/ by Don Connelly / Managing the Relationship / 0 comments
We’ve frequently stressed the importance of building deep and trusting relationships with clients. Practically speaking, the stronger and more enduring your client relationships, the greater their lifetime value to you in terms of repeat business, growing assets under management, referrals, and family legacies. For financial advisors, the profit truly is in the relationship.
The most successful advisors seek to take the relationship even deeper—to the point where they become a trusted confidant of their clients. They want to be the first person their clients think of when any significant issue arises, be it a family milestone (i.e., birth, college graduation, engagement), family tragedy (i.e., divorce, death), career change, or any major family decision (i.e., new home purchase).
To some, that may seem like going above and beyond. After all, isn’t it enough to have the family’s trust to act in their best interests in helping them manage their money? Is it appropriate to try to insert ourselves into every aspect of their lives? What do we gain from that? What does the client gain? Why would a client want their financial advisor as a trusted confidant?
Read more
It’s Time to Have Another Conversation with Your Clients About Risk
/ by Don Connelly / Investing Wisdom / 0 comments
With the stock market setting its sights on new highs, is it time for advisors to have another serious conversation about risk?
With all that is going on across the globe—war in Ukraine and the Middle East, persistent inflation, rising interest rates, a looming recession, and a divided government likely headed to another fiscal cliff—the stock market appears to be climbing a wall of worry. But how long can that go on? When will it end?
As the market nears new highs, that is the question being asked with increasing regularity by market analysts, media pundits, nervous investors, and financial advisors alike. While the question is palpable, the answer is not so obvious.
Read more
When Markets Are in Transition
/ by Don Connelly / Investing Wisdom / 0 comments
The stock market is not static. It’s always in transition, more often than not triggered by economic uncertainty.
Listen to this 1-minute audio or read the transcript below to hear an idea about calming clients’ fears and refocusing them during times of uncertainty.
Read more
5 Ways Financial Advisors Can Establish Credibility and Build Trust
/ by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments
We’ve made no secret of the fact that a trust deficit exists between the public and the financial services industry. Advisors, new and experienced, must work consciously and deliberately every day to overcome it. The challenge for advisors is they could be the most trustworthy person in the world, but without credibility, there can be no trust.
There could be trust, but it might only be fleeting without proof that it’s genuine. That’s where credibility comes in. The building blocks of trust include honesty, transparency, reliability, consistency, competence, empathy, authenticity, and vulnerability—traits that, when demonstrated by actions, create credibility. An advisor’s credibility is bolstered even more when both parties feel they benefit mutually with a vested interest in each other’s success.
Here are five ways advisors can establish credibility by demonstrating the building blocks of trust.
Read more
5 Scenarios When Advisors Should Fire Clients with Conflict of Interest
/ by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments
We’ve posted several times on the topic of conflicts of interest created by financial advisors when their objectivity may be compromised, and their interests are not necessarily aligned with their client’s best interests. We talked about the harm it can cause to the advisory relationship. Financial advisors caught up in ethical dilemmas, whether intentional or not, must be ready to take corrective action to save the relationship and keep the trust of their clients.
But what about when the tables are turned, and the client creates a conflict of interest or ethical dilemma? It happens more than you might think—when a client’s personal interests or values don’t align with their advisor’s. The conflict may not be egregious or illegal, but even if it just rubs you the wrong way, it might be time to cut the client loose.
Read more
Prospect Red Flags Financial Advisors Shouldn’t Ignore
/ by Don Connelly / Managing the Relationship, Prospecting / 0 comments
Almost every financial advisor starts in the same place—with a lot of time on their hands and not many clients. That’s when the criteria for selecting which prospects to work with is at its broadest—essentially, anyone willing to pay me anything.
It’s not until your business expands, reaching the point when you’re servicing 50 or more randomly chosen clients, that your time starts to become much more valuable. Eventually, you reach your capacity for new clients, and your revenue stops growing. Worse, you’re not enjoying your work as much as you hoped.
That’s when you realize it shouldn’t be about the number of new clients you take on; it should be about the quality. It’s about saying ‘no’ to prospects who don’t meet your criteria for the type of client you want to work with, which isn’t easy if you’re still chasing growth. But ultimately, saying no to prospects who are not a solid fit is good for you and them.
Here are some major prospect red flags warning you to move on.
Read more
Twelve Quick Suggestions for Building a Better Business
/ by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments
Allow me to give you 12 suggestions – things I’ve learned over the years. Watch this video episode or read the transcript below to learn these 12 ways to build a better business.
Read more
How to Help Clients Through Their Financial Anxiety
/ by Don Connelly / Managing the Relationship / 0 comments
Who among us has never had worries about money? You can expect that many of your clients have experienced money worries from time to time. We know that clients can become stressed during periods of increasing market volatility or economic distress. And we’ve shared how financial advisors can help clients deal with that stress and confront fears to prevent their emotions from controlling their decisions.
But what about financial anxiety? Not only is that different from stress, but it can be much more debilitating to the psyche, causing mental paralysis in the face of important financial decisions. While stress is typically caused by external factors, such as a crashing market or rising unemployment, anxiety tends to rise internally over fears or unhealthy attitudes about the world around us.
Read more
How to Become Your Client’s Trusted Confidant
/ by Don Connelly / Managing the Relationship / 0 comments
We’ve frequently stressed the importance of building deep and trusting relationships with clients. Practically speaking, the stronger and more enduring your client relationships, the greater their lifetime value to you in terms of repeat business, growing assets under management, referrals, and family legacies. For financial advisors, the profit truly is in the relationship.
The most successful advisors seek to take the relationship even deeper—to the point where they become a trusted confidant of their clients. They want to be the first person their clients think of when any significant issue arises, be it a family milestone (i.e., birth, college graduation, engagement), family tragedy (i.e., divorce, death), career change, or any major family decision (i.e., new home purchase).
To some, that may seem like going above and beyond. After all, isn’t it enough to have the family’s trust to act in their best interests in helping them manage their money? Is it appropriate to try to insert ourselves into every aspect of their lives? What do we gain from that? What does the client gain? Why would a client want their financial advisor as a trusted confidant?
Read more
How to Write a Highly Effective LinkedIn Summary – Examples for Financial Advisors Included
/ by Don Connelly / Marketing Yourself / 0 comments
It’s well established that LinkedIn is a vital platform for financial advisors to showcase their expertise and connect with potential clients. Advisors who use LinkedIn agree that the social media platform plays a key role in building connections and expanding their opportunities for finding potential prospects.
We’ve discussed LinkedIn’s important role in generating leads and how to use it effectively for prospecting. We also covered the five grave LinkedIn mistakes advisors make, including giving short shrift to their LinkedIn Summary. In fact, a poorly crafted LinkedIn Summary can render your profile unreadable, causing anyone looking for a financial advisor to move on to the next profile.
Read more
Control Is Important for People Over 60
/ by Don Connelly / Best Practices, Connelly Corner / 0 comments
There’s a subtlety about getting old that really concerns people and we don’t talk about it enough. That’s loss of control, loss of being able to control their lives. I know I went through it with my mother when she became too old to drive.
She was driving years before myself and my two brothers were born. To her, her driver’s license was not a privilege. It was a right. And for us to say as her children, ‘You shouldn’t be driving’, it’s loss of control. She freaked out and it infuriated her. I don’t blame her. If someone does it to me someday, I’m going to go nutty also. But we’re all afraid of losing control.
I don’t care if someone has a million dollars or $1. Rich people are poor people with money. We’ve all got the same worries about losing control of our lives and letting other people make our decisions. Listen to this audio episode or read the transcript below to learn about losing control, Frank Luntz, the pollster, and one of his books.
Read more