Advisors face growing competition from web-based retirement planning services catering to the do-it-yourself instincts of the baby boomers. Two factors working against advisors are the general increasing comfort of doing business on the web and the continuing, steady improvements of web-based retirement services.

Yet, there are several actions that advisors can take to compete effectively against a do-it-yourself approach. We will delve into each, but in a nutshell these actions involve speaking personally to a targeted group of investors and making a real connection with them about their investment preferences, risk attitudes and lifetime goals. Following that connection, skilled advisors will follow up with specific investment programs and techniques. Once they develop an active client, advisors can outpace web-based offerings by being proactive about investment opportunities as well as managing the financial side of life changes that investors are going through.

Part of an advisor's existing book of business combined with some pure prospects often make a good mix for an advisor's retirement services. Advisors should identify a target audience for their personalized approach and speak to specific needs. This audience can be selected based on age, investable assets, share of wallet, products used and other factors. The ideal audience for an advisor has a significant gap in retirement income, but has the means to fill it.

The target audience in an existing book can be generated by looking for the holes. To find the holes in a portfolio, the advisor should look for what is missing that successful investors at this stage in life would normally be doing. These gaps can be investment products, class ownership or risk management techniques.

Pure prospects, as most advisors know, are harder to target. In this case, advisors can take aim based on the successful profiles from their books. Advisors should examine the demographics of their most profitable retirement makeover clients and find more of them. The specific demographics of successful prospects will vary just as much as the demographics of advisors vary-which is to say-a lot. There is no one key demographic for all advisors. Go with what works.

This area is where strong interpersonal skills will play an important role. Web-based services have an inherent disadvantage to advisors, as they have methods to establish a personal connection.

The message for persuading the retirement do-it-yourself group to take on a financial advisor is simple. Tell them this: When personal goals are known and understood by an advisor who is paying attention and has the skill and techniques to implement investment plans to meet their complex and changing needs; the opportunity for success increases dramatically.

The methods for establishing a connection with a client or prospect are well covered in sales training literature. They involve communication and establishing trust. Research indicates that advisors are often most successful in targeting the demographic to which they belong.

This result is likely caused by the ease with which a personal connection is made with a member of the same group. Sharing interests and having a forum to demonstrate trustworthiness and attention to detail are key ingredients in this elusive, personality-imbued component.

While web services are good at targeting asset allocations and calculating the probabilities of generating enough retirement income, these programs generally fall short at specific investment recommendations. Nor do they incorporate the breadth of products that may be utilized to build an optimal retirement plan.

Key investment areas that are underutilized by web-based services include stocks, bonds, options and insurance products.

Web-based retirement services are geared to mutual fund investing, but even in this area, the basic approach of the web-based model is to provide education and guidance. This is a key difference that advisors can exploit. Advisors can make recommendations that can be acted upon. Moreover, they can do so on a much broader list of products such as deferred annuities, deferred income annuities and long-term care insurance.

Moreover, do-it-yourself retirement investors may not be familiar with all the techniques that professional advisors can employ to manage risk. For instance, some option techniques, including covered call programs for income generation and put-option utilization for portfolio protection, are almost exclusively utilized by advisor-serviced portfolios.

Even simple trading strategies like "trailing percentage stop loss" orders are advisor risk management capabilities that are almost never worked into web-based, do-it-yourself retirement investing.

Financial advisors with broad product knowledge and risk management techniques have a clear advantage over the more generic web services currently offered.

Active monitoring of the portfolio, life changes and market opportunities are the other areas where advisors can outpace the do-it-yourself approach.