A 90-day pilot inside a top-tier wealth management firm. Five cohorts, fourteen managers, hundreds of recorded coaching conversations. This is the redacted teaser of what we found.
Headline findings
Managers over-coach the middle
60% of coaching time went to the middle 50% of performers. Top quartile got the least attention, bottom quartile got the most.
The best managers asked 3x more questions
Not longer sessions. Better ratios. Question-to-statement ratio was the single strongest predictor of advisor lift.
Practice beat training
Cohorts that practiced the target behavior weekly moved 2.4x faster than cohorts who received training only.
What we measured
- Coaching time allocation across performance tiers
- Question ratio, decision speed, next-step specificity
- Behavior lift week over week, not quarter over quarter
- Manager scorecard adoption rates
- Advisor practice frequency and depth
WHAT WAVE 2 IS TESTING
"Inertia. Specifically, what it takes to move an advisor off a flat book. Results coming Q2 2026."