Lee Gjertsen

A group of motivated financial planners in Massachusetts are using their skills to help people in need – cancer patients at Boston’s esteemed Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

Clients in their 20s, 30s and 40s provide some unique challenges, but can be extremely rewarding to work with, according to Rebecca Schreiber, a certified financial planner at Solid Ground Financial Planning in Silver Spring, Md., who specializes in serving younger clients.

Total client focus is the key to success as a fee-only financial advisor, according to Irwin Gross, a wealth coach and one of the founders of Family Wealth Partners, a firm in Weston, Fla.

A need for higher-level support than interns could provide and a desire to help bright young people develop into full- fledged financial planners were the motivations behind a unique training program at Cornerstone Wealth Advisors, Inc. in Edina, Minn.

In the past, the Protocol was used to ease the ability of the big firms to recruit. Now, however, the Protocol is also being used by advisors to break away on their own, and some Wall Street firms are taking steps to prevent that and weaken the Protocol in the process.

Real financial planning requires a comprehensive focus on client needs, according to Kathy Stepp, principal and founder of Stepp & Rothwell, Inc. a financial advisory firm in Overland Park, Kan. To make that happen, Stepp says, her firm uses “very high ratio of us versus them.” In fact, she says, the firm has a staff-to-client ratio that is “probably unheard of in the industry.”

Making the right hires and using a firm-wide team approach to client service has helped Leonetti & Associates, a financial advisory firm in Buffalo Grove, Ill. grow and prosper, according to chief executive officer Michael Leonetti, who founded the firm in 1982.

Financial advisors spend too much time “running their practices like practices instead of like businesses,” says David B. Loeper, CEO of Wealthcare Capital Management, a Richmond, Va. a firm that provides services to advisors. And doing so decreases the number of clients they can serve and the overall value of the business, he says.

Financial Advocates, with over $2 billion in assets under management and more than $20 million in annual revenues, is what LPL calls a “Super-OSJ”, the title for its largest independent branch offices, which provide compliance supervision for other advisors.

Making the right support staff hires can improve the overall efficiency of a financial advisory firm and make it easier for top advisors to seek out and serve new clients, says Dan Davis, president and co-founder of ADK Wealth Advisory Group in St. Louis.

“We’re at the epicenter of these two companies coming together,” says Laurie Krupa, who was named head of the banking unit of the Global Wealth & Investment Management operation late last year.

Succession planning in a financial advisory firm is vital to long- term success and growth, according to Richard C. Salmen, a certified financial planner and senior vice president and senior advisor of GTrust Financial Partners in Overland Park, Kan.

Operating in a small city can present challenges but also quite a few growth opportunities for a financial planning firm. So says Cheryl Holland, a registered financial advisor and president of Abacus Planning Group, Inc. in Columbia, S.C.