theme we're hearing from your peers is that the future is here. Most of us have spent almost half a year on zoom calls, rebooting our modems and being occasionally reminded of 80s proto-meme, Max Headroom. As monotonous as this has become, this expedited embraced of all things "virtual" is a windfall for top advisors. All indications are that geography will become less relevant of a filter in the search process. Advisors with an established digital team who embrace technology will be able to scoop up market share nationwide. This advantage will be multiplied by your ability to generate effective client referrals. See below:  In past the majority of your business might have been represented by the centralmost node of dots, where a client refers colleagues and associates within your region (or perhaps social sphere). Once distance is removed from the equation, you will now be able to engage entirely new networks of people in different states (or even countries.) Each one of these new clients then in return refer their peers. Your rate of growth will start to look more exponential and less arithmetic.
Hope everyone is safe and healthy.
Although the market is down, advisors — particularly top advisors — see an opportunity to differentiate themselves. “This is what I have trained for.” says top advisors Geri Pell. “This is when we really get to excel.” Advisors to high net worth investors also see a financial upside to disruption. "I think this may be one of the great buying opportunities for us for the next 10 years," says Hall of Fame advisor Christiane Olsen. This bullishness is echoed by the staff at Barron's. In a time of uncertainty like this, we have seen extraordinary interest in our content as investors seek out quality analysis.
We've been asking advisors who participate the Guide to Wealth if they've won any new business because of it. Here are some big wins advisors have passed on to us:
Despite the uncertainty ahead, there is an opportunity for top advisors to scoop up dissatisfied clients, and Barron's and WSJ are one of the best places to find them. In fact, we've seen subscriptions and online traffic skyrocket in the past month as readers turn to us for quality insight.
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Starting this week, we will be building out a new, improved advisor finder tool. While the FA map was great, the next iteration will allow visitors to delve deeper and create more accurate lists of advisors. The matching tool will show a list of all advisors sorted by geography and minimum account size. Visitors can whittle down this list by selecting from a set of filters. We will be testing this and gathering feedback in the next two months. Our goal is to launch it by March.
 The next issue of the directory will run Dec 2 in Barron's and the following week in WSJ. The theme is talking to your children about money. We'd like your input into topics for the upcoming February and May issues. If you have suggestions for what theme(s) we should focus on, email advisor.editors@barrons.com
Barron's is making a few tweaks the homepage to make the rankings and advisor directory more visible to Barron's readers. In two weeks the "advisor" module will now be "above the fold" – the term for content that doesn't require any scrolling. It is your direct input that helped sell this change to the development team, so keep the feedback flowing.  |
