Getting that many new clients will be hard, as the survey shows. SEI holds training sessions teaching its advisors how to capture new names-mostly by developing centers of influence among CPAs, estate attorneys or even heads of human resources at corporations to find people who are retiring or leaving early.
Another problem, he says, is that advisors often refer to a new account as a new client, even if it's not a new name. That doesn't expand the network, he argues, or allow the advisor to cast a wider net.
"We do networking exercises with advisors where we actually have them put down their networks-both professional centers of influence as well as client networks, their clients-and we go through that and when typically we're done, that list gets
expanded fivefold. Because they don't think of some of their networks, and that in itself identifies targets of opportunity to increase their business," he says.
"But our experience," he adds, "is that [RIAs] do generally overestimate the number of new-name clients they receive a year because it's not something that they focus on that the sales manager would in a public corporation, for instance. They're not counting them that way. They're more [asking]: 'Is my business growing?' And it's more of a feel than it is a science for a lot of advisors."