October 16, 2023 / by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments
There was a time in the not-so-distant past when the only skill you needed to succeed in financial services was how to sell. The business of selling investments was almost entirely transactional, and all a financial advisor needed to do was shake the bushes for prospects and close them on a product sale. It was not easy by any means, and only the most tenacious advisors survived.
Certainly, that required some skill, but most were learned through memorizing scripts and drilling on closing techniques. The rest was all about persistence in dialing the phone.
Fast forward to today, and the game has changed drastically. With compensation coming largely from recurring revenue from assets under management or planning fees, advisors have had to develop an entirely new skill set. Tenaciousness, persistence, dogged determination, and knowing how to sell are still essential, but they take a back seat to more critical skills needed to succeed in the business today. Here are five such acquired skills you need to master.
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In this category, we will share stories and practical tips for financial advisors and consultants which have proven to be best practices throughout the years.
Top 5 Critical Acquired Skills Financial Advisors Need for Success
October 16, 2023 / by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments
There was a time in the not-so-distant past when the only skill you needed to succeed in financial services was how to sell. The business of selling investments was almost entirely transactional, and all a financial advisor needed to do was shake the bushes for prospects and close them on a product sale. It was not easy by any means, and only the most tenacious advisors survived.
Certainly, that required some skill, but most were learned through memorizing scripts and drilling on closing techniques. The rest was all about persistence in dialing the phone.
Fast forward to today, and the game has changed drastically. With compensation coming largely from recurring revenue from assets under management or planning fees, advisors have had to develop an entirely new skill set. Tenaciousness, persistence, dogged determination, and knowing how to sell are still essential, but they take a back seat to more critical skills needed to succeed in the business today. Here are five such acquired skills you need to master.
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Overcoming Information Overload: What Advisors Can Do to Help Their Clients
September 11, 2023 / by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments
Living in the digital world, with its instantaneous access to information, has made us smarter and more empowered. In many ways, it has leveled the playing field for clients who now have access to much of the same information once only available to investment professionals. Information is so highly valued that it is churned out 24/7, accessible on any number of devices people carry around. For clients especially, this should be a good thing, right?
The barrage of headlines and hype around market events often leads to behavioral mistakes, like following the panicky herd over the cliff during a market selloff or frantically trying to buy into the market after a massive rally. Studies show it is the primary reason why investors consistently underperform the market.
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Why Mediation Skills Matter for Financial Advisor Success
September 4, 2023 / by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments
When most people think of mediation and negotiation, it typically refers to lawyers or third parties who facilitate dialogue between two or more parties to help them reach an agreement. In practice, financial advisors sometimes find themselves in the same position, having to resolve conflicts between a client’s family members or within their advisory team, where it’s essential to find win-win solutions.
Disagreements about money are common among married couples. Money conflicts are often rooted more deeply in people’s attitudes and beliefs about money, or, in some cases, money is not even the primary issue. However, in almost all cases, it involves two or more people who don’t know how to engage in productive financial conversations.
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5 Ways You Should Be Asking for Feedback from Clients
July 31, 2023 / by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments
Advisors who are in the dark about how their clients view their relationship or feel about the level of service they receive risk losing them to advisors who care about what they think. It’s not that you don’t care; it’s that your clients won’t know that you do if you don’t periodically ask them for their feedback.
Without direct and honest feedback from your clients, you won’t know what’s working and what’s not. You could be perpetuating a less-than-remarkable client experience that could drive clients away. At the very least, you won’t know the reasons why you’re not getting referrals from your clients.
Want to know how you differentiate yourself? Be the advisor who demonstrates a sense of partnership and commitment to the relationship by proactively asking for your client’s feedback. When you do, it’s an opportunity to learn how to improve and grow your practice and make your clients appreciate that you value their opinion.
Here are five ways you can gather valuable insights from your clients while deepening your engagement with them.
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The Best Newsletters for Financial Advisors
July 24, 2023 / by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments
The list of traits and characteristics financial advisors must have or develop to be successful is long. We’ve discussed many here, including excellent communication skills, outstanding work ethic, uncommon optimism, persistence, and resilience, a hunger for self-improvement, and a passion for helping people achieve their goals, to name a few. While all are essential, advisors with ambitions of becoming tops in their field must also have a zest for learning and staying abreast of the news, trends, and developments that impact their business.
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Four Imperatives You Must Embrace to Achieve Sustainable Growth in Your Practice
June 19, 2023 / by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments
As you might already know, the key to achieving sustainable growth in a financial advisory practice is to focus on your core business of business development and client management. From a practice management standpoint, that requires developing business processes that enable you and your team to gain greater efficiencies while increasing productivity by doing more with less. In other words, turning your practice into a well-oiled machine.
But what about you? As the guiding force of your practice, what are you doing individually to ensure its sustainable growth? Business processes are essential for scaling your business and expanding its capacity for growth. But there are certain things only you can do to drive its growth.
Here are four imperatives financial advisors must embrace to achieve sustainable growth for themselves and their businesses.
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Developing a Business Process for Your Advisory Business
June 5, 2023 / by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments
Advisors embarking on the challenge of growing an advisory business understand that the key to sustainable growth is to be able to specialize in their core business of business development and client management. However, with that growth comes increasingly complex operations in all facets of the business, which can consume resources and hinder growth.
Smaller advisory businesses are disadvantaged by the lack of scale and resources, so they must rely on clearly defined, repeatable, and well-documented business processes to optimize their resources.
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Winning the “Why Do I Need a Financial Advisor” Argument
April 24, 2023 / by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments
Long before it became a field of academic study, legendary investor Benjamin Graham knew a thing or two about behavioral finance. Graham went on to say, “In the end, how your investments behave is much less important than how you behave.”
For financial advisors, understanding how emotional and intellectual processes combine to influence investors’ decisions offers the opportunity to help their clients avoid costly mistakes and optimize investment outcomes.
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Why It’s Critical to Have a Well-Conceived, Repeatable Advisor Onboarding Process
March 27, 2023 / by Diana Marinova / Best Practices / 0 comments
It is well-established in the financial advisory industry that the client onboarding process is crucial to building profitable, long-term relationships. When done poorly, you’ll likely see clients heading for the exits leaving you with thinning profit margins and a tarnished reputation. For the same reasons, onboarding advisors is equally critical for financial advisors looking to […]
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You Can’t Be Afraid to Fail. It’s How You Succeed.
March 20, 2023 / by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments
Who doesn’t want to be a success? It’s what people, particularly financial advisors, strive for every day. No one wants to be a failure. But did it ever occur to you that it’s virtually impossible to be a success without failing? Successful people must be very comfortable with failure because they probably fail more often than they succeed. They’re successful because they use their failures as learning experiences to propel them forward.
Yet, many people seem to have such a dysfunctional relationship with failure that they can’t see the value in it, choosing instead to avoid it by not taking the same risks that led to it. That’s not learning. That’s capitulation, which never leads to success.
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