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.

Want to Succeed as a Financial Advisor? Do These Five Things.

July 6, 2020 / by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments

Helping people achieve their financial goals and provide security for their families is one of the greatest, most rewarding career paths on the planet. But it’s a very tough business to succeed in, especially in your first few years.

Here are the five things you must do, if you want to maximize your chances of surviving your first five years as an advisor.

How to Fill Your Pipeline Despite the Coronavirus Pandemic

June 29, 2020 / by Don Connelly / Prospecting / 0 comments

Back in 1998, physician and author Spencer Johnson wrote a best-selling book called “Who Moved My Cheese?”

It’s the story of four mice who live in a maze and who have grown accustomed to cheese being deposited in the same spot every day… until one day it didn’t happen. The rest of the book explores their strategies for coping with change – both successful and unsuccessful.

The moral of the story is this: “Change happens.” It’s inevitable. Not everyone can roll with the punches, but you’ve got to adapt, improvise and overcome. You’ve got to move with the cheese.

Well, friends, the cheese just got moved!

Now, don’t get me wrong: The cheese hasn’t gone away. It’s still out there! People still want and need help managing their money. In fact, they want and need it now more than they have in years. But the way to get to the cheese is now radically different.

Communication in a Post-Pandemic World: How to Connect with Prospective and Current Clients

June 22, 2020 / by Don Connelly / Managing the Relationship / 0 comments

All of us are affected by the coronavirus and the shutdowns. The virus is slowly running its course but social distancing will be with us for a very long time to come.

That means most of us are going to have to change the way we market and sell our services. “Meet and greet” networking events will be out of the picture for a while. When they do come back, they’ll be different. They may look more like ‘show and tells’ with slide shows than mingling sessions.

Even walking into businesses and asking for the owner is going to be fraught. The small ‘handshake’ ritual that has been with us since antiquity will be changed as we figure out our new forms of etiquette and social conventions.

So, what’s the best path forward?

Bear Market: What You Do Will Make or Break Your Financial Advisor Career

June 15, 2020 / by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments

Every advisor gets just a few great career-building opportunities: Times when they can really establish themselves as experts, build long-term credibility, and differentiate themselves from the competition – most of whom are hiding from their clients because they don’t know how to guide them through the bear market.

What do the real pros do when things are scariest? When your clients are calling you scared witless, and they want to go to cash?

5 Advantages Young Financial Advisors Have Over Older Advisors

June 8, 2020 / by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments

When it comes to asking people to handle their money, having a few grey hairs does bring a small advantage. People are just naturally reluctant to trust people with managing their money who are younger than their own children.

But there are some huge advantages to being a younger advisor, as well. In fact, I can tell you after decades in this business, there has never been a better time in the history of the financial services business to be coming into this business as a young advisor, or even a career changer under 40.

Seven Things to Do to Set Yourself Up for Success as a Financial Advisor

June 1, 2020 / by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments

All Financial Advisors need a track to run on. That is, a set of activities that you know are productive, and that will continue to guide you on your path to success, even … and this is key… even if you don’t feel like working!

Here is a set of seven principles that will help keep you focused and moving along your path to the very top of our profession.

How to Build Your Story-Benefit Matrix

May 25, 2020 / by Don Connelly / Storytelling, analogies and power phrases / 0 comments

Last week I blogged about a useful sales tool called a story-benefit matrix, and why you should develop one for your practice. Just going through the process is beneficial: It forces you to think through a number of different ways your prospective client will benefit by working with you – and gives you an opportunity to help tell an illustrative story that will cement that case.

It’s basic “soft-skills” at work.

But it’s helpful to understand how to build one yourself, so let me help you with that.

Why You Should Create a Story-Benefit Matrix

May 18, 2020 / by Don Connelly / Storytelling, analogies and power phrases / 0 comments

Recently, in my post ”Never Underestimate the Power of a Good ‘Who I Am’ Story,” I mentioned the concept of building a good “story-benefit” matrix. I wanted to take a little time and drill down that concept.

Many salespeople are familiar with the concept of a features-benefit matrix – a handy little cheat-sheet that helps sales and marketing people translate product features into benefits for the customer.

Here’s how a features-benefit matrix works in a nutshell.

4 Reasons Financial Advisors Should Invest in Education and Self-Development Early On

May 11, 2020 / by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments

Why Advisors Should Invest in Education and Self-Development Early On

“If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it away from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.”

— Benjamin Franklin

Warren Buffett is perhaps the most successful investor there ever was. Not from just one or two big hits, but from a long string of investment successes over more than six decades. But he didn’t get where he is now without studying very hard at Wharton, then at Columbia, where he studied with the legendary Benjamin Graham.

Further, like a Roth IRA, self-development pays off the most when you do it aggressively early in life. The benefits of learning and knowledge compound over time (as long as you keep learning).

Here are four reasons why you should start investing in education and self-development as early in your Financial Advisor career as you can.

8 Stories to Help You Build Trust and Open Accounts

May 4, 2020 / by Don Connelly / Storytelling, analogies and power phrases / 0 comments

As you might know already, I’m a big believer in telling a story.

As I write this, it’s presidential campaign season. The candidates are all about telling their stories. They want to get their preferred narratives out there, in front of voters. Successful candidates are very well rehearsed on these stories. They constantly make references to these stories, in the effort to brand themselves, differentiate themselves from other candidates, and inoculate themselves against attacks from competing candidates and their staffs.

Why?

Because it works!

It works in financial services, too.

In fact, it works so well that I don’t want you to have a single story defining you. I want you to have at least eight! And I want you to know them cold.

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Articles by: Don Connelly