first client meeting Archives - Don Connelly & Associates

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

/ by Don Connelly / Managing the Relationship / 0 comments

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.

5 Things Prospects Need to Know About You from the First Meeting

/ by Don Connelly / Managing the Relationship / 0 comments

Every initial meeting with a prospect is crucial. It took a lot to get them to finally agree to meet with you, and, in most cases, you only have one shot at making the right impression. If a prospect leaves the meeting still wanting critical information, you will not likely see them again. So, you carefully craft your initial meeting to ensure you check all the boxes, including:

– Your background and experience
– Understand your prospect’s needs and concerns
– Your process
– Your firm’s strengths and why you’re different
– Customer service expectations
– How you get paid
– Next Steps

As far as key information your prospect needs, that covers all the bases. It should also give you plenty of opportunities to demonstrate your competence and capacity to address your prospect’s needs and concerns.

First Meeting with a New Client—Preparation Checklist

/ by Don Connelly / Managing the Relationship / 0 comments

The first meeting with a new client should be a momentous event for both you and the client. For your client, it’s the first opportunity to validate their decision to select you as their advisor. For you, it’s the first opportunity to showcase your professionalism and reinforce your new client’s decision. You both hope this will be the beginning of a long and trusting relationship.

As you prepare for your first client meeting, it’s critical to remember that you are being carefully evaluated. Your new client is essentially taking a leap of faith in choosing you, and you must always strive to make them feel like they have made the right choice. With that in mind, your first meeting sets the tone for the entire relationship. Plan it with care.

How to Increase Your Life Insurance Sales Making Every Initial Meeting with a Prospect Successful

/ by Russell Collins / Best Practices, Connelly Corner / 0 comments

When people meet with you for the first time, subconsciously they have four questions that need to be answered. They haven’t thought about these questions in advance but they cross their mind during that meeting. If they are answered, this will ensure that there is not only a second follow-up meeting, but also presents the immediate opportunity to develop a long-term relationship:

Do I like you?
Do I trust you?
Are you competent?
Are you the sort of person who will put my best interests before your own?

In addition to these four questions, I believe that a person would also have to be thinking to themselves “this adviser makes sense!” if there is going to be an ongoing relationship.

How to make every fact-finding meeting a success

How to Increase Your Life Insurance Sales through Preparation

/ by Russell Collins / Best Practices, Connelly Corner / 0 comments

I am of the opinion that one of the major stumbling blocks for new (and, surprisingly, even more experienced) Financial Advisers in conducting successful initial meetings with prospective clients (as well as review meetings with existing clients) is the lack of proper preparation.

In recent years Dealer Groups have introduced a one-size-fits-all templated fact finder document to be used by their advisers in both initial and ongoing discussions with prospective or existing clients. In terms of compliance requirements, the dealer group needed to protect itself from possible future litigation down the road and therefore many participated in designing the questions that their advisers could ask.

From my experience, I believed that there were two problems with this approach.

To Get to “Yes” Financial Advisors Must First Get to “Why” and Stir Up Emotions

/ by Don Connelly / Prospecting / 0 comments

What if, in every initial client meeting, your prospects would just come right out and tell you what’s important to them and what it would mean to them if you could help them? Indeed, it would make your job much easier, but then anyone could do it. The challenge is most people don’t think that way, and it’s your job as a financial advisor to help them uncover their most important issues.

But even that doesn’t go far enough because all you’ve done is uncover the “what.” People don’t act on the “what.” They act on the “why.” When fully revealed, the “why” becomes the key motivating factor. It contains the emotions that drive people to act. Your value as a financial advisor is to get people to take the actions you know will help them. If you can’t trigger the emotions behind what’s important to them, they are not likely to take action.

First Meeting Conversations You Need to Have with Prospective Clients

/ 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.

How to Succeed at Giving Financial Advice

/ by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments

So, you want to be in the business of giving financial advice. That’s understandable because not only can the career of a financial advisor be financially rewarding, it can also be very fulfilling. Through a relationship that can span a lifetime, you become the essential source of advice in one of the most important aspects of your clients’ lives. There’s just one problem. You don’t have any clients—yet.

As a new financial advisor, your number one job is to find new clients. That has always been advisors’ biggest challenge but more so today due to the trust deficit that exists in the financial services industry. According to a CFA Institute survey, only 57 percent of retail investors trust the financial services industry, which is up from a few years ago, but it’s still a wide chasm to overcome. The same survey found that retail investors listed “trust” as their top consideration when hiring an advisor. Prospective clients simply won’t work with an advisor they don’t trust.

How to Build Your ‘Why I Am Here’ Story

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

Your ‘why I am here’ story is an essential market differentiator. First of all, not every financial advisor even has one – other than to make money. And out of those who really do have a client-centered reason for being in this business, not all of them are able to express it. So if you have a real reason you come to work every day, and you’re able to articulate it in a way that makes sense to the clients and gives them a reason to work with you, you’re already way ahead of the competition.

That’s why you need a “why I am here” story.

But the ability to articulate your story in a way that makes it stick is essential. You don’t want to get lost in the details. You don’t want to get sidetracked. You don’t want to get interrupted while you’re trying to tell it. And you don’t want to bore the listener!

The First Client Meeting: Are You Making Any of These 10 Common Mistakes?

/ by Don Connelly / Managing the Relationship, Prospecting / 0 comments

The First Client Meeting - 10 Common Mistakes

It’s all too easy to slip up in the first meeting and lose any opportunity to open the account – and this is especially true for new advisors.

In this post we’ll help you identify mistakes you could, without realizing it, be making. Take an honest appraisal – do you recognize yourself doing any of the following? If so, take action to fix these mistakes.

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