How High-Performing Financial Advisor Teams Leverage and Implement Client Acquisition Strategies to Accelerate Growth

Wealth management firms have failed to produce meaningful organic growth in the years leading up to the early 2020s; treading water with average growth of 3-4% (Sharry, 2024), while client assets grew 19% during that same period (Dai et al., 2023). This was due, in large part, to wealth management firms struggling to drive client acquisition with tenured financial advisors (Crowley & Wagner, 2021). Although some research identified the client acquisition activities employed by financial advisors, there was a lack of understanding as to which strategies were used by high performing advisors and how they were employed. A modified version of the adaptive selling framework (Weitz et al., 1986), with a focus on lead generation, was leveraged for this qualitative research design to address the following research questions: 1. What are the primary client acquisition strategies of high- and average-performing advisor teams? 2. What process do high- and average-performing teams use to execute different acquisition strategies, and why did they choose specific strategies over others? 3. What are the similarities and differences in the strategies and execution methods of the high-performing teams, average-performing teams, and of both cohorts? Purposeful sampling identified 12 financial advisor teams at a wealth management firm to participate in the research; six teams with the greatest net new money growth from 2021-2023 were selected (high-performing), and six teams with average net new money growth for the same period were selected (average-performing). The instrument used for data collection was derived from the adaptive selling scale, developed by Spiro and Weitz (1990), and leveraged specific and newly designed questions from the scale. Video interviews were conducted with the lead advisors on each of the 12 teams; these interviews were recorded, and the results were transcribed. ATLAS.ti was used to code and analyze the results. Three primary themes emerged regarding successful client acquisition strategies: developing strong relationships and connectivity with referral sources; being intentional about interactions with referral sources; and leveraging centers-of-influence to driving results. The findings of this study may benefit wealth management firms and advisors in developing successful client acquisition strategies.