When selecting potential clients, wealth, life cycle situation, age and profession are the most commonly cited criteria on which advisors across all three channels focus. However, when we parse the responses we note a few interesting observations. For the W/R and RIA advisors, client wealth is the leading screening criteria by far, with response rates above 60% for both channels. Wealth is the most popular criteria for IBD advisors as well, but just not to the same degree (48% rate this most important). We also observe that life cycle situation and age are slightly more important to the W/R and IBD channels than they are to RIAs. The profession of the potential clients is roughly equally important across all three channels, a pattern we also observe when we review other criteria. Indeed, among the less popular criteria, the only one that registers any dispersion of response rates is hobbies/interests, which is over twice as important to W/R advisors relative to the other channels. Among the advisors who report having no current focus on specific criteria, there are slightly more who indicate that they have no plans to develop such a focus when selecting clients than those who would like to do so.
Next Part 2 of 8: Effectiveness of Different Marketing Methods For Attracting New Clients