December 2, 2013 / by Don Connelly / Marketing Yourself / 0 comments
Lance Armstrong once observed that a boo is a lot louder than a cheer. He’s right. And a no is a lot louder than a yes.
Advisors (and wholesalers) who fail often do so because they don’t see enough people.
Imagine the financial planning gods coming down and granting you immunity for a year. You don’t need to rely on your skills. Every time you call for an appointment, the person says yes. Every time you ask the person to become your client, the person says yes. Every time you ask for an introduction to your clients’ friends, they give you five names and go with you on the appointments.
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Never Forget That Your Client’s Original Goal Was to Beat the Bank
January 6, 2014 / by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments
I’ve been mingling with clients for years and it never fails to shock me just a bit to hear how simple both their goals and their reasons for investing really are. For the most part, clients simply want to beat the bank, especially in low interest rate environments. They want to educate their children and build a retirement fund. That’s it. They aren’t trying to hit home runs. They are trying to hit singles and doubles. You can deliver singles and doubles all day long.
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Do Full Service Advisors Deserve Commensurate Compensation?
December 26, 2013 / by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments
There’s probably precious little a Financial Advisor can offer that you aren’t offering. Some Advisors do taxes and some do not, but basically we all generate revenue the same way. We offer the same products and the same process at essentially the same price. It’s hard to charge more than the other guy if you are both doing the same thing.
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Care More than People Expect You to Care
December 23, 2013 / by Don Connelly / Managing the Relationship / 0 comments
When people get poor service, they are not the least bit surprised.
People no longer expect good service except in the very finest of establishments, places where they willingly pay a lot in exchange for that good service. Mediocrity is the new standard.
That opens an enormous door for you. Once people get used to mediocrity, anything above mediocrity stands out.
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Think like a Lifer – Being a Financial Advisor Is a Career, Not a Job
December 16, 2013 / by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments
If anybody asks, you don’t have a job. You have a career. Think that way. Think like a lifer. You are here to stay.
A job involves the pursuit of money. A career involves the pursuit of a lifelong ambition.
A job is something you have to do. A career is something you love to do.
Jobs come and go. Careers last a lifetime.
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Your Goal Today Is to Get an Appointment
December 9, 2013 / by Don Connelly / Prospecting / 0 comments
What’s so magical about having goals? It’s not so much that we don’t achieve them. It’s that we too often conveniently forget we even have them. With or without goals, we still go in and chip away day after day. Not having goals is not going to cause us to skip a day. I work hard with or without goals. What’s the big deal?
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What Is #1 Reason Advisors and Wholesalers Fail
December 2, 2013 / by Don Connelly / Marketing Yourself / 0 comments
Lance Armstrong once observed that a boo is a lot louder than a cheer. He’s right. And a no is a lot louder than a yes.
Advisors (and wholesalers) who fail often do so because they don’t see enough people.
Imagine the financial planning gods coming down and granting you immunity for a year. You don’t need to rely on your skills. Every time you call for an appointment, the person says yes. Every time you ask the person to become your client, the person says yes. Every time you ask for an introduction to your clients’ friends, they give you five names and go with you on the appointments.
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Stand Apart from the Crowd
November 25, 2013 / by Don Connelly / Marketing Yourself / 0 comments
I have a friend who is married to one of America’s most successful professional golfers. My friend is a golf pro, but a teaching pro. He is also his wife’s coach. He knows her game so well that he can watch her on television during the day and give her his advice that night. He is a consummate pro.
One day he and I were discussing the golf swing, specifically my lousy swing. He asked me if …
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Two Things Never Change for Financial Advisors
November 11, 2013 / by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments
As a Financial Advisor, you share a common concern with the wholesalers who call on you. You don’t control your distribution and they don’t control theirs. You can’t force your clients to act any more than a wholesaler can force you to act. As well, neither you nor the wholesaler has control over the landscape. Most of what affects how and what you do is in some else’s hand, be it the stock market, the economy or interest rates. And most of what affects you is in a constant state of change.
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Two Questions to Add to Your Repertoire
November 7, 2013 / by Don Connelly / Managing the Relationship / 0 comments
Effective communication is all about asking the right questions. I want to suggest two questions to ask your clients, two questions you might not be currently asking. It’s very important that you know what you are doing right, so that you can do more of it. Explain to your clients, new and old, that you are not on an ego trip but…
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Success as a Financial Advisor Is Easy to Explain, but Difficult to Replicate
November 4, 2013 / by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 4 comments
The good news for every Financial Advisor is that how one becomes a Top Tier Advisor is simple. The bad news is that it is not easy.
To rise to the top one begins by doing things right, by doing the right things and by working hard.
We lose a lot of people in the first twelve months.
The reason they fail is that,
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