Outcomes from the Advisor Relations Playbook at U.K. SIC
Advisor Relations
At the 2021 U.K. SIC in London, I shared ISG’s findings around which issues are the main challenges for Advisor Relations professionals. For example, we found their number one problem was demonstrating the ROI for their function.
After working with many members of the community to develop a solution to this challenge and more, I was excited to introduce the development of our Advisor Relations Playbook at the 2022 U.K. SIC, just last month.
This is playbook details the major expected outcomes for an Advisor Relations program, then, respectively, offers recommended actions to achieve them, key stakeholders who need to be involved, and metrics that derive value from each.
Components of the Advisor Relation Playbook
Below are the 7 Expected Outcomes of an Advisor Relations program. This is not meant to be a rigid list, but rather highlight the major activities Advisor Relations professionals engage in today. Please note:
- This is the starting point of the discussion and there are likely other things this list could include.
- A tremendous amount of detail goes into each of these expected outcomes, and those are included in the full playbook.
- Some providers may only have one expected outcome, many will only pursue two or three, and some may be interested in all seven.
- How you prioritize these outcomes may change year-to-year (or perhaps more often).
| Expected Outcome | Summary Description |
|---|---|
| 1-Maximize Invite and Win Rates | Methods for increasing your invite and win rates for each third-party advisor (TPA) engaged with your work. |
| 2-Market / Account / Competitive Intelligence | Obtain insights about the market, accounts, or competitors to enable decision making. |
| 3-Marketing | Leverage the TPA's brand to drive market awareness. |
| 4-Joint GTM - White Space Opportunities | Collaborate with TPA to create new market opportunities where both parties contribute time, insight, and IP to open a new account |
| 5-Win Non-Advised Deals with TPA Help | Engage advisors to ensure we position ourselves as effectively as possible on specific non-advised deals |
| 6-Leverage TPA Offerings in Provider Pursuits | TPA's offer services to their clients that we can leverage in our own sales process to increase our differentiation from our competitors |
| 7-Retain/Expand Existing Accounts | Leverage TPA's to minimize value leakage, ensure clients are happy with our relationship, and to help identify new opportunities within our existing accounts |
The 7 Expected Outcomes are listed in order of their prevalence. The first Expected Outcome—Maximizing Invitation and Win Rates—is the cornerstone of most every provider’s Advisor Relations program. This Expected Outcome was the genesis of the Advisor Relations function, and invitation and win rate are the main measuring sticks for many programs.
For the other Expected Outcomes, providers are less likely to have the process and specific tactics in place to systematically derive and measure value. Many can point to one-off successes in these areas, but few have yet to unlock value repeatedly. This is no fault of the provider community—the third-party advisors need to have their own processes in place as well.
The playbook has a lot of detail that supports expected outcome. For each, we’ve identified:
- What specific actions you can take to support your team’s success
- The key stakeholders you’ll need to engage with internally to maximize success
- Metrics you could potentially use to derive value from each
Across the entire Advisor Relation Playbook there are 58 specific actions Advisor Relations team can take to support these Expected Outcomes. You’re likely doing many of these already, but hopefully this will give you some new ways of thinking about how to drive success.
While all these Expected Outcomes have a common goal of creating growth for your firm, different measurements of success (beyond invitations and wins on advised deals) should be used for each. The Advisor Relations Playbook identifies metrics you can use to quantify the value created from each Expected Outcome.
Thank You!
A special and sincere ‘thank you’ to (in alphabetical order) Ed Gyurko-Computacenter, Kim Hurry-Kyndryl, Dan Mehigan-Capgemini, and Cindy Schwartz-Mindtree for your participation in this very fun project! You are true professionals and your collaborative spirit helped produce this first-in-the-industry guide—thank you!
Next Steps
The Advisor Relations Playbook, in my view, is an excellent vehicle to communicate the value of your program to your leadership team, to identify and collaborate with stakeholders throughout your organization, and as a planning tool to evolve your program.
If you’re interested in learning more about the Advisor Relations Playbook, I intend to run a webinar in the first quarter of 2023. Watch for an invitation!
If you’re interested in getting started more quickly, I’d be happy to schedule a workshop where we can review your program objectives and path forward together.
As always, I’m interested in your thoughts. Let’s keep the discussion going!
Regards,
Paul
P.S. If you’d like to access any of my prior writings, you can find them here.
