business plan Archives - Don Connelly & Associates

The Halo of Ringlets

/ by Don Connelly / Marketing Yourself, Storytelling, analogies and power phrases / 0 comments

I hope by now you’ve done a business plan. A business plan is how you’re going to hit your goals. You’re driving from Bangor, Maine to San Diego, you’re going to pass mile markers along the way. Those are your goals.

Inside your business plan has to be your marketing plan. It’s not enough to go in the morning and hunt, kill and eat.

Listen to this audio podcast or read the transcript below to hear the ‘halo of ringlets’ analogy and an idea on narrowing down and attracting your target market or markets.

Essential Working Habits to Ensure Your Success as a Financial Advisor

/ by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 2 comments

In recent posts, we have outlined why financial advisors must master critical habits for prospecting, calling, and selling, without which success can be elusive. However, while you may identify as a financial advisor, you are, first and foremost, a businessperson. You can have all the best habits for prospecting, calling, and selling, but you need to have the vital working habits of a successful businessperson or entrepreneur to help you in the long run.

If your business lacks direction or you can’t manage your time effectively, you are essentially practicing your craft on borrowed time. Without self-discipline and a results-oriented mindset, you’ll be less likely to progress to the next level. These are just some of the working habits that, when mastered, make it possible to exercise the revenue-generating practices of prospecting, calling, and selling to the greatest extent possible with much better outcomes.

To succeed as a financial advisor, you must create a sustainable business that supports your efforts to grow your clientele. These are the crucial working habits any businessperson must master to be successful.

11 Must-Have First-Year Financial Advisor Goals

/ by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments

It’s tough making it through your first year in the financial advisor business. It’s going to be even tougher without some specific goals to give you focus. If you set goals though, you’ll have some framework for deciding how to manage your time and money.

Your first=year financial advisor goals should be as specific as possible – so you know when you’ve achieved them. And write them down: People who write down their goals are 33% more successful at attaining them than people who keep their goals in their heads.

Here are some of the most important objectives for your first year as a financial advisor.

4 Key Strategies to Kick-start Your Financial Advisory Practice

/ by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments

Establishing yourself as an advisor will take dedication, time and sound strategic thinking. Here are some key strategies that will help you kick-start your financial advisory practice.

#1. Develop a business plan

No one succeeds without a plan. It’s the first step in building a credible business. No matter how good you are at your job, if you don’t know where you want to go, you won’t grow a healthy business.

Why You Need to Be a Good Business Person to Succeed as a Financial Advisor

/ by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments

A large percentage of financial advisors fail, not because they aren’t good at what they do, but because they lack the core competencies of running a business.

If you want to succeed in this profession, you need to become a business person.

Let’s look at what this entails.

Take Back Control of Your Financial Advisor Career

/ by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments

If you feel your career is at a crossroads, or that things are not going your way you need to adapt your attitude and learn to make better decisions. In the words of the late Earl Shoaff ‘Don’t wish it were easier, wish you were better. Don’t wish for fewer problems, wish for more skills”.

The only thing holding you back in life is you. You alone determine your future, not the outside world. So, if you don’t like where you are – get in the driver’s seat and take control.

Weekly Focus: Goal Setting

/ by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 1 comment

The beginning of a given year is the time to rewrite our goals, our mission statement and our business plan. For some of us that will involve a major overhaul and for some of us it will involve a tweak. For all of us, it will be a thought-provoking experience. Goal setting comes first. Decide what you want to accomplish and write it down. Set a date by which you will accomplish each goal. If you were charged with running a twelve-minute mile and nobody posted a finish line, you would have no way of knowing if you succeeded. It’s no different with business goals.

Top 5 Reasons Advisors Fail

/ by Don Connelly / Marketing Yourself / 2 comments

It may come as a surprise to learn that financial advisors don’t generally fail because of the numbers. They do so because of poor ‘soft’ skills. Being unable to manage a business competently or provide top notch customer service are more likely to get you fired than an inability to get returns on investment.

If you want to succeed as a financial advisor you need to stand out in a highly commoditized industry – which means not being guilty of the following:

When Starting as a Financial Advisor …

/ by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments

The financial services industry is incredibly competitive and the first few years can be especially gruelling for new advisors. When you first start out you won’t have many clients or a network to get you referrals but so long as you have a plan and stick with it, you will soon make an impact. You are not going to become successful by accident.

What’s New on Don Connelly 24/7 in March 2015

/ by Diana Marinova / What's New on Don Connelly 24/7 / 0 comments

In this month’s blog post from the series “What’s New on Don Connelly 24/7“ we recap new podcasts, Weekly Focus issues, and the Monthly Newsletter from March 2015. Read on!

What’s new on Don Connelly 24/7 in March 2015

Remember, most links in this post will redirect you to premium content, accessible only to Professional and PLATINUM members of Don Connelly 24/7. Non-members can still see what topics Don discusses, what questions he answers, and what issues he is helping solve through the learning center.