054: Enhancing Advisor-Client Engagement with Visual Tools: Insights from AssetMap's VP of Community, Alison Susko

In this episode, I have the pleasure of welcoming Alison Susko, VP of Community at AssetMap, to explore the revolutionary impact of visual storytelling on the financial advisory landscape. 

She shares her in-depth insights on how AssetMap's innovative approach is redefining advisor-client interactions, promoting heightened engagement and understanding.

AssetMap: Simplifying Complexity for Meaningful Conversations 

• The Genesis: Alison delves into the origins of AssetMap, tracing its roots to founder Adam Holt's experiences as a financial advisor. She highlights the pressing need for streamlined, visually captivating communication tools that bridge the divide between intricate financial strategies and client comprehension.
• The Power of Conversational Planning: AssetMap's guiding philosophy centers on "conversational planning" - meeting clients where they are and sparking productive dialogues through accessible, easily digestible visuals that encapsulate the essence of their financial narrative.

Seamless Communication: Bridging the Physical and Digital Divide 

• Versatility Across Platforms: Alison underscores AssetMap's adaptability, with its visual tools engineered to deliver consistent impact across various settings, from in-person meetings and virtual consultations to impromptu discussions at a client's kitchen table.
• The Post-Pandemic Landscape: The conversation delves into the evolving preferences for in-person and remote advisory services in the wake of the pandemic. She observes a balanced 50-50 split and the enduring appeal of remote meetings, particularly among older clients who have embraced digital communication with enthusiasm.

Empowering Advisors: Technology as an Enabler 

• The Concept of Advisor Intelligence (AI): Alison introduces the notion of "Advisor Intelligence" (AI), emphasizing AssetMap's dedication to empowering advisors with technology that complements and enhances their unique strengths in forging client relationships and delivering personalized guidance.
• Seamless Integrations and Strategic Partnerships: The discussion explores AssetMap's extensive integrations with trusted vendors in the financial technology ecosystem, illustrating how these connections streamline data entry, save time, and provide a holistic view of a client's financial tapestry.

The Future of Financial Advising: Trends and Opportunities 

• Navigating the AI Revolution: She shares her perspective on the growing influence of artificial intelligence (AI) in the financial industry. She emphasizes the importance of striking a delicate balance between harnessing AI's potential and preserving the human touch that defines the advisor-client relationship.
• Simplifying the Complex: The conversation highlights the broader trend of financial technology companies developing solutions that demystify complex topics like tax planning and estate planning. These advancements enable advisors to serve as the central touchpoint for their clients' multifaceted financial needs.

About our Guest:
Alison Susko, is VP of Community at AssetMap.

You can learn more about her work at:
Website: https://www.asset-map.com/team-1

About Your Host:  Paul G. McManus is an accomplished author and expert in helping financial professionals grow their businesses. With over eight years of experience working exclusively with financial professionals, Paul has helped his clients generate tens of millions of dollars in fees and commissions.

Claim your free audiobook copy at: www.theshortbookformula.com

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:32

Welcome everyone to another episode of the Million Dollar Producer Show. I'm your host, paul G McManus. Today I have a special guest, allison Susco. Allison is the VP of Community at AssetMap, a technology firm dedicated to creating visual communication tools used throughout the customer and advisor journey. Welcome to the show, allison.

Speaker 3: 0:52

Thank you so much for having me, Paul. I'm excited to be here and can't wait to chat with you.

Speaker 1: 0:56

Yeah, me as well. Just before we went live, we were having a nice conversation, so I'm just really excited to have this conversation on record with you so that our audience can learn from all the insights that you're going to share with us. Now, just to frame things out a little bit, we're going to both be attending the upcoming Elite Growth Academy in June in San Diego. Give me a high level. Who is AssetMap? What is your role there? How do you interact with advisors?

Speaker 3: 1:22

Yeah for sure. So AssetMap's been around for about a decade and we consider ourselves to be conversational planning. Advice engagement is another really hot topic out in the industry. Michael Kitsis, we helped him create the advice engagement category here at AssetMap and the idea is to really just meet clients where they are and make sure that a client is in a meeting being in a meeting with a prospect, an advisor who's working with these folks can actually get out there and relate with someone through visualization. Visualization is really our strong suit Taking that meeting, taking some of the complexity that's out there and making it into a simple, easy visual to see if things are on track and facilitate discussion with your client during a meeting.

Speaker 1: 2:04

I come at this from a non-advisor, so in 2016, I started working with advisors. I've been working with advisors pretty much exclusively ever since, and what was interesting to me at least, was that early on, I attended some of these meetings with typically life insurance producers that do huge cases that could be worth millions of dollars, and I'd watch some of the presentations and, between you and me, I hope no one's listening to this but they were deadly dull and not engaging and I walked out, probably not knowing anything better, and I looked around me and all the advisors who had expertise in this I think they were taking notes and they were interested because that's their expertise but I could just imagine, wow, if they're presenting in this way to a client, it's going to go right over their head. So I guess, fundamentally, what is the problem, if you want to frame it that way that you guys identified and that you help advisors solve?

Speaker 3: 2:55

That's a great question. Our CEO and founder, adam Holt, was a longtime financial advisor. He actually jokes around and calls himself a recovering financial planner. So he is now a tech CEO at AssetMap and he was an advisor, like I said, for a couple of decades a very successful firm out of Philadelphia. And, to your point, the problem that he felt like he was solving was he was spending all this time getting very deep, using complex tools, finding out to the detail exactly what needed to be done as far as planning goes for a client.

Speaker 3: 3:26

There is nothing wrong with that, by the way, doing complex planning using complex systems to make sure that someone's on track for their goals, especially things like retirement. It's table stakes. However, when you get in front of a client and you're meeting with them, like you said, a lot of times, it goes right over the head, it's confusing and people just shut down. They're not able to make good decisions. When there's complexity, complex reports. There was really, I think, a trend in the industry to do as much as possible right. As far as technology goes, you could do the most complex trust scenario wills, different kinds of really complex situations that need to be solved for and they're legitimate, but when it comes to the meeting level setting using visualizations was something he really wanted to focus on. So the practice was succeeding. But as far as the individual client meetings go, there was a bit of a gap when it came to the communication. In that exact meeting, the complex reports, the 80-page documents, were not resonating. The clients were saying things like this is great, this has been an amazing meeting, but just file this away because I'm never going to read it again.

Speaker 3: 4:26

Adam really wanted more engagement. He wanted to be able to have a really good communication going. Asset map was created as more of a process, even originally, than a technology per se. We just became a full-blown technology about a decade ago when Adam was probably using the asset map visualization process manually almost up to 15 years ago, and it took off from there and you can imagine at a large firm what ends up happening is production goes up, results are phenomenal and his peers started saying, hey, what are you doing? I would love to use this process as well. And it went viral from there and it's pretty exciting to see where it's come in so many years. But it didn't take long for people to see you've got this great process that clients are really buying into. They absolutely love what you're showing them and in that case, you're uncovering opportunities, really doing what's best for the client when it comes to best interest in KYC as well.

Speaker 1: 5:18

I heard you say I think Adam, the founder or CEO of the company, got started doing this process back in I believe you said 2012 or so. What's interesting is that I embraced the I'll call it the location-free business model back in 2015. And, of course, I started using Zoom and all these. So I'm sure you can appreciate it wasn't until maybe five years later when the pandemic happened and everybody was forced to go virtual and figure out how to effectively engage both clients, prospects and everything else, and so one of the things that I heard you say was that the tool itself and I'd love to have you deep dive a little bit on this but it was designed to be just as effective whether you are meeting with a client or prospect in person, whether you're meeting them on Zoom. Help us understand that better, because that seems like a remark. So how does your software make an advisor effective, regardless of their in-person or remote?

Speaker 3: 6:15

Because we're trying to always simplify the complex. I talk about simplifying the complex a lot and because we're always striving to do that at Asset Map provide something that is extremely valuable but not taking you six hours. Get ready for a meeting in 15 minutes instead of three hours. Help your staff be more productive. Scale your practice to be able to work with more folks, either new folks, or just get to more of your clients that maybe you haven't met with in a couple of years. All of that is accomplished by again staying away from 80 pages, compiling it down to five or six really valuable reports that people again they resonate with. That just works with a screen share. You can't share 80 pages on a screen share it just it does not work. So the ability to have not only a visualization and for those of you who haven't seen AssetMap clearly we're on a podcast here, but it is just taking the household, whoever's important in a household client and spouse but also business interests, trusts, children, beneficiaries all of that can be viewed in a nice visualization on the screen. It just works on a Zoom.

Speaker 3: 7:19

Adam really was passionate about having the experience be the same, whether it's a client in the office using a smart board, for instance, over a Zoom, like you and I are today, or even sitting at someone's kitchen table with them and meeting personally.

Speaker 3: 7:33

That way, he wanted the experience to be the same.

Speaker 3: 7:36

He had a lot of folks that were maybe half in Florida, half in Pennsylvania, and he thought I don't really just want to meet with them when they're up in the Northeast, I would like to be able to check in with them effectively while they're down in Florida. And he took his practice. I think it was and I can't speak for him 80 or so percent remote back in 2012, which was really unheard of and, as you can imagine to your point about the pandemic, when that came about, everyone on the tech side was wondering what was going to happen. It was a very volatile time. Assetmap we had some record months for sales around the pandemic because people to your point, advisors were not fully remote at that point by any means and they realized they needed to do something pretty quick to keep their clients comfortable and realizing that this was a very tumultuous time and using AssetMap really was helpful for a lot of our subscribers and we blew up a bit around that time because we made the remote so accessible for those folks that needed to pivot very fast.

Speaker 1: 8:34

I'm curious now we're several years past the pandemic Do you find that the advisors that you work with or that you're aware of, do they have a preference to now working remotely, or do they have a preference for working in person? Or just any insider thoughts there?

Speaker 3: 8:48

I don't know. I think people definitely went a little bit back to in person, which, by the way, I think is wonderful. There's no replacement for an in-person meeting. When everybody got back to conferences and even small meetings, I think it was great to be able to reconnect with people personally. But I think folks are at least doing it 50%, I think that's if I were to throw a percentage on it and people we talk to, there's definitely maybe a half and half kind of meeting situation going on.

Speaker 3: 9:15

Clients really enjoy the remote still and clients who really do prefer the in-person. But the ability to just, like I said, pivot regardless of what you maybe feel is what you want to do. It's all about what the client wants to. And another interesting trend we've seen is especially older generation clients. They're still loving the remote meetings and that's something that I think really stood out to me was people who really embraced chatting with their grandkids over. We all know what happened. It did stick around and I think it really helped people level up on all levels when it came to embracing technology a little bit. But I would give it like a 50-50 if I had to guess in person and remote, my understanding is that your company, you work currently with 6,473 advisors across the country as of this recording.

Speaker 1: 10:02

Is that an accurate number?

Speaker 3: 10:04

It's darn close, paul. We were joking around beforehand about that. I would say that's pretty close. Yeah, we are lucky to be growing by the day and we have a gosh I think let's call it between 30 and 40 broker-dealer partners out there that have put us through the whole process that it takes to be compliant and blessed for their folks to use Asimap, and we have a lot of great partners at different levels that are helping us promote this great software that we're selling.

Speaker 1: 10:34

Building on that, tell us a little bit more about your experience with Elite Resource Team. Share a little more about that, if you would. A lot of what they do is quote, unquote advanced planning, which is great, but you have to be able to communicate this in a way and probably with multiple experts that are likely in different geographies to the client in a way that they understand it, appreciate it and are able to take action. Any of their members that are actively using your software, I'm happy to talk about ERT.

Speaker 3: 10:59

We have some big asset map proponents that are members of the ERT ERT and that's really how we've been able to keep the relationship going with them and get to this event that I'm so excited to be at. An obvious phrase and a bit of a play on words that we use sometimes is AI. Right, we all know what AI stands for it's artificial intelligence but we like to use the term AI a little bit differently. We sometimes use it for advisor intelligence and I feel like what AssetMap really does a great job of doing is not taking over with the technology. We are simple on purpose. We sometimes say simple, rich or a really great way for the advisor to shine and do what they're best at, which is the relationship with the client, prospecting, whatever their kind of bread and butter is with their particular firm.

Speaker 3: 11:42

Using AssetMap to support the conversation and the technology.

Speaker 3: 11:46

With built-in planning tools, with the AssetMap report that everyone is familiar with if you know all about us, some behind-the-scenes algorithms that are even going to give you ideas on what you might want to talk to your client about, based on what we know about them.

Speaker 3: 11:59

There is a lot built into AssetMap that really, we'd say, allows you to use the technology to support what you do best, which again is the relationship, the fact-finding, the working together on what's important for your future, but not having it be so technical that it just takes over and your staff having to train for three weeks before they even use it.

Speaker 3: 12:18

We didn't want to go down that road. We really wanted it to be a seamless process, easy to adopt and support what we think advisors are doing best, without it being a whole takeover. Yes, advanced planning is certainly important and we believe in it very strongly, but we're just not going to get into the weeds so much that it's detailed down to the penny. That's not what we're all about. We're all about finding out what's most important, see if you're on track for your goals, because we all know that a lot of times the phrase goes around by the time the client leaves the office, the plan might already be out of date, and we're all about it being a fluid situation to always make sure that we're keeping what's important in mind.

Speaker 1: 12:57

Let's shift gears a little bit and tell us a little bit more about yourself. So how long have you been with AssetMap and what'd you do before you joined AssetMap?

Speaker 3: 13:05

So I'm a bit of a financial technology lifer. When I graduated college I actually started working at a bank. So I wasn't 100% sure just like most 22 year olds what I wanted to do, but I was interested in kind of finance in general. I had an opportunity to be an assistant manager of a bank and that bank actually at the time was a partial owner of a technology company called eMoney Advisor in the Philadelphia area. So lots of folks have heard of that one and at the time I think gosh, there were only 50 employees at eMoney at the time and now they're upwards of a thousand. It was when it was super, super small and I was at the bank and someone a manager at the time had said, hey, I'm going over and moving into this company called eMoney. A manager at the time and said hey, I'm going over and moving into this company called eMoney the commerce bank at the time had a stake in and he said I think you'd be really great there and I thought, wow, financial planning. I don't really know much about that at all. I was a young professional and fast forward there. I was almost there for a decade. It turned into a major career, something that was just formative for everything I do to this day an amazing group of people working at eMoney at the time and just over the years From there, I just fell in love with the process of financial planning, helping advisors really best work with their clients.

Speaker 3: 14:15

I was always super passionate about the client-advisor relationship. Emoney had a revolutionary at the time client website and I always wanted to talk about the connection between the client and the advisor and it took off from there. I've been in financial technology ever since. I was there till about 2015. Went to DocuPace Technologies. They do document storage straight through, processing really back office style Financial technology. I was there for a couple of years and then AssetMap for six years, basically right around when we'll be at the ERT event. It's been an exciting career. I absolutely love technology and especially how much it's grown. When you think about the available technology now compared to 10 years ago, it's not even comparable.

Speaker 1: 14:59

When you think of technology and I've always been a bit of a technologist I'd call myself a marketer, but I find that most marketing is dependent on technology, so I've always made it my mission to get good at the relevant technologies and over the past year plus, I've been highly focused on AI and just how AI can help improve the processes, my services, et cetera, in my company. Whether it's AI or just anything else, what do you see the trend line or the future a year from now? Two years from now? What's going on in the world that both your company, you and the advisors that you work with should be thinking about?

Speaker 3: 15:34

Another part of my job that I absolutely love is the ability to partner with a ton of the other FinTech vendors out there. We do webinars together. We're always chatting with each other about what's important to advisors and firms and what we're all working on to support the industry. Overall, it's really probably my favorite part of the job is just communicating with other companies that are making great solutions for advisors and clients, so we talk about this a lot. As you might imagine, AI is the hottest topic, right. If you're going to go to a conference these days and you're going to go to some breakout sessions, some general sessions, it doesn't matter hired speakers, folks that are part of the company's hosting conferences AI is the number one topic right now. How can you work it in without it taking over, Right? That's the big question is where is its place? How much is it going to solve for and how big of a part of the process is it going to be for these advisors who, historically, it's all about relationship, right? So where do you cut off between ease of use and saving time and potentially AI with data entry and all these things? That could be great, but without it overshadowing the advisor themselves? That's really the hot topic right now. You're right a hundred percent.

Speaker 3: 16:42

The other kind of thing that I'm loving right now that's happening at events and in the industry is there's a lot of companies that are doing what I call and I mentioned it a bit earlier taking a lot of complex topics and simplifying them.

Speaker 3: 16:54

I think AssetMap is taking complex financial planning and simplifying it. Holistaplan is taking tax planning and simplifying it, making it so that advisors can be that quarterback of the relationship, no matter what the client needs, by using technology to support it. So maybe you're not a tax expert, but now you have the ability to sign on with multiple different platforms to solve for that or estate planning another hot topic. So there's a lot of technology out there that is really solving for those kind of complex, maybe out of the box kind of things that clients need and allowing the advisor to really support them at scale. Very exciting stuff. And if I were to make one recommendation, definitely see what kind of technology is out there. There are a lot of new companies that some folks might not have even heard of yet that are just absolutely making some great software.

Speaker 1: 17:46

How do you work with advisors? How do you interface with them? For example, an advisor who's going to maybe be attending the upcoming conference and meeting you? What is your role broadly speaking?

Speaker 3: 17:56

I'm like the great connector at AssetMaps. I was saying before we started up I'm in our marketing department. I'm a proud member of our marketing department. It takes me back to, as I said, my major in college was marketing, so it's full circle moment. But I really like to coordinate between customer support, product sales, marketing, because I get out to a lot of events. I do a lot of webinars. I run all our testimonial and case study interviews for advisors that are using AssetMap to really stay upfront about all the trends, everything that's going on. So I really love to hear feedback here, not only about AssetMap, but what are the problems that you might be facing at your firm or gaps that you might want to solve? For those things tend to work themselves into what we're building, and so I absolutely love working with advisors.

Speaker 3: 18:39

I've been passionate about that since I started my career, so I work with individuals who are interested in signing up for AssetMap, connecting them to the right sales team member and people who are trying to level up and use it even better. One of my absolute favorite things to talk to individual advisors about would be our many integrations that we have, so data connections between other trusted vendors out there that you're using folks like Nitrogen, orion, schwab, you name it. We've got 15 to 20 integrations that are saving time in that data entry process or using the visualization of AssetMap and pulling in another vendor. Wouldn't you love to see the nitrogen risk score right on the AssetMap? We do that. That's really how I tend to communicate with individual advisors. Is, you know, maybe just best practices on how to get the most out of our software or connecting them to the right person here at AssetMap? It's great, no matter what the situation is. I love working with both the back office folks and also the advisors who are buying us individually as well.

Speaker 1: 19:40

A couple more questions before we conclude. Just on a personal level, what gets you up in the morning, motivated to bring your A game to work every day?

Speaker 3: 19:49

I think I've been lucky to go back to the kind of like even the case studies that I like to do.

Speaker 3: 19:54

We like to do 10 or so a year with different folks, individuals that are using firms that are using AssetMap and how it's affecting them, the relationship with their clients, the productivity of their staff all of those things.

Speaker 3: 20:07

It really gives me the ability to learn so much from the field To then share in stories with other people is something I just love. Anything that my title itself Vice President of Community the network that we have in this industry is vast. I think that it's great to reconnect with people that you might not have seen for maybe even five or 10 years. Sometimes I'll be out at an event and walk by someone that I never would have imagined I would have seen, that maybe I knew from my e-money days or whenever. Just the networking, the connecting, being able to connect to someone with someone they might not have been able to meet otherwise, anything that's got community lift all boats aspect of the financial industry is just something I'm super passionate about and always happy to take a meeting with someone and try to figure out how I can help them, if I can in any way is really something that I just love doing.

Speaker 1: 20:57

Very cool. Two more questions. First, is there anything that I haven't asked you that you think is important to this conversation, something that you'd like people to know?

Speaker 3: 21:05

No, I really, for especially the ERT group. I can't wait for the in-person event. I'm looking forward to meeting with the conference organizers to see what's going to be the most valuable for all the attendees and when we're there, like I just said, let's connect. And how can we make your practice better? How can we help out? What can I tell you more about AssetMap or the industry itself that might improve what you're doing every day? Because there's just no doubt about it, what financial advisors are doing is some of the most important work out there. I've never been an advisor myself, I've never had that kind of goal to become an advisor, but I can't see myself doing anything other than helping support that field for the rest of my career.

Speaker 1: 21:42

Final question for someone that wants to learn more or connect with you. What is the best way to connect with you or to learn more about AssetMap?

Speaker 3: 21:50

Yeah, I would say AssetMap asset-mapcom you can Google us, whatever you'd like to do is one of the most robust websites I've ever seen. You can come to our website and watch previous webinars. You can find out really amazing content from Adam, our CEO. As I might have mentioned, he was a financial advisor for, like I said, I think two decades and created the software to solve a need in his own practice, and that really attracts people to what he has to say because he lived and breathed it for so many years, and so there's amazing content from him that you can learn. From previous webinars, find out about our partners, our integration partners and what we're all about. So always assetmapcom For me.

Speaker 3: 22:32

Linkedin, twitter. You can connect with me. Send me a DM. I'm happy to connect. I'll send you my calendar link. We can always chat, but it's Allison, susco, allison with one L. That's the tricky part, but otherwise I'm pretty easy to find on any social media platform and, of course, at ERT. I'll be providing my email address and any kind of link that's needed to connect with me offline.

Speaker 1: 22:52

For someone listening to this that's going to be attending the Elite Growth Academy. Both Allison and I are going to buy you drinks at the first reception that night. Now, granted, I think the drinks are free, but I'd like to make the gesture of buying you.

Speaker 2: 23:06

I'll walk one over to someone, that would be no problem. There you go, there you go. I'll walk one over to someone, that would be no problem. There you go, there you go it's like how do you add value?

Speaker 3: 23:11

Is that the biggest?

Speaker 1: 23:12

value we added it's like with AI, it'll be doing everything for us, but our value is to, like, bring the message.

Speaker 3: 23:17

I think that'll be wonderful and just knowing the values of that company and what they're all about and I was even perusing the website again today just to remind myself really what their core mission is and it just matches up so nicely with what AssetMap believes in and tries to support, so it's going to be a wonderful event. I can't wait and don't be shy. If you have questions, if you want to learn more or get connected to someone else at AssetMap, I'm happy to provide the help.

Speaker 1: 23:43

Here's a fun question to end with, given that probably a number of people that will be attending the conference will be listening to this. What is something that nobody knows about you? But if they listen to this, they can approach you at the event and be like, hey, I know this about you.

Speaker 3: 23:59

A couple of really funny things, and when you travel a lot funny things happen, right? I don't know how much you travel, Paul, but I travel a decent amount and I have for many years. So two things that I think that are different, that have occurred in my life that maybe no one else has ever have happened and I can show you a picture of both of them is I have been an individual traveler on a plane, one person on a multi-hundred person plane by myself. So that's one thing that's really crazy. That's happened to me, that I don't know anybody else that's happened to.

Speaker 3: 24:28

Down to, the pilot who flew me said this has never happened to me before and I've flown hundreds and hundreds of flights, so that's a fun story I can always share. It was hilarious and I've also. This is really cool. Another thing that's happened to me that you could ask me about is on another flight a decade ago, probably leaving Fort Lauderdale going to Philadelphia, and the pilot said everybody get loaded in, we're going to take off on time because if we do it, we're going to see the space shuttle take off next to us. And people were just like blown away.

Speaker 3: 25:00

Everyone said I've never seen anybody board a plane faster than that day. Everyone got their luggage right in. It's true we were able to see from Cape Canaveral happen, right next to us. So I've seen, I've had some really cool things happen during travel. Otherwise I'm not like the most interesting person out there, but I have some very cool travel stories.

Speaker 1: 25:14

Very cool. Thank you so much for your time today. I appreciate it and I look forward to meeting you in person. It's going to be wonderful. Thank you, Paul.