/ by Don Connelly / Prospecting / 0 comments
Prospecting is the backbone of your business. It’s the one task you cannot delegate, since people need to like and trust you personally if they are to do business with you. So you should be constantly perfecting your soft skills in order to connect with and win new clients.
Inevitably however despite all your best efforts, you will fail to win influence with certain prospects. And it can be hard giving up on them – especially if you believe there’s even the tiniest chance of them converting.
There is a fine line between giving up too quickly and not knowing when to give up.
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Weekly Focus: Goal Setting
/ by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 1 comment
The beginning of a given year is the time to rewrite our goals, our mission statement and our business plan. For some of us that will involve a major overhaul and for some of us it will involve a tweak. For all of us, it will be a thought-provoking experience. Goal setting comes first. Decide what you want to accomplish and write it down. Set a date by which you will accomplish each goal. If you were charged with running a twelve-minute mile and nobody posted a finish line, you would have no way of knowing if you succeeded. It’s no different with business goals.
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Procrastination Will Ruin Your Chances of Success
/ by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments
Procrastination can take different forms. You may consciously procrastinate and avoid what you know you should be doing, or you may unconsciously put off your top priority tasks by attending to a series of ‘never ending fires’. Whatever type of procrastination you suffer from it can be ruinous to your business. Here’s what to do instead.
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A Story to Use When Discussing Your Fees & Commissions
/ by Don Connelly / Storytelling, analogies and power phrases / 0 comments
There are times when prospective clients are going to focus on your fees or your commissions. I want to talk about that, because it’s no one’s goal to offer the cheapest possible financial advice. That’s just not the way it goes.
So when someone talks to you about commissions or fees, I want you to tell them the Springfield story.
Watch the video or read the transcript below to hear the full story.
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Recognize When It’s Time to Move On
/ by Don Connelly / Prospecting / 0 comments
Prospecting is the backbone of your business. It’s the one task you cannot delegate, since people need to like and trust you personally if they are to do business with you. So you should be constantly perfecting your soft skills in order to connect with and win new clients.
Inevitably however despite all your best efforts, you will fail to win influence with certain prospects. And it can be hard giving up on them – especially if you believe there’s even the tiniest chance of them converting.
There is a fine line between giving up too quickly and not knowing when to give up.
Read more
7 Ways to Manage Client Expectations
/ by Don Connelly / Managing the Relationship / 0 comments
Managing client expectations is crucial in order to keep your clients invested in you and with their financial plan. Here are a few ways to make sure you deliver on your clients’ expectations both in terms of investment performance and your level of service.
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6 Steps to Help Create Urgency with Prospects
/ by Don Connelly / Prospecting / 0 comments
Creating urgency with prospects is a crucial yet often overwhelming obstacle for many advisors. The problem is how to get prospects to act, rather than deliberate and how to react when a prospect says ‘I’ll get back to you’ or ‘I need to think about it’. It’s essential to have a strategy in place for getting prospects off the fence – otherwise your business will go nowhere. Here are some practical ways you can help initiate this process.
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Put The Client Before Yourself
/ by Don Connelly / Managing the Relationship / 0 comments
As you know I’m always on a lookout for a good story. I read a great story not long ago, in Motivational Manager, told by Dana McCary who is a motivational speaker.
He said that when he was growing up, he’d been a waiter at Opryland in Nashville. He learned a very important business lesson.
Listen to the story or read the transcript below.
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Approaching Strangers Can Only Change Your Practice for The Better
/ by Don Connelly / Prospecting / 0 comments
You were probably brought up being told ‘don’t talk to strangers’. However, this rule doesn’t apply to adults, especially if you work as a financial advisor. Many advisors struggle with ‘cold’ approaching and prospecting, because it makes them feel anxious and fearful. However, unless you conquer this fear you will not be able to take your business to the next level. People are voice-activated. They are not going to talk to you. You’ve got to talk to them.
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Get Involved in Your Clients’ Decision-Making Process
/ by Don Connelly / Managing the Relationship / 0 comments
To win new business, earn loyalty and get referrals, you need to focus on what your prospects and clients are thinking. We all have our own particular ‘mental model’ or way we see the world, based on our beliefs and experiences. According to classic consumer behavior theory we tend to follow similar thought processes when we make a decision whether to purchase a certain product or service.
By understanding this consumer behavior, you can tap into your prospects’ thought processes early on and influence decisions in your favor.
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Creating Urgency with Prospects
/ by Don Connelly / Prospecting / 1 comment
I can recall few times in my career when business has been as slow as it has been recently. Perhaps the slowdown is due to the fast approaching year-end. Certainly, the pending Presidential election has a lot to do with it, as does the recent DOL running. Clients and Advisors alike have adopted a wait-and-see attitude. But there also are more traditional reasons at work.
People don’t enjoy the prospect of saving for a rainy day. There’s always a reason to delay investing, and never a ‘right’ time to make the move.
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