consulting > insightsA 2025 Guide to Creating a Financial Advisor Business Plan: The Power of A Strategic Heatmap
By Herbers & Company Senior Consulting Team
3 min readAt Herbers & Company, we’ve helped financial advisors and RIAs grow their firms for decades. One of the most common mistakes we see is that firm owners spend too much time on business planning and not enough on solving immediate operational needs. Traditional business plans often become static documents—written once and then forgotten—rather than living strategies that evolve as the firm grows.
The reality is that unexpected challenges will always arise. In the military, there’s a saying: “No battle plan is worth a damn once boots hit the ground.” The same applies to business planning—a plan is just a starting point, not a step-by-step roadmap to success. Without regular assessment and execution, even the best-laid plans fall short. That’s why, at Herbers & Company, we take a different approach. Rather than jumping straight into long-term planning, we recommend that financial advisory firms start with a strategic heatmap. This approach helps prioritize immediate needs while building a sustainable long-term strategy, allowing firm owners to adapt and make informed decisions based on real-time business insights.
Before Using a Business Planning Template: Start with Strategic Heatmapping
Before drafting or revising a business plan, firm leaders must first assess where the business stands today. Many advisors make the mistake of setting long-term goals without first evaluating their current team dynamics, operational structure, or client service model. Without this assessment, business plans can become detached from reality, making goal achievement difficult.
A strategic heatmap provides a visual framework that highlights the key areas impacting growth, efficiency, and client service. By identifying the gaps between where the firm is today and where it needs to go, firm owners gain clarity on their priorities. Using a heatmap serves both immediate problem-solving and long-term strategic planning, ensuring that businesses stay agile and focused.
Download the Herbers & Company Strategic Heatmap
How to Use a Strategic Heatmap: The Eight Key Areas
The first step in using a business planning heatmap is to circle the areas where your firm has the most critical needs. These high-priority areas will require immediate attention, whether they relate to leadership, client experience, talent management, or sales and marketing. By identifying and ranking these priorities, firm leaders can ensure their business plan is built on immediate actions. A well-structured heatmap focuses on the eight critical areas of practice management:
Leadership – Evaluating leadership structure, decision-making processes, and succession planning.
Growth – Assessing key performance indicators (KPIs), organic growth opportunities, and the firm’s prospect for mergers and acquisitions.
Client Experience – Aligning service models with client needs and optimizing client retention strategies.
Operations & Efficiency – Identifying workflow inefficiencies and improving internal systems to support scalability.
Talent Management – Developing professional performance plans to increase focus, decrease stress, and get results.
Human Capital Programs – Implementing career tracks, compensation models, and partnership programs.
Sales & Business Development – Strengthening client acquisition strategies, referral programs, and strategic partnerships.
Marketing & Brand Positioning – Refining brand messaging, client targeting, and lead generation strategies.
By focusing on these areas, firms can prioritize what needs to be addressed immediately and what should be implemented over time. This clarity in decision-making ensures that every step taken is aligned with both short-term business stability and long-term success.
Building a Financial Advisor Business Plan Using Strategic Heatmaps
Once the critical areas have been identified using the heatmap, the business plan becomes a far more powerful tool. Instead of being a generic document, it transforms into a strategic action plan—one that directly addresses immediate challenges while setting the foundation for future growth.
For example, if a firm recognizes that it lacks career tracks, this issue becomes an immediate strategic priority. Creating career progression paths not only improves talent retention and recruitment but also strengthens financial advisor development in the long run. Similarly, if a firm is struggling with client service consistency or unclear marketing messaging, then refining service models, building a client journey map, and creating a strong brand narrative become top priorities. These actions enhance client engagement today while positioning the firm for stronger lead generation in the future.
By aligning business planning with heatmap insights, firms ensure they are focusing on the most pressing needs first while building a scalable foundation for sustainable growth. This turns business planning into a continuous, evolving process—one that is not just strategic but also practical, actionable, and results-driven.
How the Strategic Heat Map Enhances Financial Forecasting & KPIs
A business plan informed by heatmapping insights leads to more accurate financial forecasting and performance tracking. The results directly impact a firm’s ability to project revenue, optimize expenses, and adjust to market conditions with confidence.
Revenue & Expense Projections – The heatmap helps firms assess which areas require immediate investment and where efficiencies can be improved. This creates a foundation for effective capital allocation to expand valuations.
Better Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) Tracking – Firms that address gaps in leadership, client experience, and operational issues more directly in client retention, AUM growth, profit margins, and overall efficiency.
Marketing Program Effectiveness – A strategic heatmap identifies gaps in marketing messaging, client targeting, and brand positioning, ensuring that marketing resources are allocated effectively toward growth goals. Firms that refine their marketing approach based on heatmap insights can increase lead generation, improve conversion rates, and strengthen client relationships through more targeted and compelling communication.
By using the Strategic Heat Map as a business planning tool, financial advisory firms gain greater clarity, efficiency, and adaptability, leading to stronger financial performance and long-term sustainability.
From Business Planning to Implementation: How Herbers & Company Helps Firms Move Forward
Business planning is only the beginning—success lies in implementation. Too often, firm owners develop a strategic plan but fail to revisit, refine, and implement it, resulting in a perpetual cycle of planning without progress. Without continuous auditing and adjustment, even the most well-crafted business plans can become outdated and ineffective. At Herbers & Company, we take a different approach. We believe that a business plan should be a living strategy—one that evolves alongside the firm’s growth, challenges, and market shifts.
The key to effective business planning starts with heatmapping. Rather than relying on static, templated business plans, firms that integrate a heatmap analysis gain real-time insights into their most pressing needs and opportunities. This data-driven approach ensures that decision-making remains agile and responsive, helping firms prioritize what truly matters—whether that’s revenue expansion, operational efficiency, or leadership development.
At Herbers & Company, we help firms transform their strategic goals into action with our 1-Month Strategic Assessment Project. In just four weeks, we analyze key performance indicators (KPIs), identify opportunities to increase revenue, profitability, and business value, and provide a clear action plan to accelerate growth. With our expertise, firm owners can move forward with confidence—knowing they are making strategic, high-impact decisions that drive measurable results.
