You are a unique financial advisor with a special set of skills, goals and passions that no other advisor can match. But in a crowded, competitive financial advisory market, how do you express that individuality?

“The challenge is that, to the public, a financial planner looks like a financial planner, who looks like a financial planner,” says Mark Wardell, president of Wardell Professional Development in Toronto. “Until people really look closely at an individual, they don’t immediately see the difference.”

An important way to make yourself stand out is to identify and articulate your goals as a financial advisor.

Create a mission statement

A mission statement, according to Wardell, is your “purpose statement.” It’s the reason why you, as an advisor, exist on a business level and why your business exists. The statement should outline the fundamental reason why you are an advisor and why you do what you do.

“Some people will say that their mission statement is their elevator speech,” says George Hartman, CEO of Market Logics Inc. in Toronto. “A mission statement is much more than that.”

Write your mission statement from the point of view of the client, Hartman advises.

“Most advisors don’t really do a great job articulating their mission statement,” Hartman says, “because they tend to do it from their own perspective.”

So, instead of saying “I sell mutual funds,” a mission statement might say, “I help my clients reach their long-term financial goals.”

Wardell offers these examples of mission statements for a financial planner:
-“Our mission is to promote health and prosperity to all clients.”
-“Our mission is to bring security and prosperity to people’s lives.”

The process of developing a mission statement forces you to clarify your objectives and what you aim to provide for clients in terms of products and services. It can also include intangibles: “I provide clients with financial peace of mind.”

Here are some tips to help you create an effective mission statement:

– keep it short — one or two sentences;
– focus on telling why a client should do business with you;
– make it easy to understand and free of jargon;
– make your statement appeal to the aspirations of the person reading it;
– include words that reflect and describe your passion for what you do;
– make your mission unlimited in scope.

IE