I ran a pricing session recently with an advice team under-pricing nearly half their client base.
Nothing unusual there, most comprehensive advice teams are.
What was interesting was the discussion with the newest adviser at the end of the table, Lisa.
She has been in the team for two and a half years and is in her Professional Year.
Not yet accredited.
Not able to give technical advice on her own.
The last discussion in sessions like this is when I ask everyone what they plan to implement as a consequence of the discussions and agreements made.
Lisa said she couldn’t really do much with the new pricing concepts herself. She will support the other advisers with their fee plans instead.
Fair enough, an expected response from someone getting through their PY.
Except, should it be?
I asked if she has good relationships with any of the clients we’d discussed?
Yes. In fact, she said quite a few of the clients discussed contact her directly.
Were any of those clients that contact you directly also ones we identified for an uplift of fees from $3,300 to $5,500?
Yes. Several.
So, I asked her: would it be a breakthrough for you, if you, not the other advisers, could secure that fee increase with some of those clients that already contact you directly?
She looked at the three more senior advisers in the room.
She waited for their response.
Crickets.
She said she didn’t believe she could, as she was still in her PY.
I asked the whole team a different question.
Are there expected changes or new technical, product, or specific service recommendations attached to the fee conversation for these clients for whom Lisa was already acting as the contact?
For the majority of them, there wasn’t any expected technical advice or new recommendation that would need to be provided.
So what’s stopping Lisa from delivering the fee uplift conversation?
She responded saying she assumed fee conversations, including fee increases, were for qualified advisers only.
TEAMS OF EXPERTS VS EXPERT TEAMS
Here’s where most firms get stuck.
Most advice firms build teams of experts.
Each expert adviser owns their qualification, their clients, their patch. The majority of issues outside strict technical competence get positioned, managed and delivered as if they need the same license.
Principal advice teams, compared to specialist advice teams, build something different – expert teams.
Not everyone needs to be expert at everything.
But everyone needs to be skilled and trusted with the most valuable elements of the relationship – i.e. why the client is paying the advice fee – which does not require a technical qualification.
Here’s the thing for principal advice teams: while product or service performance is crucial, the majority of ongoing value, that is, what keeps existing clients on their best possible financial paths, isn’t the technical aspects of the advice.
It’s client care.
It’s project management.
It’s the follow-up.
It’s never forgetting what is of most value to them and continually checking in on it.
It’s the skills and trust-building in the most crucial conversations about what they’re worth to the firm and what the firm is worth to them.
None of that needs a Professional Year certificate.
All of it needs the skills to build and maintain the enduring trust between every client and their expert advice team.
WHY THIS MATTERS MORE THAN THE TECH STACK
Advice teams are rushing into better AI, better systems, better presentations, better data management, all in the name of productivity.
Meanwhile, a significant productivity gain from a team member with two and a half years of client relationship already built is left sitting on her hands because nobody skilled or supported her, believing only technically qualified advisers can discuss fee increases even when the uplift has nothing to do with new recommendations or different technical advice.
Yes, you can improve productivity by giving your least experienced person better tools, software and systems.
But that does not compare to the productivity gain by skilling and supporting them to leverage the client trust they and the firm have already built in the parts of the job that are not locked behind the need for a technical qualification.
WHAT HAPPENED NEXT
By the end of the session, every adviser in the room, including Lisa, agreed to have fee increase conversations with their specific clients.
But the more important agreement was the second one: they’d help each other prepare for these crucial conversations.
Everyone agreed to support each other with their uplift conversations, particularly the difficult ones, by preparing their approach, positioning, and conversational frameworks with the team first.
That’s the actual difference between a team of experts and an expert team. The expert team is only as strong as its least confident member, so they show up for each other when someone’s being asked to perform at a level they lack the confidence for.
The most junior team member could be sitting on as much relatively untapped value as senior team members.
Not because they know more. Not because of a qualification.
Because they already have what no system, no AI, and no new software can manufacture: a trusted relationship.
What or who is stopping them from using it?