Being Proactive Is a Key to Financial Advisor’s Success
No one becomes a great financial advisor by accident. In order to become successful you must decide to be successful, and you’re the only person that can do this. If you don’t like where you are today then do something about it. Change, do things differently. The only thing standing between you and success is you. If you are tired of not having enough people to talk to, then make the decision to sharpen your prospecting skills. If you are tired of hearing people say they’ll ‘think it over’, make it your aim to learn how to better overcome their objections.
Don’t just contemplate – initiate
Becoming proactive means actually doing the things that unsuccessful advisors simply contemplate. If you want to achieve success, don’t put your plans on hold. Get out there and initiate a prospecting campaign; start getting referrals from an agreed number of clients; hold a seminar. While your competition is sitting there contemplating these actions, you should be out there making them happen.
Get in front of decision makers
Your job is to help people, and the more people you help the more successful you will be, so if you are not enjoying success you are not helping enough people. This means you need to prospect daily. No matter how good you are, if people don’t know you and understand how you can help them, you will not succeed. Prospective clients will not hunt you down. You need to be proactive, and this is something you have to do for yourself, it’s the one thing you cannot outsource.
Once you’re settled in for the day, get on the phone and get appointments. If you have appointments lined up for the week, nothing can get in your way. Slumps will become rarer and you will get more referrals because you have more people to ask. Business development, research and staff management, while important, do not generate revenue; client meetings do, so put your focus on sitting knee to knee with prospects.
Getting ready to prospect is not prospecting; it’s simply a way to avoid prospecting. If you aren’t prospecting enough, ask yourself why. Is it because you fear being rejected? Are you unsure of yourself, or how to properly prospect? You need to address your issues to get beyond them, so find someone who will help you become a better prospector.
Take the lead
Life is not a constant bull market. There will be many ups and downs along the way and another crisis always seems to be looming. You can’t control the markets but you can control your reactions to the market. When things get tough your enthusiasm will serve you better than any product knowledge. If you can convince clients that things will be better down the road, you will help overcome their fears and keep them on track.
Be a confident leader. Act with positivity despite your fears during uncertain times and guide clients in terms of what to do. Your clients need you to be enthusiastic and self-confident on their behalf. Just as air passengers look to flight attendants during a bumpy flight your clients need someone to turn to in a turbulent market. Flight attendants don’t panic and neither should you.
Make the first move if things go wrong
You won’t be right all the time. You will make mistakes. But don’t run for cover when things don’t work out. It’s easy to pick up the phone and call clients when things are going well but it’s far more difficult to call to say you made a mistake.
A big reason people switch financial advisors is due to a lack of communication. If you want to be successful, treat your clients as you would want other people to treat you. And always remember that if you don’t call to reassure your clients, someone else will. Your clients still need to make money and they need your input and suggestions so get proactive and make the call.
If you want to succeed, motivate yourself to become more proactive.
Get out there and make things happen. And use your enthusiasm to motivate others to stay with you. There’s never a perfect time to get started, so simply put one foot in front of the other and start walking – because if you don’t make a start, you’ll never know what you might have achieved.
If you are ready to make the first step, we invite you to try Don Connelly 24/7!
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