Advisor goes from 860 clients to zero, makes more money

And that explains why advisors working with CPAs don’t get their partner’s A clients.

“These [A clients] are worth hundreds of millions of dollars,” Lombardi says. “That translates into over $100,000 in fees to the CPA. They’re never going to take the risk of sending you those clients.”

It was that realization that caused him to rethink how advisors need to approach CPAs. It dawned on him that he needed to stop threatening to compromise the CPA’s relationship with his clients and instead enhance that relationship.

An advisor could accomplish that by making the CPA the advisor’s client and by helping the CPA address the problems and inefficiencies inherent in the CPA’s, or tax attorney’s, business model.

These tax professionals “are the hammer, but they don’t have a nail.”

Putting that nail to use means making it unambiguously clear to the CPA that it’s his nail. Most advisors show off their “tool kits” to CPAs, but Lombardi says they need to completely take themselves out of the equation and learn about the CPA’s needs.

Perfect Client trains advisors to first determine if there’s a match between the two professionals. For example, Lombardi’s practice focused on affluent business owners and wealthy families.

Second, the training session counsels advisors to verify that the CPA has trusted relationships with his clients.

The final step is convincing the CPA “that by working with someone like you, he can do it better.”

Making that case requires trust. Trust is established through relationships, and relationships, Lombardi says, are restricted to the very few people one finds it worthwhile to invest a lot of time in.

That’s why Perfect Client’s process involves advisors integrating their practice with the CPA program over a 12-month period, during which the advisor does nothing without the CPA’s approval. It is always clear that the CPA is the primary advisor, and the investment advisor is just part of the CPA’s team.

“We become the go-to person for the go-to person,” Lombardi says. “When [the CPA] needs something, we meet with him; and only then do we present solutions to the end user; only then do we become entrenched with the end user.”

That process completely changes the dynamics between the investment advisor and the client, who, Lombardi says, will ask his CPA: “‘What do you think? Should I do it?’ Then the CPA says, ‘I think you should.’

“And that’s it,” Lombardi says. “There’s no selling, just solving.”

The barrier to advisors’ success is the perception they’re trying to sell things. The benefit of the advisor-CPA alliance is the focus on solutions, says Lombardi.

He adds that both advisor and CPAs end up “having it all” — higher income and more time to spend on the important things in life, like their families.

Scott Johnson, Perfect Client’s director of sales and marketing, says the firm trains between 30 and 40 advisors a year. The program, which they used to conduct as a three-day live event, is now conducted over 24 months in order to keep advisors “focused and accountable,” he says.

“We keep our training sessions small on purpose,” Johnson says. “It lets us get more interactive and personal with the advisors.”

Lombardi says about half of the advisors in his training program come from wirehouses, the other half from independent broker-dealers — one of which, he says, recently sought to buy his firm, an overture he rebuffed.

The difference between advisors and CPAs, Lombardi concludes, is that “what advisors are trying to do is sell the end user something to make money; the CPA, on the other hand, needs to take care of the end user to make money.”

Lombardi’s solution, in essence, is for the advisor to take care of the CPA.