Ever feel like client acquisition is a black box: fundamentally unpredictable and impossible to decode?
Many advisors we talk to believe organic growth is an anomaly. Sure, it happens. But they feel powerless to generate, forecast, or replicate it at scale.
The problem is they often haven’t mapped their sales and marketing funnels. Client behavior seems erratic; marketing feels like alchemy; and AUM growth becomes near-impossible to forecast—all because they don’t track the journey their prospects go through.
This article explores how funnels work and how mapping them can drive more reliable growth.
Funnels are a systematic way to map the buyer journey, allowing you to visualize how prospects become clients. While they are inherently imprecise—nobody behaves exactly as simple models predict—these funnels are remarkably effective at predicting how leads act.
The traditional funnels are split into two distinct sections:
But for our purposes here, we’ll discuss them as a single funnel that has three distinct stages:
Sales and marketing funnels are not optional. And they are not purely imaginary. Your prospects already move through a set of broadly predictable stages, regardless of whether you decide to formally systematize or track them.
The question is whether you want to know what those stages look like—and how you can ensure your firm is there at each stage, giving clients what they need,
Wealth management is a high-trust industry; the average journey from first touch to signing a contract takes several months—and a lot of lead nurture. Even referrals often require significant engagement before they convert into clients.
The process is also highly non-linear: prospects often shop around for a new advisor on-and-off for many months before they start seriously considering a change. Rather than making a clear, rational decision, they are influenced by everything they’ve seen and read during that long period.
Many advisors excel at one phase of this journey. You might be great at developing lead magnets, but offer almost nothing to help prospects choose between your firm and a rival. This creates nurture gaps where prospects must go elsewhere to find the information or support they need to make a decision.
Structured sales and marketing funnels help you fill those gaps. You gain a clear view of the sales and marketing cycle; then you develop content that speaks to prospects at each stage of the journey.
Those long sales cycles also take place across multiple separate channels—often including both in-person and digital interactions. This fragments the sales cycle; how do you build a unified view of prospects when they’re engaging differently across several disparate channels?
Funnels make it easier to keep tabs on these complicated omnichannel journeys. Rather than treating interactions on each platform as distinct, you can map content onto specific funnel stages. Your email, LinkedIn, and website can work in tandem to move prospects through the funnel—and toward signing a contract.
The average advisor has a few hours per week to focus on marketing; even large RIAs we work with generally feel they are time-poor and stretched thin budget-wise. So every piece of marketing must serve a strategic purpose—and actually help generate revenue.
Funnels help allocate resources more efficiently and optimize your ROI. You can quickly identify where the gaps in your funnel exist and prioritize fixing them. You can also map your unique prospects’ behavior to tailor your marketing strategy to increase conversions.
This is the key to creating scalable processes that help you keep driving AUM growth over time. But how exactly do you do that?
While the basic stages of marketing and sales funnels are universal, every firm has its own unique clients and marketing approach.
Our experts recommend four basic steps to map and optimize your funnels:
Your best insights about conversion aren't in marketing blogs or competitor analysis—they're buried in your own CRM data. But most firms treat historical data as an archive rather than an instruction manual.
Start with what you already have: objective data about how clients really engage with your firm. Every subsequent step will then be based on reality, rather than conjecture.
Most funnels aren't designed—they're inherited. Duct-taped together over years of "let's try this" campaigns. They leak because they were never complete to begin with.
A real funnel is reverse-engineered from the decision moment backward. You need to know exactly what information, proof, and reassurance someone requires at each stage of the journey. Then build the path that delivers those things in the right sequence.
The gap between your ideal funnel and your actual funnel is your growth opportunity. Most firms discover they're excellent at one or two things—such as a strong LinkedIn presence or solid webinar content—while entire stages of the buyer journey are held together by hope and manual follow-up.
The wins don't matter if prospects fall through the cracks between them. Find where people get stuck or disappear, then fix those breaks before you build anything new.
Mapping your funnel is strategic; building the systems that execute it is operational. Plenty of firms do the first part, get excited, then never finish the second.
The single factor that makes AUM growth scalable is process. Automate everything you can. Build reliable systems to forecast growth and optimize results. Build funnels that won’t need an overhaul in 6 months.
ProperExpression is the only marketing agency that offers RevOps specifically built for financial advisors.
Using proven frameworks and creative problem solving, our team has helped leading firms unlock unprecedented AUM growth—while spending less time and money on marketing and sales efforts.