/ by Don Connelly / Managing the Relationship / 0 comments
If you are to be chosen as someone’s Financial Advisor, you must pass three tests. The person must like you and think you are smart, but, most importantly, the person must trust you. There is no substitute for trust.
When mom and dad leave you after that first meeting, they do not talk about convexity or tactical asset allocation.
They ask themselves one question: “Do you trust him? Do you trust her?” If the answer is ‘no’ or ‘not really’, you stand no chance of getting those folks as clients. There are too many other Advisors they can turn to.
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Your Clients Look to You for Leadership
/ by Don Connelly / Managing the Relationship / 0 comments
The more uncertain the times, the more certainty clients want from you. They want you and they expect you to guide them to their goals. Like it or not, you are depended upon for your leadership skills. This may be unfair to you.
You weren’t taught leadership in training.
Nonetheless, the role has been thrust upon you.
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Tell Simple Stories
/ by Don Connelly / Storytelling, analogies and power phrases / 0 comments
Clients, as we’ve discussed in the past, love word pictures. What we find very, very simple, people find very, very difficult to comprehend. This is much the same as you and I having difficult time understanding two lawyers when they talk. It’s because of lingo.
Because our lingo in the financial services industry is just as confusing to people you need to use stories when communicating to current and prospective clients. So tell them stories.
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Effective Communication Is an Acquired Skill
/ by Don Connelly / Marketing Yourself / 0 comments
Effective communication occurs when the listener understands everything you just said. You made the complex simple. That’s not an easy thing to do.
It takes a long time and a lot of practice to become simple.
The effort is worth it. There is nothing more important to a Financial Advisor than being understood. After all, if everyone understood everything you said, you would be one of the highest paid and most influential people in the world.
Fortunately, effective communication is an acquired skill, not an innate skill.
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Without Integrity, There Is No Credibility
/ by Don Connelly / Managing the Relationship / 0 comments
If you are to be chosen as someone’s Financial Advisor, you must pass three tests. The person must like you and think you are smart, but, most importantly, the person must trust you. There is no substitute for trust.
When mom and dad leave you after that first meeting, they do not talk about convexity or tactical asset allocation.
They ask themselves one question: “Do you trust him? Do you trust her?” If the answer is ‘no’ or ‘not really’, you stand no chance of getting those folks as clients. There are too many other Advisors they can turn to.
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Learn to Laugh at Yourself when It Is Called for
/ by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments
It is hard to overstate the importance of being able to laugh at yourself. People who can do this are generally more optimistic than those who cannot.
Optimistic personalities go far in the Financial Services industry.
I have seen a lot of Advisors fail over the years, but I have never seen an optimistic Advisor fail. Being more cheerful and less serious is a great survival technique.
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There Is a Shortage of Accountability – Be Responsible
/ by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments
Your clients will love you if you insist on being accountable for your own actions. Your clients look to you as a leader. They depend upon you to lead them to their goals safely and on time.
One of the key components of leadership is accountability.
If you hold yourself accountable for everything you say and do, people will respond favorably. It is so refreshing to hear someone take responsibility for his or her own actions.
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Common Sense Is Quite Uncommon
/ by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 2 comments
Our A students become professors. Our B students go to law school. Our C students rule the world.
So wrote Dean of Harvard College, Henry Rosovsky.
The inference to be drawn from Rosovky’s observation is that common sense will take one very far in life. Street smarts trump book smarts.
Everybody seems to know that common sense is always the answer.
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The Alzheimer’s Tsunami & Preparing for the Worst
/ by Don Connelly / What's New / 0 comments
Understanding the Signs, and YOUR legal & Ethical Liability
We heard you loud and clear! On February 18, 2014, Don Connelly 24/7 held a second webinar discussing a Financial Advisor’s call to action upon a client’s diagnosis of Alzheimer’s.
Is the Advisor obligated to act? If so, how?
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Optimism Is a Choice
/ by Don Connelly / Marketing Yourself / 1 comment
I read an interesting article that stated each of us has nearly 60,000 thoughts per waking day, one each second. We mostly think about things we have thoughts about before and many of those thoughts are negative.
Mood and memory are linked.
For whatever reason, bad thoughts seem more powerful than good thoughts. We hash over the bad thoughts and we get in a bad mood. People in bad moods think negative thoughts. We should call it a negativity loop.
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Play The Cards The Market Deals You
/ by Don Connelly / Investing Wisdom / 1 comment
There are things we know and there are things we don’t know. A first thing we know is that every single time the stock market has gone down, it has come back.
A second thing we know is that every single time the market has gone down and come back, it has gone on to set new highs.
And, a third thing we know is that a perplexingly large number of investors lose money in the stock market, despite knowing the first two things.
What we don’t know is what the market will do tomorrow.
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