David Bach, New York Times bestselling author and financial expert, racks up hundreds of appearances each year on TV, radio and in the news in service of a single goal: He wants to make financial advisors into local celebrities.
Bach, the co-founder of Topeka, Kan.-based AE Wealth Management, believes in financial literacy as a powerful tool for both advisors and their clients. “Advisors who take an active teaching role in their community to increase financial literacy and establish themselves as thought leaders can dramatically raise their own profiles,” he says.
To help advisors achieve this, Bach’s firm offers a number of tools they can use, including aggressive marketing packages, frequent trainings and a writing team that helps advisors put out their own books. Bach also created a number of turnkey seminars that advisors anywhere in the country can host to attract, educate and grow their client base.
Seminar topics include “Understanding Market Corrections,” which helps advisors educate clients before a market correction happens: “Smart Couples, Smart Retirement,” and “Smart Women, Smart Retirement” programs based on his New York Times bestselling books of the same name. For advisors themselves, Bach has taught “The Art of Client Referral Program,” which illustrates how to get rid of toxic clients and attract more of the best clients. “I’m constantly teaching advisors to have a deeper relationship with their clients,” he says. “As a result, they get clients for life and they get referrals.”
Bach has often predicted trends years before the wider financial services industry has caught on. For example, his book, Smart Women Finish Rich, was first released more than 20 years ago. That book and his seminar of the same name educated over a half million women through advisor lead seminars over the past two decades. Amazingly, Bach said “the industry is now finally recognizing critical need to have a closer relationship with their women clients.”
The trend to think about now? Wealth management services for millennials. While many advisors are still focused on retirees, Bach says, they shouldn’t wait to building relationships with their children. “If they wait – they will lose the next generation when their older clients pass away to millennial focused financial service firms.”
