I want to take some time to give you some insight into what it will look like in the future to be an Advice Professional. It is critical that you understand how much is changing and how much of both opportunity and risk there is for you. If you are not already planning to be on this journey then I really do want to slap you with my words…not for my own agenda but because I believe in what you do for people and want to see you do more of it rather than less.
‘The best way to predict the future is to invent it’ (as Steve Jobs used to say), and many of the changes we are predicting we have already pioneered and tested, and then replicated across market-leading firms. Let’s take a closer look at some…
1) Advisers will be focused on developing people skills at scale
Good Advisers will be more focused on the people skills and more specifically ‘people skills at scale’. That is one of my favourite quotes and one that I use to express the true heart of the ‘socialisation of business’. Over the last two decades, the focus has largely swung towards compliance and the technical aspects of Advice and the focus on soft skills, bedside manner, referral generation and even sales training has largely disappeared. What’s worse is that those who are focused on the old methods of soft client skills have not kept up with changing technology, and ‘social to digital’ behaviour, so they are fast being left behind.
However, those Advisers who are taking the time to invest in themselves and to grasp the wide and very real opportunities that Social Service and Social Selling provide are creating a competitive advantage that will very quickly change the business landscape of the Advice professions. Two years ago when I began speaking publicly about these ideas, I said that professions had around five years to adapt or be redundant, and I still believe that prediction to be correct (if not a little conservative) based on all of the unique intel and data we have gathered on the Australian Advice community.
If you can grasp people skills you can also grasp people skills at scale, however, there is a requirement to educate yourself, practice, and most of all have a willingness to set aside ‘fear of change’. This will mean that over the next 2-3 years there will continue to be a widening gap between those who have embraced change and those who have not, and the difference to profitability is like comparing the horse to the modern car.
These Advisers will spend as much time learning about neurology, psychology and the art of Social Advice than they will learning about Advice strategy. Ultimately good technology and better use of systems also mean that compliance and the technical aspects of Advice are now more than ever just commodities rather than being the key value driver for both firms and the end clients.
2) Advice firms will outsource A LOT
We are now also living in a global community and with the rise of broadband internet and more sophisticated systems for security, supervision, accounting and legal protection, it is easier than ever to outsource all of the non-relationship elements of any professional services firm. Firms are quickly learning that outsourcing means you can have business capabilities larger than you ever dreamed and still reduce your cost to serve.
What most Advisers think of as outsourcing in today’s environment is really just hiring Australian contracts to do the work that you used to have staff do; similar price but with less fixed overhead is the primary benefit here. The outsourcing and offshore hiring I am talking about is fundamentally different.
What leading firms are discovering is that the argument for outsourcing or offshoring being a destroyer of Australian jobs is actually false. What it means is that your business is so much more scalable and profitable you can actually grow your local team, have them doing more high-value tasks, and ultimately pay them more.The problem, of course, is that just like with Social Media, if you try to do this without a fundamental understanding of these activities and how to execute, you will lose money and fail fast. But for those who embrace this opportunity well, it represents an evolutionary leap forward in their productivity versus costs.3) All Advice firms will be ‘multimedia houses’Despite what some marketing and PR firms might tell you, outsourcing your ‘public face’ into someone else’s control is NEVER a good idea. Advice firms in the future will have ‘in-house’ creative teams (both internal and offshore), and this is something we have seen develop very quickly with the firms we have worked with, as they move to create their own dedicated resources to keep pace with the rate at which their businesses are evolving and prospering.The key components in the early stages are Social Plan Coordination (the person who ‘organises’ Advisers), graphic design, videography and copywriting. The good news is that in the early stages most of these skills can be found in one person at intermediate levels reasonably easily. Many multimedia, journalism or creative degrees and diplomas cover all of these areas.In the future, all Advice firms will be as much focused on spreading their message, and relationship management and client communication, as they will be on the Advice delivery.This is just a factor of simple profitability and what clients actually WANT and VALUE.