What are the positives for business development from this period?

I was stopped at the lights in Brookvale yesterday waiting for them to turn green when I noticed quite a crowd across the road. Nothing out of the usual – normally – but of course these aren’t normal times. And they were all keeping their 2 metre distances so quite a crowd was probably 20 people. The surprising thing was what they were crowded around: a bike shop.

It made me realise that apart from Amazon and Uber Eats a few businesses must have found that this turn of events has operated in their favour. Which set me thinking about the opportunities for business development for advice that the past month has given rise to. Many advisers tell us that a key role they fulfil for their clients is that of comfort and confidence building – clients feel reassured that their affairs are under the guidance of an expert. These are worrying times: Mark Carney, the former Governor of the Bank of England, made the point that the turmoil in the market is more than a simple loss in financial value, it reflects concerns over previously unquestioned organisations and assumptions about how economies will work.

If people with the experience and insight of Mr Carney ask these questions, what must it be like for people who haven’t had to think much about how the macro factors of the global economy might affect the microcosm of their lives?

Which brings us back to the role that advisers perform – not of somehow having greater insight than the Mark Carneys or the CIOs of the world, but of being able to help clients prepare for the inevitable downturns in their life, personal or economic. And if advisers can do this for their existing clients, isn’t there an opportunity to do it for others who are not yet clients?

Watching people queue in a crisis to buy a bike, I took to wondering: how many of these people had idly been to a bike shop in the past, looked at a couple but never had the final compulsion to go ahead with the purchase? How many were there because a family member had said “why not get a bike?” And for advisers: is this a good time to go back to people you’ve spoken to in the past 24 months and ask if there’s something they’d like help with now? And for your existing clients, is this the time to ask if there’s anyone they know who might be interested in talking to you?

Then the light turned green.

Have a good week.

Toby Potter