With 600 RIA Participants Already, Schwab Expands Practice Management Program

On strategic planning, Georgis says attendees go through a SWOT analysis to identify their strengths and weaknesses, “then we work with them after that” to determine “what we need to do get them where they want to be.” Most firms might have a vision, Georgis sayd, “but it’s helpful to get them to articulate” the vision and then “streamline it to make it plausible.” Returning to the SWOT analysis, advisors are encouraged to explore “what’s keeping you from realizing your vision? What can you do today? Advisors are finding that process incredibly helpful.” Just having a vision isn’t enough, Georgis says, since “the vision won’t work without a game plan.” Many firms are “separating themselves from the pack,” he says, “with much better results than others,” including doing more strategic planning, segmenting their client base, and creating a client service roadmap. Such firms tend to “understand the importance of succession planning” which entail not only “putting people in place so the founding partner can transition out of the firm, but finding and keeping the right people to be the next generation of owners.”

“We meet our clients where they are,” Georgis says, with Schwab “not dictating that they have a certain vision” but working with the advisors to achieve their own visions, though Georgis points out that an advisor’s chances for growth success “goes up dramatically when you do things like client segmentation.”

Georgis believes that advisors are “much more willing” to spend the time and energy to improve their firms than they have in the past, but with the understanding that they “need to be more targeted.” By participating in these workshops, writing a strategic plan and a succession plan, “they’re creating more enterprise value…giving them more options” with the result that it’s “good for clients, employee and the next generation” of advisors.

In addition to what Schwab’s ITA consultants deliver to attendees, in tandem with Schwab’s regional relationship managers, Georgis says that a major benefit of the workshops is that the advisors learn from one another in these specific areas of concentration.

The programs are delivered by Schwab’s core team of business consultants in conjunction with regional relationship managers around the country; they include onsite RIA office visits.