Make your office space more inviting

Not too shabby, not too chic. When it comes to the perfect office environment for financial advisors, Jared Rabinowitz aims for what he calls the “goldilocks” zone.

“Clients will make value judgments about your office,” said Rabinowitz, founding and executive partner of Q Wealth Partners in Toronto.

An office in the city’s tallest, most expensive tower might be appealing — but it could also put off some clients, he said. 

“They get in there and everything is marble and granite, with floating staircases and sprawling lobbies. Many clients will think, ‘Could my fees be lower if this office wasn’t so opulent? All this mahogany is costing me,’” he said.

The first rule of setting up a space is understanding client expectations, Rabinowitz said. If you’re dealing with wealthy families who are used to the finer things, the office should reflect it. But if they’re the “millionaire next door” type, they might be offended by extravagance, he said.

On the flip side, going cheap can send the wrong message. “If you go too low budget, it ends up looking like a crappy medical clinic,” he said. “That’s not good.”

The perfect setup

Brendan Frazier, chief behavioural officer with RFG Advisory in Nashville, Tenn., said the purpose of your client meetings can dictate how a room should be configured or even which room to use. Are you looking to have a good conversation and get to know each other better? Or are you diving deep into numbers?

“Maybe the most important question is, ‘How do we want the client to feel?’” he said.

Frazier pointed to a “research recommended financial advisor office setup” put together by Michael Kitces, a Virginia-based financial planner and commentator who also does research. The recommended setup shows two chairs facing a sofa, with a small round coffee table between them.

“It represents conversation and connection and comfortability,” Frazier said. “Do we want to set this up like a used car salesman’s office or the office of a high-end architect or maybe even a therapist? When was the last time you went to a friend or family member’s house and sat down at a conference table and had a great, intimate, personal conversation?”

Frazier calls office design part of the “invisible influences” that factor into decision-making. The design isn’t necessarily related to the quality of the advisor’s work, but people use appearance as a “cheat code” when judging their experience, he said.

Three things to remember

There are three key elements to designing the perfect space: privacy, accessibility, and cleanliness, said Rod Perry, president of Sensyst, The Business Interiors Group, in Mississauga, Ont.

“Private spaces … where a client can be in an environment where they can’t hear other people and other people can’t hear them? That, to us, is almost number one,” Perry said.

He was recently at a bank branch that had moved to an open-concept office for their advisors.

“I’m literally standing in line to deposit a cheque and I could hear a discussion between this planner and this couple because their mortgage rate had gone up so much,” he said. “That is not ideal. I couldn’t imagine that couple feeling comfortable talking about their finances in the middle of a branch.”

The office also needs to be accessible — which is a big umbrella term, he said. It should be easy to find, with clear signage, and no impediments for either able-bodied clients or people with disabilities, he said.

“I went to a lawyer’s office last week and we actually couldn’t find his office in the building, and we found that very frustrating,” Perry said.

Keeping meeting areas clean is also paramount regardless of the demographic an advisor is trying to attract, he said.

“The cleanliness, orderliness and the regular maintenance of the office reflects on you as a financial planner,” Perry said.

Colours and lighting

Chairs should be comfortable, but also firm, so that older clientele don’t struggle to get in and out of them, Perry said. Lighting needs to be in what he called the “new colour spectrum” — the 3500K or neutral-warm range.

Office lighting used to be warmer, in the 2500K to 2700K range, but that’s a dated look, he said. “You also don’t want to have the Canadian Tire 5000K range, where it’s so overwhelmingly bright.”

For colours, Perry recommends using your brand colours in the scheme along with “soft neutrals” such as taupe, light gray, blue and green. If the brand colour is overwhelming, use it sparingly and as an emphasis.

“An example of this is we don’t use red for our financial planner clients because red is a negative colour for a lot of people,” Perry said. “It’s the sense of losing money. Your financial planner never wants to show you things in the red.”