build trust Archives - Don Connelly & Associates

Understanding Your Strengths and Weaknesses as a Financial Advisor

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For financial advisors with ambitions of taking their practice to the next level, self-awareness is fundamental to their success. Knowing your unique strengths enables you to maximize the value you deliver to clients while understanding your weaknesses helps you address critical areas that may impact your effectiveness.

Continuous self-assessment to develop a clear picture of your strengths and weaknesses is essential in a fast-evolving industry where personalized service and superior client experience have become minimum expectations.

How to Handle Unexpected Client Questions

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As a financial advisor, it’s essential that your clients ask questions. It means they want to engage with you, and they trust your expertise. Every question a client asks is an opportunity to educate them, which is a good thing. When your clients are comfortable enough with you to ask questions, it’s a sign of a healthy advisory relationship.

But what if a client blindsides you with an unexpected question, one you didn’t see coming? The relationship could turn on how you handle the question. If you hesitate, appear uncomfortable, or try to avoid the question, you could find yourself outside the client’s circle of trust, at least for the moment.

However, if you’re prepared to manage these impromptu and uneasy moments with confidence and professionalism, you will reinforce the trust you’ve already built.

Future-Proofing Your Financial Advisory Career: The Power of Soft Skills in an AI World

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Financial advisors are bracing for the “next big thing” as artificial intelligence (AI) is playing an increasingly prominent role. The rise of AI-powered tools and robo-advisors is automating many of the routine, data-driven aspects of financial planning, creating more efficient and accurate solutions.

Robo-advisors, for example, offer algorithm-based portfolio management services that can reduce the need for human intervention in certain advisory functions. AI tools can sift through massive datasets, analyze market trends, and generate investment strategies, all at a fraction of the cost and time it would take a human advisor.

However, as AI takes over the technical aspects of financial advising, the human touch remains irreplaceable.

Ten Strategies for Encouraging Your Clients to Spread the Word About Your Business

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We’ve often posted about the importance of creating an extraordinary client experience to make yourself more “buzzworthy” as an advisor your clients will want to discuss. You can’t even think about creating a compelling word-of-mouth buzz until you create the kind of service that feels personal, unique, and genuinely caring to your clients. That should be your primary focus.

However, beyond creating an extraordinary client experience, it’s essential to turn your clients into vocal advocates, like human billboards spreading the word about your business. While it does happen—having a delighted client go on and on about your service to a friend or colleague—most people are not naturally inclined to initiate a conversation like that without some help and encouragement.

Here are ten effective ideas to inspire your clients to spread the word and advocate for your business proactively.

A Guide to Securing Second Meetings with Prospects: Turning First Impressions into Lasting Partnerships

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It’s no exaggeration to say that the initial meeting with a prospective client is a make-or-break moment that sets the tone for the relationship and determines whether it will continue in a second meeting. The initial meeting is a crucial dance between the advisor and a naturally skeptical prospect who wants to know why they should work with you.

In a crowded field of financial advisors, the initial meeting presents a critical opportunity to differentiate yourself. Prospects are likely to meet with multiple advisors. You must make the prospect feel they’re making the right choice in working with you and that they should expect an advisory experience with you that they can’t get from anyone else. That’s a tall order.

But if you’re organized, practiced, and have the end in mind—a second meeting with the prospect—you can make each initial meeting a success.

5 Essential Things New Financial Advisors Must Know to Be Successful

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There’s never been a better time to be in the financial advisory business. And if you’re new to the industry, the opportunity is limitless—if you’re adequately prepared. But if you aren’t, the journey can be a long, slow, uphill slog with a minimal chance of success.

Too harsh? Not at all. It’s a fair warning to anyone who gets into this business with little or no understanding of what it is about and what it takes to succeed.

Historically, the advisory business has attracted young people enamored by numbers, analysis, and their application in the investment world. And most are motivated by the desire to help people achieve financial security. Here’s the deal, though—you can’t help people if they don’t trust you. You can’t build a practice if you can’t convince people to follow your advice. You can’t stay in business if you don’t prospect, and prospects won’t gravitate toward you if you don’t stand out.

Three Decisions People Make When Choosing an Advisor

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When mom and dad sit down with you for the first time, they want to get to know you. They want to do business with someone they like and trust and someone who is making the right suggestions. They don’t want to do business with the Mr. or Ms. Financial Advisor you. They want to do business with the real you.

Watch this video episode or read the transcript below to learn what people want to know when making the decision to work with you or move on.

5 Ways Financial Advisors Can Establish Credibility and Build Trust

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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.

How to Become Your Client’s Trusted Confidant

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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?

How to Bring Back Face-to-Face Meetings with Clients

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A survey by YCharts in December 2019 found that clients didn’t feel engaged and wanted more personalized communications. We’ve posted several times that, pre- and post-pandemic, the frequency and style of advisors’ communication directly impact client trust and confidence in their advisor, financial plan, and their likelihood of keeping their advisor.

A more recent report, post-pandemic, found that, though virtual meetings had taken hold as a viable form of communication for advisors forced to limit in-person meetings, it’s likely that the decrease in face-to-face contact contributed to client feelings of reduced communication. That’s a direct threat to the strength of the advisor-client relationship.

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