The Financial Advisor Business Plan...Is it important to You?

A financial advisor business plan is just as important or more important than what products you provide.

Many advisors for the most part are results oriented and a buisness plan is a delayed benefit. Trainor adds the other issue to the lack of financial advisor business plans on the part of a financial advisor is when they must plan the 1, 3, 5 year outlook.

Because of the complexity involved many advisors will shy away from the exercise. If you are concerned with which way your business is headed or don't know how to start a financial advisor business plan you may want to look at the financial advisor software by Norm Trainor The Entrepreneurial Challenge "Building Your Business". What the package will actually do is take you step by step to building a financial advisor business plan.

You will notice that it is laid in a very simple way in a multimedia format. Which means there is audio and visual aids. There are also exercises that you will complete right on the system.

The CD-ROM is divided into six sections, in the introduction you are asked what type of financial advisor are you? An income producer or a business builder? Norm Trainor says these are the two basic types of financial advisor, the entrepreneurs or the vast majority being income producers.

An income producer is looking to replace income earned working for someone else with income earned through his or her own efforts. The primary measure used for success is how much income is being earned.

As a financial advisor you tend to look at an investment into the business as an expense. The business builder on the other hand make up only 3% or less of entrepreneurs and know they are looking to create value in the business, they are essentially looking for leverage.

The leverage can come in the form of hiring other people, residual income, trailers and renewals on insurance. The business builder is looking to build a business that is not dependent on them. While the income producer is building a business solely dependent on themselves.

This is a very different approach and you must decide which of these two entrepreneurs you want to be or become. Once you are clear on what you want then you can begin to build your business plan.

The second part of the CD-ROM takes you through defining your business. What is your vision for the business (where are you going)? What is your business to look like 1, 3, 5 even 10 years from now.

What is your mission (why are you here)? Another part to this section is looks at values. It is important to be clear about what it is your value in your work and in your business.

In the third section you begin to set 3-year objectives of where you want the business to be. Norm Trainor believes that a financial advisor business plan set 3-year objectives far enough into the future due to the complexities involved if you plan farther than that.

In the next section you are looking at your current operations. Marketing objectives, sales and services activities, staffing, the structure of the organization. At this point you will go through the exercise of assessing the major tasks that have to be performed.

Probably the most powerful parts of the CD-ROM is the financial management section. As financial advisors Norm Trainor notes that most don't do a good job of managing their own financial health and well being. Financial management looks at all the aspects how do you insure the profitability of your business? How are you going to finance it?

This will take you to an excel spreadsheet, which includes: an opening balance sheet, an income and expense pro forma for up to 5 years. Along with a cash flow projection and analysis for the next twelve months and 5 years out. What makes this package more useful than other business planning software is that it is all based on a financial advisor's business. It doesn't matter if you derive your income from fees or commissions.

You can break out what are your various revenue streams from different products and services along with the margins you enjoy. So at a glance your financial advisor business plan can look at the whole financial picture of your business. In the final section you look at ways to delegate and utilizing resources. Here you will figure how to best delegate to people, delegate to technology and building your organization.

Depending on how much work you put into each section, expect it to take 4-6 hours to complete your business plan.

Once you complete the CD-ROM all of your work is downloaded onto your financial advisor business plan template. It then can be used in a couple of ways to use in your business or negotiate your banking relationship, for potential investors or partners. More importantly you now have a clear statement of direction of where your business is going.

More than a decade ago the role of an advisor was to sell and acquire clients. In the new millennium Norm Trainor sees the role of the financial advisor changing, today they are building businesses skills have to be broader than ever before.

The advisors that will be most successful will build an organization that is able to optimize the amount of time they have to operate at their highest capability. In other words doing what they do best, planning for the clients' financial health.