March 30, 2020 / by Don Connelly / Marketing Yourself / 0 comments
Traditionally, being a financial advisor has been a face-to-face business. We are creatures of the working lunch, the handshake, the coffee meeting. Appointments are the lifeblood of our business, because we’re in the business of personal relationships. That’s our real advantage over the low-cost robo-advisors, and a big part of how we justify our fees.
But social distancing is changing all that in a flash. I’m optimistic about the economy and the stock market long-term. But this bug isn’t going away anytime soon. We are undergoing a rapid cultural shift where social distance may very well become the norm for a good, long while.
And all of us old-school financial advisors, as well as brokers, planners, insurance agents, all of us, are going to have to adjust.
I’ve talked with a lot of people, and I’ve seen a lot of economic cycles. Here’s what I suggest you do to keep growing your business even with social distancing.
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Presenting the Strategy Paper to Turn Prospects into Clients
November 28, 2022 / by Russell Collins / Connelly Corner, Prospecting / 0 comments
In my previous guest blog post, I explained how I dissected the confirmed file note by dividing it into four separate quadrants in order to create a strategy to take to my next meeting – the Strategy Paper Meeting (SPM), It should lead to a “yes”, the prospect agreeing to do business with me.
In summary, the primary purpose of the SPM is to highlight a problem; get their agreement to the problem; that they want to solve it; and then involve them in the decision-making process. That way the decision becomes theirs and all I had to do was the numbers based on their ability to pay. In relation to the latter, I found the best time to do that was after I had proceeded through the strategy paper up to the point of discussing the shortfall with them. More on that later. Now let’s focus on the strategy paper itself.
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Digital Marketing for Financial Advisors – Email Can Still Be Your Most Powerful Communication Channel
February 1, 2021 / by Don Connelly / Marketing Yourself / 0 comments
It wasn’t long ago when you were considered a marketing dinosaur if you didn’t use email campaigns. Today, you are obsolete if you aren’t using digital marketing to take advantage of all the digital channels available to you, including email marketing. A digital marketing strategy aims to push targeted content out to pull qualified leads in, and email marketing is core to that strategy.
The challenge is your target market is receiving so much content through the internet, email, social media, and snail-mail that the noise has become deafening. It used to be that marketers would create the message and push it out to anyone within range of their ads or mailers. In the digital age, consumers control the message, with the ability to determine what information they receive, how they receive it, and how they respond, if they want to respond. If any content manages to reach them outside that control, it is probably deemed irrelevant or a nuisance.
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Financial Advisors and Social Distancing: How to Keep Prospecting and Servicing Clients
March 30, 2020 / by Don Connelly / Marketing Yourself / 0 comments
Traditionally, being a financial advisor has been a face-to-face business. We are creatures of the working lunch, the handshake, the coffee meeting. Appointments are the lifeblood of our business, because we’re in the business of personal relationships. That’s our real advantage over the low-cost robo-advisors, and a big part of how we justify our fees.
But social distancing is changing all that in a flash. I’m optimistic about the economy and the stock market long-term. But this bug isn’t going away anytime soon. We are undergoing a rapid cultural shift where social distance may very well become the norm for a good, long while.
And all of us old-school financial advisors, as well as brokers, planners, insurance agents, all of us, are going to have to adjust.
I’ve talked with a lot of people, and I’ve seen a lot of economic cycles. Here’s what I suggest you do to keep growing your business even with social distancing.
Read more
Top 10 Most-read Posts on Our Blog in 2019
December 30, 2019 / by Don Connelly / What's New / 0 comments
Another year is about to end tomorrow – we hope it was as great for you as it was for us at Don Connelly & Associates. We’d like to close our blogging year with a recap of the most-read posts on the blog by tens of thousands of Financial Advisors and Wholesalers in 2019.
They are mostly on using stories and analogies, getting referrals and becoming brilliant at the basics. But there were also a couple of posts on preparing yourself for market corrections, overcoming your fears and building strong relationships with prospects and clients. Enjoy and thanks for reading!
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Why You Need a “Who I Am” Story to Succeed
March 26, 2015 / by Don Connelly / Marketing Yourself / 0 comments
When someone tells you they want to ‘think it over’ it’s a sign they haven’t invested in you. They are most likely not deciding about your recommendations. They are deciding about forming a relationship with you. Remember, the three most important things in this business are to be likeable, smart and trustworthy. A great way to be likeable and build trust is to tell a ‘who I am’ story to prospective clients. By telling them a story about yourself you can influence people and establish your credibility. A great story will resonate with clients, stir up their emotions and get them to act.
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