April 6, 2020 / by Don Connelly / Investing Wisdom / 0 comments
We’ve all encountered them: The prospect or client who wants to go it alone. They want to manage their own portfolio.
Well, here’s one approach you can use:
First, ask the question, “Can I share something with you?” (I like this phrase because it’s non-confrontational. It doesn’t activate the prospect’s ego, leading to an argument you can’t win. It neutralizes it.
Then you can show them the latest DALBAR study.
It doesn’t matter much what year you use. The results for individual DIY investors are almost always dismal: According to the 2019 DALBAR Quantitative Analysis of Investor Behavior, the typical do-it-yourselfer achieved an annual real return of just 1.71%.
Compared with the S&P 500, do-it-yourself investors lagged the S&P 500 by huge margins:
• 4.35 percentage points, annualized, over five years;
• 3.46 percentage points, annualized, over 10 years;
The reason: Bad market timing decisions. People pile into the market at the wrong times, and then they panic and sell at the wrong times.
Why? Because people are irrational, and are hardwired to make sub-optimal decisions.
Read more
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.
Read more
Are You Working in Your Business or on Your Business? The Key to Growth Is Delegation
March 13, 2023 / by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments
Growing a successful financial advisory practice is one of the most challenging endeavors anyone can choose to undertake. The road to success is riddled with the many mistakes financial advisors make along the way, such as not prospecting consistently, not marketing themselves, or failing to provide their clients with an exceptional experience. These and other mistakes are symptomatic of a much bigger mistake many advisors make: spending too much time working in their business and not enough time working on the business.
Read more
Advice for New Financial Advisors – 8 Things Veteran Advisors Wish They Knew When They First Started Out
April 20, 2020 / by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments
“Experience is the best teacher. But only a fool learns by no other.”
This is a slight misquotation of Benjamin Franklin. But the idea is sound: We all can and should learn from the mistakes and experiences of those who came before us.
And advisors are certainly making mistakes! Somewhere between 70 and 90 percent of financial advisor trainees are out of the business by their fourth year. And too many of those who survive aren’t thriving.
So we asked some veteran financial advisors what they wished they knew when they first started out in this business, or what they would do differently if they could start over. There was a lot of variation in the details, but most of them had these themes in common.
Read more
Reasons Clients Need a Financial Advisor – Overcoming the Do-It-Yourself Objection
April 6, 2020 / by Don Connelly / Investing Wisdom / 0 comments
We’ve all encountered them: The prospect or client who wants to go it alone. They want to manage their own portfolio.
Well, here’s one approach you can use:
First, ask the question, “Can I share something with you?” (I like this phrase because it’s non-confrontational. It doesn’t activate the prospect’s ego, leading to an argument you can’t win. It neutralizes it.
Then you can show them the latest DALBAR study.
It doesn’t matter much what year you use. The results for individual DIY investors are almost always dismal: According to the 2019 DALBAR Quantitative Analysis of Investor Behavior, the typical do-it-yourselfer achieved an annual real return of just 1.71%.
Compared with the S&P 500, do-it-yourself investors lagged the S&P 500 by huge margins:
• 4.35 percentage points, annualized, over five years;
• 3.46 percentage points, annualized, over 10 years;
The reason: Bad market timing decisions. People pile into the market at the wrong times, and then they panic and sell at the wrong times.
Why? Because people are irrational, and are hardwired to make sub-optimal decisions.
Read more
Poor Communication Is The #1 Reason Advisors Get Fired
July 2, 2018 / by Don Connelly / Managing the Relationship / 0 comments
The chief reason clients fire their advisors is not, as you may have thought, poor performance – it’s poor communication. A survey by Financial Advisor Magazine revealed that 72% of clients said they fired their advisors due to their advisor’s failure to communicate on a timely basis.
The best advisors put their communication strategy at the very heart of their business – and so should you. Not only should you build in time to communicate with clients – but take time to develop your soft skills so that you communicate effectively.
Read more
Avoid These Ten Mistakes to Improve Your Financial Advisor Business
June 5, 2017 / by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments
We’ve been getting plenty of questions about common mistakes Financial Advisors make so here’s a quick roundup of things you should avoid doing if you want to take your Financial Advisor business to the next level.
Read more