Pershing

This option best suited for investment professionals who cannot or are not willing to share ownership of the firm. In the expanded solo practice, you would act as the relationship manager, supported by a team of specialists who are employees of the business. While most will receive a salary and bonus, you might give one or several employees a small stake in the company, increasing their share as they meet certain benchmarks. To boost retention and morale, you’ll also need to provide opportunities for career advancement, including such steps as regular performance reviews and formal training.

This is a good choice if you would like to provide more services, but revenues won’t support hiring more staff, or you don’t want to share equity and decision-making with a partner. With this model, you work with a group of professionals (e.g., paraplanner, estate attorney), but many of them will operate remotely. You’ll act as the primary relationship manager, overseeing all interactions.

Vital to this model is the implementation of the right technology, which will help you facilitate collaboration among virtual and non-virtual team members and manage the many remote relationships central to meeting client needs. For example, you’ll need document management software that allows you to share clients’ quarterly reports, financial statements and contracts with outside experts.

Each team member may bill the client separately. You may also share referral fees or have central fee billing depending on the code of conduct of that individual’s profession or your desire to control the client relationship.

Consider this one if you’ve decided to share or combine your practice with another professional—and you’re after high growth. With the wealth management team model, you’ll bring on a full-blown team of internal specialists and likely, at least one partner. You can choose one of two flavors: a horizontal team, with a circle of equal partners, or a more-hierarchical vertical organization, with a formal reporting structure.

You’ll probably start by giving key employees a small share in the practice. However, as the business matures, you may consider partnering with a professional who has complementary skills. For best success, roles and responsibilities will need to be clearly defined and put in writing.

For the rest of the team, it’s also crucial that each person clearly understands his or her role. To that end, it’s especially important to create job descriptions that not only lay out duties, responsibilities and goals, but also outline the reporting structure. For example, who has equal responsibility and authority, and who is a subordinate.

No matter what model you choose, you need to make sure you have the right people on your team. To that end, define the roles needed to accomplish your goals and the skills, behavior traits and motivators appropriate for each job. Then, evaluate existing team members to understand more clearly their skill sets, preferred work styles, strengths and weaknesses and what motivates them. Consider using a personality assessment tool such as DISC (dominance, influence, steadiness and conscientiousness) to help you. DISC is the four quadrant behavioral model that examines the behavior of individuals in their environment or within a specific situation. It therefore focuses on the styles and preferences of such behavior. Based on your assessment you may find you have to reassign duties to different team members or make changes to your staffing structure.

With that accomplished, you can assess the gaps in your team and what roles might require hiring from the outside. When hiring from the outside, before conducting interviews, create a compatibility questionnaire that zeroes in on important skills and business drivers. Remember, in many cases, skills can be learned on the job but behavioral traits and values cannot.