goal setting Archives - Don Connelly & Associates

How to Turn Data Collection into a Process Your Clients Will Appreciate

May 22, 2023 / by Don Connelly / Managing the Relationship / 0 comments

Financial advisors love data—until it’s time to collect it from a new client. Advisors know that data collection is an essential component of the planning process, without which they can’t get an accurate picture of their client’s current situation. But mining all the critical data needed to connect current circumstances to future aspirations can be tedious—for both advisors and clients.

It can also be a point of tension in a new advisory relationship, as new clients may still be working through trust issues. Advisors must understand this and continue working fervently to earn their client’s trust by expertly shepherding them through the process. While getting the data is important, advisors need to use this moment as another opportunity to engage their clients on a deeper level, focusing as much on the qualitative side as the quantitative side of data collection.

Goal Setting: Not Just About the Numbers. It’s About Emotional Connections.

May 15, 2023 / by Don Connelly / Managing the Relationship / 0 comments

Goal setting is the second step of the client data-gathering process —unquestionably the most critical step in solidifying the client relationship and the key to setting your clients up for success. Beyond offering the technical expertise to help clients navigate the complex realm of financial planning, the most valuable service financial advisors bring to the table is helping them align the use of their resources with the things that are most important to them.

Yet even though advisors are well-positioned in this stage of the relationship to have these critical conversations, encouraging their clients to discuss their financial goals and understanding on a deeper level why those goals are meaningful to them, is a significant challenge for many. They then wonder why the client later chooses to abandon their financial plan or the relationship.

How to Get the Most out of the Client Data-Gathering Process

May 8, 2023 / by Don Connelly / Managing the Relationship / 0 comments

Next to the initial meeting with a prospect, data gathering is the most critical step in the relationship-building process. Of course, it’s also the most vital step in the financial planning process, without which advisors can’t analyze a client’s situation, make proper recommendations, and implement them. That’s well understood by most advisors. Less understood is the critical role the data-gathering step plays in increasing client engagement, building trust, and solidifying the advisor-client relationship.

Essential Working Habits to Ensure Your Success as a Financial Advisor

February 27, 2023 / 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.

Only Elite Advisors Step Out of Their Comfort Zone—Do You?

July 5, 2021 / by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments

It’s human nature to seek comfort in familiar habits and patterns. When anything comes along to threaten the status quo, we naturally feel uncomfortable, even anxious. Most of us will take great pains to cling to our comfort zone just to avoid those feelings, rejecting change and its unpredictability. The inevitable result for many people is to languish in predictable mediocrity. While they may feel safe, they eventually slip into obsolescence.

In the financial advisory business, if you are not constantly working at getting better, you are getting worse. That’s because successful advisors always strive to improve, to find ways to perfect their craft, which often requires breaking from familiar habits and stepping outside their comfort zone. They know that if they continue to live inside their complacency zone and do what they’ve always done, they’ll continue to get the same results. As a financial advisor, that is ultimately a formula for failure.

4 Key Strategies to Kick-start Your Financial Advisory Practice

September 9, 2019 / 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.

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 Things Financial Advisors Should Do to Make the Most of This Holiday Season

December 25, 2017 / by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments

As the year draws to a close it’s the ideal time to reflect, regroup and make plans for the New Year. What went right and what went wrong? What things can you do to make sure your career is in great shape going into the next year?

Here are five ways to help you hit the ground running next year.

How to Develop a Repeatable Process

September 4, 2017 / by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments

If you want to make your life easier and become a truly elite advisor, make sure you have repeatable processes in place. This especially applies to tasks such as prospecting, presenting, following up and servicing your accounts. Remember: Repeatable processes produce repeatable results so make your goal consistency, not perfection.

In this post we’ll look at some practical steps you can take to incorporate repeatable processes into your working life.

What’s The Greatest Cause of Burnout among Financial Advisors

May 15, 2017 / by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments

A Blueprint for Aspiring Million Dollar {Producers to Follow - AskDON

Here’s a question I received from Ricardo in Portugal. He’s writing about burnout with an interesting question.

What’s the greatest cause of burnout among advisors in the United States?

I think that actually is very easy to answer. Whether it’s Los Angeles or Lisbon, it doesn’t really matter.

Listen to the audio or read the transcript below to learn what Don thinks the greatest cause of burnout among Financial Advisors is.

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