/ by Don Connelly / Managing the Relationship / 0 comments
No doubt you remember the last car you purchased. If you’re like most people, you spent hours, days, maybe months researching, comparing prices, features and specs. You knew what you wanted but were hesitant to pull the trigger. Ultimately, it wasn’t the gas mileage, sporty interior, or five-year bumper-to-bumper manufacturer’s warranty that moved you to action.
While those are nice features and may be important to you, they’re not the reason you bought the car. The reason you acted was how those features made you feel. They made you feel smart, secure, and proud. You may even feel like a million bucks. The smile on your face as you drove your new car home was not from having made a good decision based on the car’s features; it was from how your decision made you feel.
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The Non-Salesy Way to Finding and Attracting Your Ideal Clients
/ by Don Connelly / Prospecting / 0 comments
Financial advisors’ success hinges on building trust and long-term relationships. To do that effectively, they need to target the right audience—individuals who value their expertise and require the specific services they offer.
Successful advisors know how to identify a niche that represents their ideal client. More importantly, they know how to reach out in a way that leads to a connection without resorting to pushy sales tactics. The key is to create a sustainable and repeatable process that positions you as an expert in a particular niche to the extent that they are drawn to your message.
Here are the steps to follow:
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Why You Need to Encourage Your Clients to Ask Questions
/ by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments
As a financial advisor, you occupy a position of trust, guiding clients through complex financial landscapes. While knowledge and experience are crucial assets, an advisor’s success hinges on another critical factor: fostering a culture of open communication where clients feel empowered to ask questions. This often-overlooked attribute can unlock a multitude of benefits, leading to more effective financial planning, stronger client relationships, and, ultimately, a brighter financial future for the client.
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The Paradox of Financial Education: How Too Much Knowledge Can Cost You Clients
/ by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments
Financial advisors constantly walk a tightrope between empowering clients and overwhelming them. While financial literacy is crucial for informed decision-making, overeducating prospects and clients can backfire, resulting in the loss of an account. This phenomenon can be better understood by examining the psychology of financial decision-making and the delicate advisor-client relationship.
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The Perils of Lacking Empathy: Why It Matters for Financial Advisors
/ by Don Connelly / Managing the Relationship / 0 comments
Nothing can form a human connection quite like the genuine expression of empathy. That human connection, which is the basis of trust in a relationship, is what clients want from their advisors. Failure to make that connection quickly can drive clients into the arms of a more empathic advisor.
Why empathy is so powerful
Empathy is the ability to see the world through someone else’s eyes, understand their emotions, and connect with them on a deeper level. But to your clients, it’s much more than that. When you express genuine empathy with a client, they feel like they are the most important person in your life at that moment. You took the time to step inside their shoes, walk around, and make them feel understood without judging them.
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Winning Over the Children of Wealthy Clients
/ by Don Connelly / Managing the Relationship / 0 comments
As evidenced by the great wealth transfer of $30 trillion currently underway from the baby boomers to the next generations, wealth is generational, with far-reaching impacts beyond any one client. For financial advisors, it could be an unprecedented opportunity to grow assets or the greatest threat to their survival.
Why the disparity in outlook? Because some advisors will be better positioned than others to capture the attention and trust of the next generations. Advisors who fail to connect with the children of their baby boomer clients stand a better than even chance they will lose the assets upon their transfer.
The failure to realize that, when working with a client, you are also working with everyone dependent on them leads to advisors losing an average of 70% to 80% of a client’s assets following their death.
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Why Mediation Skills Matter for Financial Advisor Success
/ by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments
When most people think of mediation and negotiation, it typically refers to lawyers or third parties who facilitate dialogue between two or more parties to help them reach an agreement. In practice, financial advisors sometimes find themselves in the same position, having to resolve conflicts between a client’s family members or within their advisory team, where it’s essential to find win-win solutions.
Disagreements about money are common among married couples. Money conflicts are often rooted more deeply in people’s attitudes and beliefs about money, or, in some cases, money is not even the primary issue. However, in almost all cases, it involves two or more people who don’t know how to engage in productive financial conversations.
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Thought Leadership May Be the Only Edge for Financial Advisors
/ by Don Connelly / Marketing Yourself / 0 comments
Clearly, the financial advisory industry is undergoing a major transformation. Technological advances and the democratization of investing has virtually commoditized financial advice to the detriment of advisors who continue to languish in brand obscurity. Until financial advisors can differentiate themselves as authorities in their field, most struggle to gain the attention of new clients or keep the attention of existing clients. Advisors who establish themselves as true thought leaders hold a distinct advantage in the race to add new clients and grow assets under management.
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How to Motivate Your Prospects to Take Action Now
/ by Don Connelly / Managing the Relationship / 0 comments
No doubt you remember the last car you purchased. If you’re like most people, you spent hours, days, maybe months researching, comparing prices, features and specs. You knew what you wanted but were hesitant to pull the trigger. Ultimately, it wasn’t the gas mileage, sporty interior, or five-year bumper-to-bumper manufacturer’s warranty that moved you to action.
While those are nice features and may be important to you, they’re not the reason you bought the car. The reason you acted was how those features made you feel. They made you feel smart, secure, and proud. You may even feel like a million bucks. The smile on your face as you drove your new car home was not from having made a good decision based on the car’s features; it was from how your decision made you feel.
Read more
How to Get More Unsolicited Referrals from Clients
/ by Don Connelly / Prospecting / 0 comments
Ask any successful advisor what the key to their success is, and they’ll tell you—referrals. You can’t grow a profitable practice without a steady stream of referrals. When you ask for and receive a referral, it’s an indication that you impressed your client enough to act on your request. But what if you didn’t have to ask for referrals? What if your clients were so impressed with you that they took the time to share their experience with someone without you having to ask?
You know what that feels like if it’s happened to you. But, for many advisors, it happens so rarely that it’s a major shock when it does. So, how do you make it happen consistently enough to make it an expectation?
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For Clients Expecting 5-Star Service, Exceptional Communications Is Not Enough—Proactive Communication Is the New Standard
/ 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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