brilliant at the basics Archives - Page 10 of 13

How to Create a Systematic Communications Strategy

/ by Don Connelly / Managing the Relationship / 0 comments

By now you should know the importance of staying engaged with your clients. Clients who feel less engaged are less likely to trust their advisor relationship and more likely to bolt when things go south, if not before. At a minimum, they will feel less inclined to recommend you to others. Suddenly, it’s as if you’re spinning desperately on a hamster wheel with little hope of getting off.

Most advisors would agree that having a systematic communications strategy is essential for adding and retaining clients. The challenge for many is how to go about it. The exact tools and methods an advisor would use could vary greatly depending on their communication preferences, prospecting methods, and available time and resources. Here are a few steps to get you started.

Overcoming the Age Bias Prospects Have About Young Advisors

/ by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments

For young financial advisors, nothing is more challenging than overcoming the age bias that older clients have against them. I hear it often from advisors who come through our training programs—that feeling as though they are viewed more like a child or grandchild than a financial advisor. It creates a perceived impression that young advisors don’t have the experience, skills, or knowledge to appreciate the circumstances of older clients, let alone guide them in making critical financial decisions.

That may be understandable and, in some cases, deserved. Older prospects are right to question a young advisor’s experience and depth of knowledge. But the problem may not be with the perceptions of older clients as much as it is with the mindset of younger advisors. Most advisors have gone through that painful period of not knowing what they need to know and feeling embarrassed to meet prospects who may sense that.

The primary difference between where they are now compared to where they were back when they knew less and lacked experience is confidence.

3 Strategies Advisors Are Using to Break Through Stagnation to Get to the Next Level

/ by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments

“I feel my team and I have reached a stage of stagnation. How can we build on what we have and continue to grow the business?”

That sentiment is becoming a common theme among many of the advisors who enroll in our workshops and training programs. I can also attest that it is pervasive throughout industry, which means it happens to most every advisor or advisor team. Regardless of what stage you’re in, you can do all the right things to move through that stage and then realize that what got you to that point isn’t enough to get you to the next level. So, you stagnate. And you know that in this business, if you’re not deliberately moving forward, you’re actually falling behind.

To Develop Top-of-Mind Awareness with Clients, Develop Your Authority

/ by Don Connelly / Marketing Yourself / 0 comments

We’ve reached the fourth and final issue in our series on Critical Issues Facing Financial Advisors Right Now—Staying Top-of-Mind with Your Clients. Of the four critical issues presented, developing top-of-mind awareness is perhaps the most crucial because it is paramount to your ultimate success. If you are not the first person your clients think of when good or bad things happen to them, things that impact their financial lives or the lives of their friends and family, you could have a long, slow slog to the next level.

I’ve written on the importance of top-of-mind-awareness in past posts, along with the strategies you can use to develop it among your clients. The key to remember is creating top-of-mind awareness is not about pestering your clients with calls and emails just to keep your name in front of them. You don’t want to annoy your clients.

The key is reaching them in a way that heightens their perception of you as someone who’s not a typical advisor but rather as a genuine authority in their field. Authorities have influence. Some even develop a kind of star power that gets people’s attention. What makes an authority? Content.

How Advisors Can Inoculate Themselves from Fee Compression

/ by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments

In our last post, we highlighted four critical issues financial advisors face in the aftermath of the COVID pandemic, impacting the way they approach their businesses and the way clients are responding. In the next month or so, we will take a deeper dive into these issues, the challenges they present, and how advisors can meet them head-on for a greater chance at success.

At the top of the list—an issue familiar to all and well-covered here in past blog posts—is fee compression.

8 Client Event Ideas for Financial Advisors

/ by Don Connelly / Managing the Relationship, Prospecting / 2 comments

Client events have always been the most effective way to increase client and prospect engagement, providing the opportunity to express appreciation while strengthening personal connections. It has always been a challenge for financial advisors to keep their clients engaged and their prospects enthusiastic, more so during the pandemic, keeping everyone at a virtual distance. Now, with the pandemic waning, client events should once again stand as a key pillar in advisors’ marketing plans.

Why You Matter: Embracing the Difference Financial Advisors Make in People’s Lives

/ by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments

Allow me another movie reference because it’s crucial for the point I want to make. If you haven’t seen the movie, Oh God! or if you haven’t seen it in a while, I encourage you to track it down. The film is excellent – funny, full of life’s lessons and a joy to watch. But it’s the last ten minutes that is worth 100 times your time and effort in trying to find it.

You remember the story: Jerry Landers, an assistant manager of a supermarket played by John Denver, is convinced he has visits from God, played brilliantly by George Burns, who asks him to take on some worldly responsibilities.

Now, imagine telling your spouse, friends, and co-workers that you’ve spent a few hours talking with God, and you describe him as Jerry did, as a short, old man wearing sneakers, a fishing hat, and smoking a cigar. That his wife threw him out, his friends ostracized him, and his boss fired him shouldn’t surprise anyone.

Priceless Lessons for Financial Advisors from George Bailey

/ by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments

“Each man’s life touches so many other lives. When he isn’t around, he leaves an awful hole, doesn’t he?” Angel Second Class, Clarence

For many of us, it took these words, proffered by a fledgling angel to a despairing George Bailey, to realize one of life’s most enduring truths. The timeless movie, It’s a Wonderful Life, is full of valuable lessons. But its central theme – that each of us is a hero in waiting – should remind us that it’s through our challenges that our superpowers and unique gifts are eventually revealed.

For me, the essence of the story is conveyed in a scene not usually associated with the classic moments people remember about the movie.

For Great Financial Advisors, the Profit is in the Relationship

/ by Don Connelly / Managing the Relationship / 0 comments

The industry pressures that have weighed on financial advisors over the last few years will continue into 2021 and beyond, especially with the lingering effects of the pandemic. Fee compression, increasing regulation, heightened competition, and the commoditization of services are all part of an inevitable trend that threatens the survivability of many advisors. From now on, advisors who fall short of clearly differentiating themselves will have a difficult time bucking the trend, and advisors who fail to put their entire focus on their client relationships may be doomed.

Unfortunately, many advisors learn too late in their careers what I have stressed numerous times—that this isn’t a money business. It is a people business! For the first several years of an advisor’s career, the focus is almost solely on acquiring product knowledge, investment expertise, and planning skills. While that is essential for building necessary competencies, too few advisors come to realize that money management is not the lifeblood of their business—their clients are.

For financial advisors, the profit is not in the financial analysis or the transactions they conduct; it’s in the relationship.

5 Red Flags That Will Cause Your Prospects to Dismiss You

/ by Don Connelly / Managing the Relationship / 0 comments

You never see it coming, and you may never know the reason why. A prospective client you have carefully cultivated agrees to a meeting to learn more about how you can help them. It seems to go well. Their heads were nodding up and down, and they laughed at your joke. At the end of the 30-minute meeting, you suggest the next step with an offer to follow up with them. Turning toward the door, they reply, “We’ll let you know.”

You know that’s the end of it. So, you replay it in your head, asking, “What were the red flags that soured their perception of me?”

Whether the outcome of a prospect meeting is good or bad, you should always replay it in your mind. With a positive outcome, you need to know what worked and why. For a negative outcome, it’s vital to understand what didn’t work and why. Identifying the negatives is often more difficult because it’s hard to be self-critical. But that’s where the path to self-improvement begins. To help in your diagnosis, we list the five of the most common red flags that could cause your prospects to dismiss you.

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