The report highlights some of the ways this can play out: with an "embedded advice solution," for instance, which would be more or less at the level of the TDF.

Once the product is constructed, there's relatively little involvement with the client unless and until the client's preferences or needs change.

Then there's digital advice, which may be more personalized but without face-to-face contact; this includes robo advice and is also a lower-priced option. A digital relationship is the next step up, with advisors devoting more time to clients' needs but depending largely on technology for both client interaction and portfolio management.

Finally, there's the most involved model: wealth management, in which both services and fees can still vary, depending on the number, type and complexity of services provided.

As advisory practices increasingly compete for investor relationships, they can be built around any of these models, with the level of engagement by the advisor and the price of the service or product provided determining what sort of practices they will be.

Advisors need to consider how many and what type of services to provide, what fee structure to adopt, and how to develop efficiencies that will enable them to provide a "truly personal client experience."

In part, those decisions will depend on the client base the advisor seeks to develop, with younger clients drawn to one classification of services, moderate-level clients willing to take advantage of digital advice options another and wealthy clients drawn to more personalized, and more expensive, products and services.

Providing a range of services allows the advisory practice to care for clients who may have to "grow into" more complex and expensive services while developing a relationship at the same time—giving the practice a more stable basis.

Advisors themselves have to negotiate the transition from commission to fees, since, despite the delay and possible elimination of implementation of the Department of Labor's fiduciary rule, "the genie is out of the bottle" and clients are far more interested in "knowing whose interests their advisor is working for, as well as how their advisor is paid for services."

This "great awakening" of investors, the report says, is unlikely to change, and advisors must adapt.

Focusing more on asset gathering and retention, rather than transactions, is one way advisors can prepare themselves for the future.

And to do that, advisors will have to focus on relationship management, most particularly the level of trust that clients have in them; that will outpace portfolio management as a primary concern in developing those relationships.

Advisors should also remember, the report says, that relationship management is business development—adding that survey results indicate that 78 percent of respondents chose to work with an advisor to whom they'd been referred.

While advisors may already recognize that referrals can be vital in building a practice, they may not realize the extent to which the referral itself matters—except for those who were referred by an immediate family member, the source of the referral is less important to investors looking for an advisor than the fact that they were referred.