March 18, 2024 / by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments
Anyone who has ever accomplished anything of significance started with a goal. Professional athletes, entertainers, business titans, and the millionaire next door will all tell you that they began with the end in mind, visualizing their destination and then mapping the road to get there.
We’ve written about the importance of goal setting and the significance of writing them down and keeping them in front of you to remind you of what’s possible. However, the process of goal setting is often marred with unrealistic expectations or ambivalence about what you want to achieve, resulting in unachievable or unmeasurable goals.
Financial advisors on the path to success can’t afford to wallow in hopes or pipe dreams. You need clearly defined, actionable goals that reflect your professional and personal ambitions. Although goal setting isn’t rocket science, it does require a deliberate process to ensure your goals are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. In other words, it requires the SMART goal-setting framework.
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What Is an Initial Benefit Statement and How to Use It
March 25, 2024 / by Don Connelly / Presentation Skills / 0 comments
As I have mentioned already on the Don Connelly 24/7 learning center, I was taught a method of selling called Professional Selling Skills (PSS) many years ago. It was and still is the bestselling course in the world. Let’s talk about the first step in giving a Professional Selling Skills presentation. That step is called the Initial Benefit Statement.
Watch this video episode or read the transcript below to hear Don explaining what it is and how to use it.
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Getting SMART About Setting Goals for You and Your Clients
March 18, 2024 / by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments
Anyone who has ever accomplished anything of significance started with a goal. Professional athletes, entertainers, business titans, and the millionaire next door will all tell you that they began with the end in mind, visualizing their destination and then mapping the road to get there.
We’ve written about the importance of goal setting and the significance of writing them down and keeping them in front of you to remind you of what’s possible. However, the process of goal setting is often marred with unrealistic expectations or ambivalence about what you want to achieve, resulting in unachievable or unmeasurable goals.
Financial advisors on the path to success can’t afford to wallow in hopes or pipe dreams. You need clearly defined, actionable goals that reflect your professional and personal ambitions. Although goal setting isn’t rocket science, it does require a deliberate process to ensure your goals are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. In other words, it requires the SMART goal-setting framework.
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For the Sake of Time, Learning to Say “No” Is a Vital Skill Advisors Must Master
March 11, 2024 / by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments
Being able to maximize time to spend on high-payoff activities has long been a significant challenge for financial advisors who must wear many hats on their path to success. Advisors not in control of their time typically have less of it to spend interacting with clients and prospecting for new clients and other activities essential to the growth of their practice.
To gain more control of their time, advisors can follow these steps:
– Setting clear goals,
– prioritizing and planning tasks and activities,
– delegating and outsourcing administrative tasks,
– utilizing technology to automate repetitive tasks where possible,
– blocking time and batching similar tasks together,
– creating a focused work environment to limit distractions and
– learning to say “no.”
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Steps to Take When Ending a Client Relationship
March 4, 2024 / by Don Connelly / Managing the Relationship / 0 comments
For everything it takes to secure a new client, it seems counterintuitive that a financial advisor would fire one. But, under certain circumstances, that’s precisely what you must do to keep your practice on the right growth trajectory while keeping your sanity.
Holding on to clients who stray outside your profile of an ideal client, or when they become too demanding or no longer follow your advice, can weigh you down. Your time is too valuable to spend it with clients who aren’t a good fit for you.
So, you need to fire them. But how? Ending a client relationship is a delicate process, but it doesn’t have to be awkward for you or the client when handled with care and professionalism. Much like a structured onboarding process, you should also have a clearly defined “deboarding” process to make it easier on everyone. Here are some steps to consider when ending a client relationship.
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Current Events Are White Noise
February 26, 2024 / by Don Connelly / Investing Wisdom / 0 comments
Seemingly each day, the media hysteria heightens. You’d think nobody would want a steady diet of bad news, but you and I know that it’s not going to stop. Why? Because bad news sells.
Do you ever wonder why bad news sells? Do you ever wonder why we focus on what’s wrong in the world? We do that because we’re concerned about anything that threatens our sense of wellbeing.
Watch this video or read the transcript below to learn why we do that and what you and your clients should focus on.
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How Financial Advisors Can Take Control Over Their Time
February 19, 2024 / by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments
As a financial advisor, your most valuable resource is your time. If you are not in control of how you spend your time, then you are not in control of your results. Controlling your time and injecting your schedule with the right mix of high-payoff activities is vital to achieving your goals.
However, time is a diminishing resource, which is why it’s so valuable yet so challenging to manage. Advisors must find a way to maximize their critical high-payoff activities, such as client interactions, prospect meetings, and prospecting, while allocating sufficient time for other essential activities that need to get done, such as administrative tasks, marketing, and planning. Advisors must also be able to allocate adequate time for professional and personal development and ensure there’s enough left over for a healthy work-life balance.
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Why Financial Advisors Quit
February 12, 2024 / by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments
It’s estimated that nine advisors out of ten don’t last three years in the industry. That seems high for a career that offers so much promise and potential. Most people come into the business checking all the appropriate boxes for having what it takes. Still, when you consider the gap between reality and expectations of fledgling financial advisors, it begins to make sense why most choose to leave the business.
To put it bluntly, not everyone is cut out for a career as a financial advisor, even for those who do check all the boxes. However, with a better understanding of why many financial advisors quit the business, you can beat the odds by avoiding that fate.
The reasons why financial advisors quit are varied, but here are some of the most common.
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Get More from an Advisory Relationship with Client-Centric Investing
February 5, 2024 / by Don Connelly / Managing the Relationship / 0 comments
With the 2008 global financial crisis fading in the rearview mirror, investors are slowly regaining their confidence in the stock market with a halting willingness to take on more risk. However, many still find it challenging to overcome the trust deficit created by financial advisors who view them as assets to be managed rather than people with life ambitions.
To those advisors, the market indices and benchmarks mattered most. However, to the client, it was all about their financial future. All too often, advisors focused on standard deviation, Monte Carlo analysis, and risk-return lose sight of the emotional characteristics that drive investor behavior. They then become perplexed when their clients decide to break from a perfectly good investment strategy to follow the herd over a cliff near a market bottom.
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Put Risk in Perspective: What Do Going to The Dentist and Investing Have in Common?
January 29, 2024 / by Don Connelly / Investing Wisdom, Storytelling, analogies and power phrases / 0 comments
I’ve got a good story about how two Advisor friends of mine, Eric and Lisa, deal with their clients when the markets become unsettled. They help their clients put risk in perspective. When times get tough, keep this story in mind.
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Winning Over the Children of Wealthy Clients
January 22, 2024 / by Don Connelly / Managing the Relationship / 0 comments
As evidenced by the great wealth transfer of $30 trillion currently underway from the baby boomers to the next generations, wealth is generational, with far-reaching impacts beyond any one client. For financial advisors, it could be an unprecedented opportunity to grow assets or the greatest threat to their survival.
Why the disparity in outlook? Because some advisors will be better positioned than others to capture the attention and trust of the next generations. Advisors who fail to connect with the children of their baby boomer clients stand a better than even chance they will lose the assets upon their transfer.
The failure to realize that, when working with a client, you are also working with everyone dependent on them leads to advisors losing an average of 70% to 80% of a client’s assets following their death.
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