From the data collected on how RIAs spent their time each day we gleaned some interesting observations that illustrate differences between advisors across the three defined groups. Most notably, it appears that advisors at large firms tend to spend more time on business strategy, marketing, administration, and employee training. This is a logical result and likely indicates that the large firms tend to be more complex, offer a greater number of services, and employ more people. Growing firms tend to spend more time on client meetings and client acquisition, which are likely correlated with their success in growing their practices. Firms that did not fall into the large or growing categories do not meaningfully deviate from the other groups in any of the categories, but do report spending slightly more time on compliance, trading and office administration. If these firms aim to demonstrate more growth, they may need to outsource at least some of those tasks to free up time to focus more on client acquisition and service. Overall, it seems that devoting time to big picture tasks and one-on-one client interaction, while delegating focused work, like research, to others, is part of the recipe for the success of this year’s top RIA firms.
Next Part 4 of 10: Marketing Methods