Andrew Sumitani

Claude can now read a prospect's bank accounts. Plaid-linked, read-only, up to two years of transactions. A lot of firms still lead with a free cash-flow checkup to get the first meeting. That offer just got harder to sell. techcrunch.com/2026/11/05/cl…

What's a post for? Leads, firms say. One step up: being the name that comes to mind when someone's friend asks who to call. That person may not like, comment, or follow for a year. Judge the post by that and "no leads" looks different.

Every purchase comes with a receipt. Advice doesn't. A client leaves a great meeting with nothing to show anyone. So "is your advisor any good?" gets "yeah, he's fine." Give them a receipt. One idea they can repeat. A one-page summary they'd forward.

Your clients know who you are. Their friends don't. Their kids don't. The CPA down the hall knows your logo. The effort goes to people who already know you. The next clients come from the open circles. Give one of them a reason to remember you this quarter.

Nobody wins "sell me this pen" by talking about the ink. Intro calls are full of ink. Credentials, process, the team page read out loud. All true. Mostly not why people say yes. Take the ink out of your first ten minutes and see what's left.

"Sell me this pen" tests who asks a question first. People believe what they say out loud more than what they're told. A prospect who says "I've been putting this off for three years" just made your case. You can only ask the question that lets them say it.

"Sell me this pen" is four questions. When did you last need to write something down? What happened? What did it cost you? Want one? The advisor version: When did money last keep you up at night? What happened? What did it cost? Want help next time?

Microsoft offered buyouts to about 60,000 people. Decision due early December. Asked ChatGPT, Grok and Google which Seattle advisors a Microsoft retiree should call. The 5 local RIAs under $500M I tested never came up. The firms that did had written about Microsoft benefits.

Where did you hear about us tells you the last click. What made you want to contact us tells you the motive. A Google search and a website only capture a decision made earlier, often after a podcast or a LinkedIn post. Ask for the motive.

Demand capture finds people who already want an advisor. Demand creation makes them want one. SEO and AI answers do the first. Your talks, writing, and client relationships do the second. Budget for both, and measure them differently.

The client reading problem: prospects cannot judge advice quality, so they judge what they can see. A firm that makes its process, its fees, and its client type visible gets chosen over one that is better but unreadable.

Referrals are demand creation done by your clients. Search is demand capture. If you only measure what search captured, you will cut the work that made people want to call. Track who mentioned you to whom, not just who clicked.

Advisors don't have a lead problem. They have a reading problem. A prospect can't tell a good advisor from an average one on a website. Make the quality legible before the first meeting: a specific client type, a stated process, and a way to see the work.

Ask every new client one intake question: what made you want to contact us? Not where did you hear about us. A search box records the last click. It does not record why they wanted an advisor in the first place. The answer is where demand creation happened.

Schwab surveyed 1,235 RIAs. 44% now track client referrals as a growth metric, up from 15% a year ago. Meanwhile Schwab's own referral network takes about 100 of its 17,000 firms. The custodian pipe is closing for most. The one left to build runs through clients and CPAs.

Every custodian referral program prices your new client about the same: a quarter of your fee. Robinhood takes 25% of revenue. Schwab charges 26.25 bps on the first $2M. Fidelity, 25 bps plus $50,000 a year. Count it as rent, not growth.

Every open prospect record belongs in one of three states. 1. Active, with a next step and a date. 2. Warm, with a trigger and a date. 3. Closed, with a reason. You'd be surprised how many firms have made-up ones with a bunch of maybes. There is no fourth state.

AUM growth is a poor scoreboard for marketing. A good market year adds assets no matter what. Count new households. Then count how many of them knew who you were before they called.

Tell me you lost the prospect in the first meeting without telling me. "They said timing wasn't right." Timing has a date. If you can't name the event they're waiting for, log it as a loss and make sure CRM knows why.

Custodians can block agents at the front door. They can't block a client who asks an AI which advisor to hire. The firms that show up in that answer are the ones with something written about them. Discovery is the next custody fight.