Which of your people does what, how the first ninety days go, and the three decisions a firm has to make before it starts.
Three decisions to take first
Firms that stall usually stalled on one of these, and all three are easier to settle before anything starts than after the first introduction.
Who owns it. One partner, named, who the adviser deals with and who answers questions internally. Arrangements owned by everybody are owned by nobody and produce nothing.
Who raises it with clients. One partner keeping it themselves is the simplest start. Client managers raising it reaches far more of the book and needs an hour of training and someone watching quality.
Which clients first. Firms that start with a shortlist move faster than firms that start with whoever happens to come in. A read of the client list against the public record produces that shortlist without anybody having to go through the files.
Who does what
The partner. Signs the introducer agreement, owns the relationship with the adviser, raises it with their own clients, and looks at the quarterly review.
Client managers. Notice the moments in the meetings they already run, use the approved wording, and record the introduction.
Whoever runs the practice software. Exports the client list once, at the start.
Equity & General. The adviser, the fact-find, the research, the suitability report, the compliance file and the annual review.
Nobody in your firm needs to learn financial planning. They need to recognise five or six situations and know one sentence for each.
Training the client managers, specifically
This is one hour, once, and it is the highest-leverage hour in the whole arrangement because it is what turns a partner-led trickle into something that reaches the book.
What the session has to cover is short:
The handful of situations worth noticing, with what each looks like in the accounts rather than in theory.
One sentence for each, already approved, so nobody has to invent wording under pressure.
Where the line sits: describing a problem is fine, prescribing a solution is not, and the answer to “what would you do?” is always that it is a question for the adviser.
What to do with a yes, which should be one action and not a form.
What the session should not cover is financial planning. A client manager who has been taught about pension wrappers will eventually explain one to a client, which is the outcome the whole structure exists to prevent.
The first ninety days
Week one. The introducer agreement, and a call to agree commercial terms. Your engagement letters, permissions and professional indemnity cover are untouched.
Week two. Meet the planner matched to your firm. Send the client list so it can be read against the public record.
Weeks three and four. An hour with the client managers on the moments, the wording and the line not to cross.
Month two. Two or three introductions from clients you already had in mind. Most partners sit in on the first adviser meeting.
Month three. Review what happened, what was recommended and what came back to the firm, then decide how widely to use it.
The two failure modes
The first is training everyone and then never referring to it again. The signals fade from memory within about six weeks unless something in the meeting routine prompts them, which is why one line on the year-end agenda outperforms a good training session.
The second is the partner who intends to do it personally and never has the time. If the only route into the arrangement is through one busy person’s diary, it produces very little. Firms that put it in the client managers’ hands, with the partner reviewing, do several times the volume.
What to measure
The temptation is to count introductions, which produces pressure and eventually produces bad ones. The more useful measures say whether the process is working rather than how hard people are pushing.
Coverage. For how many of your owner-managed clients can the firm say whether the question has been asked? This is the number that matters and the one nobody tracks.
Conversion from shortlist. Of the clients flagged as worth a conversation, how many have had one? A low number points at the process, not the clients.
Outcome visibility. For every introduction made, can the firm see what was recommended? If not, something has broken in the reporting rather than in the advice.
Client reaction. Complaints and thanks are both informative, and in practice the second is far more common than firms expect.
Questions your people will ask
“What if the client asks me what they should do?” The correct professional answer is that it is a question for the adviser, and saying so raises your standing rather than lowering it.
“What if they already have an adviser?” Ask when they last had a review. A client advised once several years ago and not since is in a different position from one who is actively looked after.
“What if the advice turns out badly?” The advice is given under Equity & General’s permissions and stands behind their professional indemnity cover. Your firm’s role is documented as an introduction.
“Will it look like we are selling?” Not if the conversation starts from something visible in the client’s own accounts and ends with an offer rather than a recommendation.
What good looks like after a year
A practice of moderate size, running this properly, is having the conversation with a meaningful share of its owner-managed clients rather than all of them, and is hearing back on every one. The measure worth watching is not how many clients were introduced. It is whether the firm can say, for any client on the list, whether the question has been asked.
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