August 15, 2016 / by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 1 comment
I’m often asked what I read. One of the things I read is the Motivational Manager. They once reprinted an old treatise written by Harry Joiner at ecommercerecruiter.com called – “Before you apply for your next job”.
The title of the Motivational Manager article is simply “Disengage autopilot and take control of your career”. I think it’s really important for advisors to hear this.
It goes on to say that Harry Joiner was an executive recruiter. He meets about a hundred and fifty candidates a week and 90% of those professionals share the same failing – they’re clueless.
He said that most are well educated, and some may even be considered accomplished.
But they have a blind spot where their long-term career vision should be.
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A Blueprint for Aspiring Million Dollar Producers to Follow
September 19, 2016 / by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments
A while ago I received an email from Guy Steele who is a friend and an advisor in Hawaii. He said:
“Give me an idea of how a million dollar producer works. How many calls a day do they make? How many hours a day do they work? Mentally what’s their mindset each day when they go to the office? Do you have a blueprint for aspiring million dollar producers to follow?”
Listen to Don’s answer or read the transcript below.
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Three Challenges Financial Advisors Face in Their Daily Work
September 12, 2016 / by Don Connelly / Managing the Relationship / 0 comments
A recent post on this blog outlined three challenges Advisors face when acquiring clients. This week I’ll outline three more chief challenges you are probably facing in your daily work, along with some tips on how to overcome them.
#1. Providing clients with reassurance when the markets take a downturn
Keeping clients on track when markets take a dive is a situation many advisors find tricky. But It’s essential to know how to keep clients invested for the long term.
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Never Forget that Clients and Prospects Are Real People with Real Concerns
September 5, 2016 / by Don Connelly / Managing the Relationship / 0 comments
Clients and prospects are real people so the best way to reach out to them and win them over is to appeal to their humanity – not wow them with financial jargon.
People won’t warm to you simply because you know your way around the stock market. Your prospects and clients make their decisions based on whether they like you and trust you – not on your ability to make the numbers add up. People overwhelmingly tend to make decisions based on emotions rather than on hard rational thinking. So put away your graphs, numbers, pie charts and statistics and convince people to trust you rather than the numbers.
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Take Action Now if You Want to Succeed as a Financial Advisor
August 29, 2016 / by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments
Financial advisors often fail or stay at a mediocre level because they procrastinate. They don’t understand that success requires looking to the future, setting goals and working hard to achieve those goals. Instead many advisors think they can get by day by day on the bare minimum. Unfortunately, success doesn’t just ‘happen’. No matter how talented you are your star won’t rise unless you get proactive about growing your business.
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Three Major Challenges Financial Advisors Face when Acquiring Clients
August 22, 2016 / by Don Connelly / Marketing Yourself / 0 comments
Pinpointing the main challenges Financial Advisors face in their daily work is a challenge in itself, considering there are so many. But here are three of the most often cited pain points – with a few tips on how to address them.
#1. Getting referrals
If like a lot of other advisors, you often find it difficult to ask for referrals it’s because asking for referrals is essentially like asking for help to grow your business. And having to ask for someone’s help feels like admitting that your business is deficient in some way. Asking for referrals also means facing up to your fear of rejection.
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Getting Back on Track
August 15, 2016 / by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 1 comment
I’m often asked what I read. One of the things I read is the Motivational Manager. They once reprinted an old treatise written by Harry Joiner at ecommercerecruiter.com called – “Before you apply for your next job”.
The title of the Motivational Manager article is simply “Disengage autopilot and take control of your career”. I think it’s really important for advisors to hear this.
It goes on to say that Harry Joiner was an executive recruiter. He meets about a hundred and fifty candidates a week and 90% of those professionals share the same failing – they’re clueless.
He said that most are well educated, and some may even be considered accomplished.
But they have a blind spot where their long-term career vision should be.
Read more
Take Charge of Your Own Destiny if You Want to Be a Successful Advisor
August 8, 2016 / by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments
If you want to succeed as a financial advisor you need to understand that you, and you alone, are in control of your career. Your future success relies on the choices you make, so take control without delay.
Take some time out to analyze your current practice and identify areas requiring improvement. Commit to change and to getting better at the basics. Change your mindset to re-inforce the idea that you are doing things out of choice rather than necessity.
Take note of Maya Angelou’s words of wisdom: “If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.”
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Five Skills That Will Make You Stand Apart from The Crowd
August 1, 2016 / by Don Connelly / Marketing Yourself / 0 comments
Hard skills can be learned from a book. They’re the skills most of us spent 16 years in school focusing on. In contrast, there’s no clear path to learning soft skills. Soft skills have to be learnt ‘on the job’ via experience and with trial and error.
Soft skills are at the very heart of what it is to be a great financial advisor. They are the skills that will mark you out from the crowd. So make sure you excel at soft skills by putting in a lot of practice. And persevere.
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How to Be a Better Prospector
July 25, 2016 / by Don Connelly / Prospecting / 0 comments
To succeed in this competitive industry, you need to be creative when it comes to acquiring new clients. No one universal approach is likely to be your Holy Grail when it comes to prospecting. Instead, you will need to adopt a number of prospecting approaches and learn, through trial and error, which work best for you. Once you’ve found a method you’re good at, you’re likely to enjoy finding clients that way, boosting your job satisfaction as well as your ability to attract new clients. Here are a few prospecting approaches to try.
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Read This if You Need a Boost in Self-motivation
July 18, 2016 / by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments
At some point in your career as a financial advisor you will experience a lack of motivation. When this happens you can either stay unmotivated and fail, or develop a new course of action and succeed. The following post includes some tips to help you do the latter.
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