A high-growth, profitable practice with overjoyed clients is the goal of most financial advisors. But for many fast-growing, successful businesses, growth comes at a price — and the cost is often consistency. When each team member is passionate about the practice and the clients, they often spend their time reacting to client needs, changing market conditions and opening new accounts, and it is not uncommon to develop different ways of doing things and systems that live in people’s heads.
At some point, it becomes clear that continued growth is hindered by the very habits and conditions that fueled the initial growth. To continue growing a successful practice, you must create and codify standard operating procedures (SOPs) and continuously update them to meet the needs of clients and your business.
“A lot of times when advisors try to do things that someone else in the organization does better, they don't do it as well. They don't follow processes, they just wing it. And pretty soon people are batting cleanup, trying to help fix the mistakes that they made. With a great process, advisors can be more confident in delegating. And I think clients will get better outcomes from those experiences.”
— Max McQuiston, Advisor Practice Management Consultant at Capital Group
According to Capital Group’s 2024 Advisor Benchmark Study, high-growth advisors are 59% more likely to track metrics related to the effectiveness of their SOPs and use the information to refine business.
Take a look at the SOP creation frameworks in this lesson, and then use the tool to create your own set of codified SOPs. You’ll walk away with a repeatable process for designing, documenting and delegating key procedures. All to align your team and uplevel your operations into world-class territory.
INSIGHTS
Designing SOPs to support scale
In this video, Max McQuiston discusses the utility of creating and implementing SOPs to manage time, prioritize client services and drive sustainable growth and business value.
Max McQuiston
Advisor Practice Management Consultant
3MINVIDEO
Primer
Create SOPs for scale and efficiency
Every advisory practice has a rhythm — how client meetings are prepared, how accounts are opened, how follow-ups are handled. In a practice’s early stages, that rhythm is often driven by instinct and experience. It works, until it doesn’t.
As your business scales, informal routines can become a liability. What once felt efficient starts to create inconsistency. Team members may interpret tasks differently. Details are missed. And growth begins to outpace your ability to manage it.
That’s where standard operating procedures come in. SOPs provide clear sets of directions for how important business tasks are handled. They’re about more than documentation: They're about delegating without losing control and growing without compromising quality. They allow your practice to operate with consistency even when you're not involved in every step.
SOPs also do something subtle but powerful: They turn what makes your practice great into something others can carry forward. They free up your time, sharpen your team's focus and create a more reliable client experience.
To build SOPs that truly support scale and efficiency, start by choosing one area of your business that would benefit from greater consistency. Then apply the five Ws to unpack the process:
- When is this task completed?
- Where is the necessary information stored or accessed?
- Who owns the task from start to finish?
- Why does it matter — to the client, the business or both?
- What is the ideal outcome?
This is not just about getting the steps right. It's about making your expectations clear and repeatable, so that outcomes become more predictable — and easier to improve.
The next step is to communicate the SOP, which can be via step-by-step instructions, hierarchical processes and flow charts.
Step-by-step instructions
- Step-by-step works well for straightforward processes that have only a few steps and require no decision-making. With each step there is a distinct goal that builds upon the steps before it.
- An example of a step-by-step SOP might be a client conversation framework.
Hierarchical process
- A hierarchical format is better for workflows that include multiple stages or contributors. It is similar to the step-by-step in that it requires no decision-making. It’s a top-down approach that helps you break down a more complex process involving more steps or sub steps.
- An example of a hierarchical SOP might be a client prospecting process.
For illustrative purposes only
Flow chart
- A flow chart is ideal when decisions or branching paths are involved. Whether the process is simple or complex, a flow chart will help you run through various scenarios in a systematized way that anyone can follow to best complete the tasks in a particular situation.
- An example of a flow chart SOP might be an emergency response process.
For illustrative purposes only
The format you choose matters less than the clarity you create. The best SOPs are simple, specific and easy for others to follow with confidence.
This lesson includes a guided tool to help you create your first codified SOP. You’ll define the task, apply the five Ws and select a format that brings structure and clarity to your process. Once complete, you’ll have a repeatable template for translating your most important processes into something scalable.