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.

Recognize When It’s Time to Move On

Recognize When It’s Time to Move On

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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6 Steps to Help Create Urgency with Prospects

6 Steps to Help Create Urgency with Prospects

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

From Don Connelly Blog - audio post

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

Approaching Strangers Can Only Change Your Practice for The Better

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

Get Involved in Your Clients’ Decision-Making Process

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

Creating Urgency with Prospects

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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Learn to Manage Client Expectations

Learn to Manage Client Expectations

Running the business gets in the way of growing the business. That’s a fact of life in the Financial Services industry. As the business gets bigger, an Advisor has to make a decision. Am I going to manage money or am I going to manage client expectations? It’s almost impossible to manage both. In my travels, I find most elite Advisors opting for outside management. They choose to manage their clients and their clients’ expectations.

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Four Client Retention Strategies to Try Out

Four Client Retention Strategies to Try Out

As in so many other industries, your business model as a financial advisor is to open new accounts and gather new assets on a continual basis. However, in order to succeed you need to combine this approach with a plan that ensures your clients will stick with you for the long term. You need to allocate time to both looking after existing clients as well as time to prospect. If you don’t, your current clients will feel discontented; they may start to look elsewhere, and they certainly won’t recommend you to others.

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