Deane Mayerhofer

PLANADVISER: Tell us about your role at your firm and your current responsibilities? How do you contribute to your firm/team’s growth and progress?

Mayerhofer: I am the chief operating officer of Strategic Retirement Partners. I am responsible for the development and execution of our “secret sauce”: our people, processes and technology; the operations of the company. This includes retirement plan and WELLth operations, HR, payroll, IT, marketing, sales support, participant education and our registered investment adviser (WELLth Advisory Services). Our “secret sauce” is what makes SRP unique. We have a unique recruiting and hiring strategy (our people); we have created standardized, repeatable processes for all the operational areas that were just mentioned; and we have all these processes inside our proprietary, in-house built technology. Our unique back-office adviser support structure is here to free our advisers up to scale their practices.

PLANADVISER: What are the most common operational challenges in a retirement plan advisory firm? How do you manage those?

Mayerhofer: The single biggest challenge for an adviser’s practice, regardless of size, is solving for an adviser’s time. Specifically, freeing up an adviser’s most precious asset: time with clients, prospects and centers of influence. This can be solved by removing advisers from operational services and thereby creating scale and efficiency. Unlike other firms, we built Strategic Retirement Partners on an operational chassis, rather than on a sales chassis. We’ve built a model that the industry had not seen before, wherein we removed the adviser from operational activities so they can focus on scaling their practices and spend time with their clients, prospects and centers of influence.

PLANADVISER: What have you done that you are most proud of?

Mayerhofer: I am the proud of changing the way our industry thinks about recruiting, hiring, compensating and supporting employees. When it comes to recruiting, we often “fish from the same pond,” rather than looking outside our industry and disregarding the normal recruiting standards and job description requirements. We make job descriptions so complex (for even entry-level positions) that it intimidates candidates and half the requirements truly aren’t needed. Do we really need a bachelor’s degree for entry-level positions, or do we need someone willing to learn, given a training plan, and then we coach them up and instill confidence in them. One hundred percent of the time, I will hire the motivated, passionate, “just give me a chance” candidate. My goal is to change the way our industry brings in new, inexperienced talent by simply recruiting and hiring differently.