May 29, 2023 / by Don Connelly / Marketing Yourself / 0 comments
Highly successful advisors have long determined that the traditional shotgun approach to prospecting using blast emails no longer works. They have found that prospecting with a more targeted approach, focusing more narrowly on clearly defined ideal client types based on a readily identifiable market segment or niche, increases both efficiency and results. These segments or niches are identified by demographics, businesses, careers, interests, or shared financial concerns that distinguish them from others.
We’ve written about the many advantages of niche marketing, including the more efficient use of resources, the ease of establishing one’s authority within a niche, and the built-in networking apparatus of well-connected clients residing in a niche.
However, the most significant marketing advantage is the ease of conducting research to gather intelligence about your market. Through market research, you can uncover critical information enabling you to develop more effective communication methods that appeal to your target market while honing your value proposition to touch their pain points.
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How to Turn Data Collection into a Process Your Clients Will Appreciate
May 22, 2023 / by Don Connelly / Managing the Relationship / 0 comments
Financial advisors love data—until it’s time to collect it from a new client. Advisors know that data collection is an essential component of the planning process, without which they can’t get an accurate picture of their client’s current situation. But mining all the critical data needed to connect current circumstances to future aspirations can be tedious—for both advisors and clients.
It can also be a point of tension in a new advisory relationship, as new clients may still be working through trust issues. Advisors must understand this and continue working fervently to earn their client’s trust by expertly shepherding them through the process. While getting the data is important, advisors need to use this moment as another opportunity to engage their clients on a deeper level, focusing as much on the qualitative side as the quantitative side of data collection.
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Goal Setting: Not Just About the Numbers. It’s About Emotional Connections.
May 15, 2023 / by Don Connelly / Managing the Relationship / 0 comments
Goal setting is the second step of the client data-gathering process —unquestionably the most critical step in solidifying the client relationship and the key to setting your clients up for success. Beyond offering the technical expertise to help clients navigate the complex realm of financial planning, the most valuable service financial advisors bring to the table is helping them align the use of their resources with the things that are most important to them.
Yet even though advisors are well-positioned in this stage of the relationship to have these critical conversations, encouraging their clients to discuss their financial goals and understanding on a deeper level why those goals are meaningful to them, is a significant challenge for many. They then wonder why the client later chooses to abandon their financial plan or the relationship.
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How to Get the Most out of the Client Data-Gathering Process
May 8, 2023 / by Don Connelly / Managing the Relationship / 0 comments
Next to the initial meeting with a prospect, data gathering is the most critical step in the relationship-building process. Of course, it’s also the most vital step in the financial planning process, without which advisors can’t analyze a client’s situation, make proper recommendations, and implement them. That’s well understood by most advisors. Less understood is the critical role the data-gathering step plays in increasing client engagement, building trust, and solidifying the advisor-client relationship.
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For Clients Expecting 5-Star Service, Exceptional Communications Is Not Enough—Proactive Communication Is the New Standard
December 5, 2022 / by Don Connelly / Managing the Relationship / 0 comments
Top financial advisors understand that superior client communications are paramount to building a successful practice. That is supported by a widely published survey by Financial Advisor Magazine, revealing that 72% of clients cite poor client communications as the number one reason they leave their financial advisor.
If 72% of clients expect exceptional client communications as a condition for staying with an advisor, it’s no longer a differentiator—it’s merely table stakes for advisors who hope to compete for their business. So how can financial advisors who do focus on elevating the client communications game stand out to clients with higher expectations of what five-star service should look like?
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3 Steps to Build Your Self Confidence Regardless of Your Experience Level
April 25, 2022 / by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 2 comments
At some point in their careers, every financial advisor suffers from the affliction of self-doubt. For most of us, it overcomes us at the beginning of our careers. For some, it can linger on for several years. Heck, even experienced advisors have bouts of self-doubt, but they tend to be rare. Whatever the reason for it, self-doubt or lack of self-confidence can be a career killer or, at the very least, a painful way to go through life.
There probably isn’t an advisor among us who early on thought to themselves, “Why would anyone want to work with me?” “I work in a cubicle. I’m just a few years out of college. Many of the people I talk to are old enough to be my parents. The younger ones are successful in their careers. What business do I have telling them how to become financially successful?”
Sound familiar?
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Mapping Out the Client Acquisition Timeline—How Long It Takes to Get a New Client
March 14, 2022 / by Don Connelly / Managing the Relationship, Prospecting / 0 comments
New clients are the lifeblood of a financial advisory practice, without which it could go into cardiac arrest. For newer financial advisors, acquiring new clients can’t happen fast enough. However, if obtaining clients was easy, anyone could be a successful financial advisor. Starting out, it’s an uphill battle that only the most determined can eventually win.
It also helps to have a systematic process for capturing leads, nurturing them through the sales funnel, and converting them into prospects, out of which a certain percentage become clients. That’s all laid out on a timeline that can vary significantly depending on the type of lead, where it came from, and how effective your process is for cultivating the lead. It could take anywhere from one month to a year for a lead to complete the journey through the funnel to becoming a new client.
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5 Reasons Advisors Need a Well-Conceived, Systematic Communications Strategy
January 10, 2022 / by Don Connelly / Managing the Relationship / 0 comments
Financial advisors are reaching a pivotal moment that will shape their future. An increasingly competitive landscape, fee compression, the commoditization of advice, and increasing client expectations make client satisfaction, retention, and referrals more essential than ever. As advisors struggle to differentiate themselves in a sea of sameness, I always reach back to the time-tested solution: good communication.
If you have been following my blog for a while, you’re familiar with my core belief that communication is vital to developing solid and enduring relationships. You simply can’t form trusted relationships without good communication.
Most clients don’t feel engaged with their Advisor
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Nothing Happens without an Appointment
January 3, 2022 / by Don Connelly / Prospecting / 0 comments
Would you like to have $50,000,000 in assets under management? How about a $100,000,000? How about $500,000,000? It’s simple. It’s not easy, but it is simple. Go get an appointment. It all starts with getting an appointment. Nothing happens without an appointment in this business. Go on the appointment, get your nose bloody, come back and get another appointment. Then get another one. Then get another one. Building a career is a series of many steps. Success is not part time. Get in the habit of getting appointments.
Watch this video or read the transcript to learn how to get in the habit of getting appointments.
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Why Financial Advisors Must Embrace Technology Now
November 29, 2021 / by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments
In the third of our series of Critical Issues Facing Financial Advisors Right Now, we turn to the challenge facing advisors in adopting the technologies that will drive business growth for the foreseeable future. Financial advisors have seen the future, and it is now. Those who learn to embrace it will have a distinct advantage over those who continue to run from it.
We can complain all we want about the rise of robo-advisors but, the fact is, they only control a minute portion of the trillions of dollars held by wealth managers, advisors, and asset managers. Still, robo-advisors are on the cutting edge of technological innovations, and venture capital is flooding the financial technology sector with billions of dollars.
Our industry has reached a critical juncture where advisors must now choose to embrace technological change to get ahead of their competition and provide the level of service their clients have come to expect or risk obsolescence.
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