LX Planning Template
Financial Advisors

Reading Your Weekly Appointment Number

The cadence line at the top is the entire plan compressed into one week. Everything else on the page - the channel mix, the payout assumptions, the profit reserve - exists to explain that one number or to tell you what it costs. A production goal is an outcome you do not control directly. First appointments scheduled is an input you do, and it is the only figure here you can act on before Friday.

The Weekly Number Is the One You Actually Control

Production, revenue and profit are results. They arrive late, and by the time they are wrong the quarter is gone. The count of first appointments scheduled each week is an input, and it is visible on Monday. Work the funnel backward until you have that number, then ask a harder question: is it on someone's calendar as a standing commitment, or is it a figure you hope the year averages out to? A weekly requirement that lives only in a plan is a forecast. One that lives in a calendar is a plan.

The Conversion Assumptions Are Where the Plan Quietly Breaks

Three rates sit between a scheduled first appointment and a new client: how many keep the appointment, how many book a second, and how many close. They multiply rather than add, so a modest slip in each does far more damage than a large slip in one. Change a single rate and watch the weekly appointment requirement move. If the number moves more than you expected, that rate is the constraint - and improving it is almost always cheaper than buying enough additional appointments to overcome it.

The Cost of the Plan Decides Whether the Goal Is Worth Hitting

Marketing spend and non-owner commission come off the top, and the profit goal is reserved before anything is left to run the business. Read the bottom line first. If what remains cannot cover the team, the office and the systems the plan assumes, the goal is not aggressive - it is unfunded. Then read marketing cost per new client alongside revenue per dollar of marketing. Together they tell you whether the channel mix supports the appointment requirement or whether the requirement is being set by what you can afford rather than by what you need.

Common questions

How many first appointments per week does a financial advisor need?

Work backward rather than starting from a habit or a round number. Divide the production goal by average case size to get the new clients required, divide that by the close rate to get second appointments, then work back through the rate at which kept first appointments produce a second one and the rate at which scheduled first appointments are actually kept. Divide the result by the number of weeks worked and by the number of advisors. The figure that comes out is a requirement, not a target - if it is not scheduled, the production goal is not scheduled either.

What is a stick rate and why does it change the plan so much?

The stick rate is the share of scheduled first appointments that are actually kept. It sits at the top of the funnel, so every appointment lost there has to be replaced by new activity rather than by better selling. Because it multiplies against the rates below it, improving the stick rate reduces the weekly scheduling requirement across the whole funnel at once. Confirmation habits, reminder sequences and how far out appointments are booked all move it, and none of them require more marketing spend.

How should an advisory team set a production goal?

Set it against capacity rather than against last year. Take the goal, divide it by the number of advisors, and look at the weekly appointment requirement each advisor is left holding. If that number exceeds what an advisor can carry alongside servicing the existing book, the goal implies a hire, a change in the channel mix, or a higher close rate - and deciding which one now is the difference between a plan and a wish. A goal that produces an impossible weekly number is not a stretch goal; it is an unmade decision.

How do you work out what a new advisory client costs to acquire?

Divide total marketing spend by the number of new clients the plan requires. Then divide the same spend by first appointments kept, which isolates what you pay to get in front of someone before any selling happens. Comparing the two shows whether acquisition cost is driven by the price of attention or by what happens after the appointment starts. If cost per appointment kept is reasonable but cost per client is not, the constraint is conversion, and no additional marketing budget will fix it.