Don Connelly, Author at Don Connelly & Associates

Don A. Connelly is a speaker, motivator and educator for financial advisors. During a career of more than 40 years on Wall Street, he worked for nearly 19 years as company spokesperson, senior vice president and senior marketing officer for Putnam Investments, in addition to holding positions as a stock broker, financial planner, branch manager, wholesaler and national sales manager. As founder and CEO of Don Connelly 24/7, he provides timely and provocative sales ideas to thousands of financial professionals, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Twelve Quick Suggestions for Building a Better Business

November 27, 2023 / by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments

Allow me to give you 12 suggestions – things I’ve learned over the years. Watch this video episode or read the transcript below to learn these 12 ways to build a better business.

How to Help Clients Through Their Financial Anxiety

November 20, 2023 / by Don Connelly / Managing the Relationship / 0 comments

Who among us has never had worries about money? You can expect that many of your clients have experienced money worries from time to time. We know that clients can become stressed during periods of increasing market volatility or economic distress. And we’ve shared how financial advisors can help clients deal with that stress and confront fears to prevent their emotions from controlling their decisions.

But what about financial anxiety? Not only is that different from stress, but it can be much more debilitating to the psyche, causing mental paralysis in the face of important financial decisions. While stress is typically caused by external factors, such as a crashing market or rising unemployment, anxiety tends to rise internally over fears or unhealthy attitudes about the world around us.

How to Become Your Client’s Trusted Confidant

November 13, 2023 / by Don Connelly / Managing the Relationship / 0 comments

We’ve frequently stressed the importance of building deep and trusting relationships with clients. Practically speaking, the stronger and more enduring your client relationships, the greater their lifetime value to you in terms of repeat business, growing assets under management, referrals, and family legacies. For financial advisors, the profit truly is in the relationship.

The most successful advisors seek to take the relationship even deeper—to the point where they become a trusted confidant of their clients. They want to be the first person their clients think of when any significant issue arises, be it a family milestone (i.e., birth, college graduation, engagement), family tragedy (i.e., divorce, death), career change, or any major family decision (i.e., new home purchase).

To some, that may seem like going above and beyond. After all, isn’t it enough to have the family’s trust to act in their best interests in helping them manage their money? Is it appropriate to try to insert ourselves into every aspect of their lives? What do we gain from that? What does the client gain? Why would a client want their financial advisor as a trusted confidant?

How to Write a Highly Effective LinkedIn Summary – Examples for Financial Advisors Included

November 6, 2023 / by Don Connelly / Marketing Yourself / 0 comments

It’s well established that LinkedIn is a vital platform for financial advisors to showcase their expertise and connect with potential clients. Advisors who use LinkedIn agree that the social media platform plays a key role in building connections and expanding their opportunities for finding potential prospects.

We’ve discussed LinkedIn’s important role in generating leads and how to use it effectively for prospecting. We also covered the five grave LinkedIn mistakes advisors make, including giving short shrift to their LinkedIn Summary. In fact, a poorly crafted LinkedIn Summary can render your profile unreadable, causing anyone looking for a financial advisor to move on to the next profile.

Control Is Important for People Over 60

October 30, 2023 / by Don Connelly / Best Practices, Connelly Corner / 0 comments

There’s a subtlety about getting old that really concerns people and we don’t talk about it enough. That’s loss of control, loss of being able to control their lives. I know I went through it with my mother when she became too old to drive.
She was driving years before myself and my two brothers were born. To her, her driver’s license was not a privilege. It was a right. And for us to say as her children, ‘You shouldn’t be driving’, it’s loss of control. She freaked out and it infuriated her. I don’t blame her. If someone does it to me someday, I’m going to go nutty also. But we’re all afraid of losing control.
I don’t care if someone has a million dollars or $1. Rich people are poor people with money. We’ve all got the same worries about losing control of our lives and letting other people make our decisions. Listen to this audio episode or read the transcript below to learn about losing control, Frank Luntz, the pollster, and one of his books.

How to Attract Emerging Affluent Gen Z and Young Millennials in their 20s

October 23, 2023 / by Don Connelly / Marketing Yourself / 0 comments

Financial advisors with any ambitions of growing their practices in the next couple of decades can’t ignore the emergence of Gen Z as an economic force. Though the estimated $143 billion in assets held by Gen Z is dwarfed by the trillions held by millennials, Gen Z workers are expected to outearn millennials as soon as 2030. They will be more educated and more ambitious than their generational predecessors, and they will be starving for financial advice.

The challenge for financial advisors is that while even today, the members of Gen Z are looking for financial advice, most prefer to find it through social media, the internet, and their parents or friends, according to the FINRA Investor Education Foundation.

The good news for advisors is that the same study found that 71% of Gen Z investors are receptive to working with financial professionals, counting them among the most trustworthy sources of financial information, second only to their parents.

The critical issue for any financial advisor hoping to attract young clients is whether they are perceived as someone who can be trusted to serve them in the manner they expect.

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.

Financial Advisor Branding—Elements to Focus On

October 9, 2023 / by Don Connelly / Marketing Yourself / 0 comments

One of the most significant challenges facing financial advisors trying to grow their practice is it takes time, resources, and a well-conceived marketing strategy to get their stories out to the right audiences. While it involves strategically utilizing digital marketing and producing targeted and relevant content, the path must be paved by building a solid brand and reputation.

How to Bring Back Face-to-Face Meetings with Clients

October 2, 2023 / by Don Connelly / Managing the Relationship / 0 comments

A survey by YCharts in December 2019 found that clients didn’t feel engaged and wanted more personalized communications. We’ve posted several times that, pre- and post-pandemic, the frequency and style of advisors’ communication directly impact client trust and confidence in their advisor, financial plan, and their likelihood of keeping their advisor.

A more recent report, post-pandemic, found that, though virtual meetings had taken hold as a viable form of communication for advisors forced to limit in-person meetings, it’s likely that the decrease in face-to-face contact contributed to client feelings of reduced communication. That’s a direct threat to the strength of the advisor-client relationship.

How to Talk to Clients About Market Volatility

September 25, 2023 / by Don Connelly / Investing Wisdom / 0 comments

You don’t hear people talk much about market volatility until stock prices suddenly sell off. But when your clients watch their portfolio value decline unexpectedly, it can be terrifying, leading many to make potentially costly mistakes, such as selling into a steep market decline. Though we’ve experienced many volatile markets over the last 20 years, advisors must help clients understand that volatility is not their enemy.

1 2 3 … 56

Articles by: Don Connelly