establish trust Archives - Don Connelly & Associates

Prospect Objections Are Often a Cry for Help. Your Job Is to Help Them.

May 31, 2021 / by Don Connelly / Prospecting / 0 comments

As a financial advisor, you are valued for your expert knowledge, but you are only as effective as your ability to get your prospects and clients to act on your recommendations. If you can’t, their situations won’t improve, and neither will yours. Many financial advisors in that situation might chalk it up to them being “bad” prospects and move on, but aren’t they abdicating their role as an advisor?

Certainly, advisors shouldn’t use strongarm tactics to turn their prospects around, but shouldn’t they at least understand the reason behind the objection? Could they learn some valuable insights that would help resolve the issue, if not for the prospect in front of them, but for similar situations they encounter in the future?

In the financial advisory business, objections come with the territory. They’re often just knee-jerk reactions from clients hesitant to make a change. Prospects often don’t understand the real reason behind their objection—they’re just not comfortable moving forward. As an advisor, your job is to help them acknowledge the real reason so they can place it in the context of what you have offered them.

First Meeting Conversations You Need to Have with Prospective Clients

May 10, 2021 / by Don Connelly / Prospecting / 0 comments

Let’s be honest. Many financial advisors view the first client meeting frettingly as an obstacle to overcome on their way to, hopefully, establishing a new client relationship. After all, the way you start a first client meeting sets the tone for how your relationship will develop—if it develops at all. Prospective clients don’t make it any easier, often approaching their first advisor meeting with an air of skepticism or apprehension. This creates an unnatural tension that crowds out trust-building. That tension must be broken at the outset, and the ball is in the advisor’s court.

Three Stories about Trust to Use with Prospects and Clients

February 22, 2021 / by Don Connelly / Managing the Relationship, Storytelling, analogies and power phrases / 0 comments

The most fundamental principle of building a clientele is understanding that people do business with people they like and trust. While it’s easy for many advisors to be likable, trust has to be earned—quickly and often. As an advisor, you can never lose sight of that because trust not only binds a client to you but it also enables them to follow your guidance with confidence and conviction, which is critical to their long-term success.

If you’ve been following this blog for any length of time, you know I believe in the power of storytelling to drive home concepts and change a client’s perspective. I offer these three stories about trust to you as an advisor to drive home the crucial role trust plays in your client relationships.

3 Issues Financial Advisors Should Address to Overcome the Trust Deficit in Clients

November 23, 2020 / by Don Connelly / Managing the Relationship / 0 comments

Financial Advisors face a huge trust deficit. That’s significant because who holds a more important position of trust than an advisor who can impact when people retire, how they live in retirement, and what’s their financial security late in life when they need it the most? For advisors whose livelihood depends on attracting new clients and retaining them, that’s a major obstacle to overcome every day.

Six Ways Financial Advisors Can Establish Trust in Today’s Virtual World

November 16, 2020 / by Don Connelly / Managing the Relationship / 0 comments

You can have all the technical and market skill in the world. But if people don’t trust you, you’re not going to open new accounts.

It’s just a fact of life in sales: If people don’t trust you, their defensive mechanisms are going to be up during the entire sales process. If you’re lucky, they’ll tell you. At least that way, you get to face the trust issue head on. That might give you a fighting chance.

But more often than not, you’ll be met with polite silence, and the dreaded “we’ll give you a call if we decide to do anything.”

If you hear that, chances are you whiffed on the trust issue.

After all, if you had their trust, they’d be looking for ways to talk themselves into doing business with you!

Becoming a Financial Advisor at 40? Yes, You Can!

April 27, 2020 / by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments

This is for all you career-switchers, and those considering a career change move into financial advisory services:

Don’t listen to the nay-sayers and the haters: You absolutely can become a successful financial advisor as a second career. In fact, as a career-switcher, you’ll have many advantages over your younger peers in your training classes.

Here are some of the many pros of becoming a financial advisor mid-career – and a few of the obstacles you may encounter.

Don’t Underestimate the Power of a Good “Who I Am” Story

March 2, 2020 / by Don Connelly / Storytelling, analogies and power phrases / 0 comments

Human beings are storytellers. We tell stories because we respond to stories. It’s been so since the dawn of history.

In western civilization, we have received many of our great stories, myths, legends and cultural archetypes from stories memorized and passed down from generation to generation around campfires, dating back to pre-literate times.

Can Trust Be Established Early?

December 23, 2019 / by Don Connelly / Managing the Relationship / 0 comments

I got a really interesting question from a subscriber named Jeffrey, who said he is a new advisor and he’s having a problem gaining trust with people during the initial visit. He asked if establishing trust up front is possible and if it is, how he can do that. Furthermore, he asked if it is possible to open an account without the establishment of trust.

Listen to this audio episode or read the transcript below to learn Don’s 4 suggestions on establishing trust early on in the relationship.

7 Things Many Financial Advisors Don’t Do, and Fail as a Result

June 17, 2019 / by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments

Much of the failure in this industry comes down to non-observance of the basics. Too many advisors fail not only to develop their soft skills but lack the necessary business acumen to remain viable. If you want to succeed as a financial advisor, learn from their mistakes and make sure you ‘do’ what they are ‘not doing’.

Here are some things that many advisors are not doing – but should be.

5 Dos of Developing Good Storytelling Skills

August 13, 2018 / by Don Connelly / Storytelling, analogies and power phrases / 2 comments

The ability to tell interesting stories is an essential skill for all advisors. Stories are an effective way of letting people get to know the real you, and they’re also useful when it comes to educating clients.

Few of us are born natural raconteurs – but if you commit to developing your skills and practising them regularly, over time you can become a great storyteller.

Here are 5 best practices when it comes to developing good storytelling skills.

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