How to Grow and Become a Better Financial Advisor

You want your business to succeed, but what does it take to go from a good financial advisor to a great financial advisor? It’s a question many advisors ask, and the answer isn’t always a straight path. Business development is part of the puzzle, but personal development is just as important. Learning how to grow as a financial advisor can help you better serve your clients as the industry evolves.

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How to Grow as a Financial Advisor and Build a Thriving Business

Successful advisors understand the importance of connections and creating a client experience that can’t be matched anywhere else. Growing as a financial advisor sometimes means reshaping your service approach to deliver exactly what your clients need.

1. Make Emotional Connections

Your clients come to you for financial advice, but they may be looking for more than just investment recommendations. According to a 2024 Million Dollar Round Table survey, 74.7% of Americans say that it’s important for advisors to demonstrate emotional intelligence.

What does that mean? Emotional intelligence, or EI, is the ability to be self-aware and manage your emotions, while also being aware of the emotions of others. In an advisory setting, that means being able to recognize when clients are upset, anxious or distressed, and knowing how to respond appropriately and empathetically.

Developing your emotional intelligence can help you better understand your clients and how emotions influence their decision-making. That, in turn, can help you deepen trust and foster stronger relationships if you can react and respond in ways that truly speak to their needs.

2. Become an Active Listener

It should come as no surprise that advisory clients value effective communication skills. In a 2024 YCharts survey, 85% of high-value clients said that more frequent and personalized communication could enhance their confidence in their advisor.

Using active listening strategies can improve your communication with clients and help you better understand what they need from you. Active listening means paying attention when clients are talking, and using spoken and unspoken cues to indicate that you’re hearing and absorbing what they’re saying.

Active listening strategies include:

Giving the client your undivided attention and making eye contact throughout the conversation.
Allowing your client time to complete their thoughts before asking questions.
Using what they’ve said to direct the questions you ask and keeping those questions open-ended.
Paraphrasing or restating what the client has said to ensure that you understand them correctly.

The goal of active listening is to keep both sides of the conversation fully engaged in it. Active listening, when paired with emotional intelligence and empathy, can lead to more powerful and productive client conversations.

3. Invest In Learning

Two advisors discuss how to grow as a financial advisor.

Advisory services is an ever-changing landscape as tried-and-true methods of doing things are replaced with newer, more innovative techniques. If you’re interested in how to grow as a financial advisor, then learning is an important part of the journey.

Where should you direct your efforts? A little self-assessment can help point you in the right direction.

For example, if you struggle with attracting new clients to your business, you may want to take a deeper dive into marketing strategies for advisors. Some of the areas you could focus on include:

Search engine optimization (SEO) as a website traffic driver
Social media and how to increase engagement
Email marketing and the power of drip campaigns
Personal and business branding

You may also consider adding one or more certifications or designations to your resume, which can help you grow your service offerings. Holding CFP® marks or designation as a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA), for instance, can add to your expertise and credibility, which could help you attract more clients.

4. Embrace Technology

Tech adoption has become increasingly critical for client engagement. According to J.D. Power, 86% of advised clients engage with their account through their advisor’s website. Meanwhile, 60% of advised clients do the same through their advisor’s mobile app.

Look at your current tech stack and ask yourself if there’s room to improve. For example:

Could you offer a secure portal that allows clients to log in and view their accounts and transaction history?
Do you offer a streamlined digital onboarding experience that new clients can complete from anywhere?
Is your customer relationship management (CRM) platform equipped to meet the demands of a growing business?
Where does AI fit in? For example, have you used ChatGPT or similar services to assist with social media content creation?
Are you using digital tools to streamline back-office processes, so you have more time to focus on client service?
Have you considered how an advisor marketing platform might help you attract more qualified leads and nurture those relationships automatically?

If you’ve been reluctant to invest in tech because of the cost, the learning curve or something else, you could be hindering your growth. If implementing a slew of new tech tools or strategies feels overwhelming, consider tackling one thing at a time so you have an opportunity to explore them fully.

5. Set Goals

Goalsetting is one of the best ways to motivate yourself and grow as an advisor. When you set clear goals, you force yourself to break out of your holding pattern and take action that pushes you forward.

As you set goals, choose ones that are specific, actionable and measurable. For example, saying that you want to increase revenue is a vague goal that you can’t really pin down. A better goal would be to increase revenues by 15% year over year.

This goal is specific and measurable so that you can easily track it. And it’s actionable because you can break it down into smaller steps. For instance, you might set a monthly goal of connecting with 50 new prospects. You can then break that goal down into specific actions, such as:

Creating a new lead magnet that you’ll share on social media
Increasing your digital ads campaign budget by 10%
Partnering with an advisor marketing platform to get matched with leads

When you fully flesh out your goals this way, the path to achieving them becomes much clearer. As you achieve one goal, you can set a new one to continue driving growth.

Bottom Line

There is no secret to grow as a financial advisor, it simply takes time and effort.

The secret to how to grow as a financial advisor is that there is no secret — it simply takes time and effort to become a better advisor today than you were yesterday. The strategies shared here are designed to inspire you to focus on your personal growth to fuel business growth and create a better client experience.

Tips for Growing Your Advisory Business

Marketing takes time to perfect, and you may be interested in finding ways to simplify your approach so you can direct your energies elsewhere. Working with an advisor marketing platform is one way to gain new clients without leaving the clients you have hanging. SmartAsset AMP (Advisor Marketing Platform) is a holistic marketing service financial advisors can use for client lead generation and automated marketing. Sign up for a free demo to explore how SmartAsset AMP can help you expand your practice’s marketing operation. Get started today.
Strategic partnerships and collaborations are another way to grow your advisory business. Forming partnerships with other advisors, financial professionals and financial influencers can help you tap into a broader audience and gain more exposure for your firm. Networking can help you build the connections that you need to increase your business’s visibility and potentially gain new referrals.