/ by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments
“No man is an Island, entire of itself.” That excerpt from a 17th-century sermon given by a man named John Donne has become a popular proverb that describes the inherent connectivity of humankind. In essence, it says that humans cannot get along with their lives and succeed on their own—that we are all dependent on other people for support.
If you can imagine a conversation between two people, one of whom has ambitions of becoming a financial advisor, it might sound something like this:
First person: When I leave school, I’m going to start a financial planning practice.
Second person: That’s great, but how are you going to do it by yourself?
First person: I don’t need anyone else; I can do it alone.
Second person: No man is an island; you’ll need someone’s support at one point or another.
While that actual conversation may have never taken place, it’s no secret that many people who set out to become financial advisors do so because they like the idea of being independent. But it doesn’t start out that way. Most of us started our careers as trainees thrown together with other trainees to learn the business, typically by reading manuals or attending formal classroom presentations.
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Why Financial Advisors Need a Coach
/ by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments
For challenging endeavors in which people seek to achieve a level of performance beyond their current capacity – such as sports, weight loss, or running a business – they have a better chance of getting over the top by working with a coach. Even successful business executives and sports figures recognize the significant gap that separates a plan from action, theory from practice, and activity from results.
For most people, it often takes an external force to push them beyond their comfort level. That’s what a coach does. The top athletes in the world hire a team of coaches because they know they can’t get to the next level without them. In complex and vital endeavors, we could all use a coach to keep us detached from our emotions and accountable to our goals when our discipline fails.
Ask any professional athlete, corporate executive, or entrepreneur why they hire a coach, and they’ll tell you they want to increase their earnings by improving their performance. It’s no different for financial advisors.
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Prospect Red Flags Financial Advisors Shouldn’t Ignore
/ by Don Connelly / Managing the Relationship, Prospecting / 0 comments
Almost every financial advisor starts in the same place—with a lot of time on their hands and not many clients. That’s when the criteria for selecting which prospects to work with is at its broadest—essentially, anyone willing to pay me anything.
It’s not until your business expands, reaching the point when you’re servicing 50 or more randomly chosen clients, that your time starts to become much more valuable. Eventually, you reach your capacity for new clients, and your revenue stops growing. Worse, you’re not enjoying your work as much as you hoped.
That’s when you realize it shouldn’t be about the number of new clients you take on; it should be about the quality. It’s about saying ‘no’ to prospects who don’t meet your criteria for the type of client you want to work with, which isn’t easy if you’re still chasing growth. But ultimately, saying no to prospects who are not a solid fit is good for you and them.
Here are some major prospect red flags warning you to move on.
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The Four Success Habits of Highly Successful Advisors
/ by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments
It has been said that habits determine 95% of a person’s behavior and are the most important determinant of the type of person you will become. That can be frighteningly ominous for financial advisors who spend little time focused on developing successful habits.
As financial advisors, we’re all searching for the secret to success—finding that edge that can move us effortlessly toward our ambitions. The challenge for many is that it is human nature to look for shortcuts in the pursuit of success.
However, in reality, it’s those who are able to find the motivation to develop successful habits that separate the ordinary from the exceptional—finding the will to take deliberate daily action consistently in pursuit of their goals. Successful advisors will tell you that it’s the practices we develop and master in their daily lives that empower them and propel them to their fullest potential for producing at an elite level.
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Why It’s Vital to Join the Community of Financial Advisors
/ by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments
“No man is an Island, entire of itself.” That excerpt from a 17th-century sermon given by a man named John Donne has become a popular proverb that describes the inherent connectivity of humankind. In essence, it says that humans cannot get along with their lives and succeed on their own—that we are all dependent on other people for support.
If you can imagine a conversation between two people, one of whom has ambitions of becoming a financial advisor, it might sound something like this:
First person: When I leave school, I’m going to start a financial planning practice.
Second person: That’s great, but how are you going to do it by yourself?
First person: I don’t need anyone else; I can do it alone.
Second person: No man is an island; you’ll need someone’s support at one point or another.
While that actual conversation may have never taken place, it’s no secret that many people who set out to become financial advisors do so because they like the idea of being independent. But it doesn’t start out that way. Most of us started our careers as trainees thrown together with other trainees to learn the business, typically by reading manuals or attending formal classroom presentations.
Read more
Only Elite Advisors Step Out of Their Comfort Zone—Do You?
/ 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.
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How to Convince Prospects and Clients That You Understand What They’re Going through
/ by Don Connelly / Managing the Relationship / 0 comments
It’s long been said that people might forget what you say. But they will never forget how you made them feel.
There’s a lot of truth to that. And one of the first things your clients and prospects should feel is that you understand what they’re going through. Before some of you were born, there was a great, great sales trainer and educator named Zig Ziglar. Look him up! He learned to sell by selling brushes. Door-to-door.
He went on more sales calls before breakfast than some of you go on in a month. And he used to say “People don’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care… about them.”
There’s two steps to that equation: First, you need to genuinely understand what they are going through. Second, you need to communicate that to them.
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How to Fill Your Pipeline Despite the Coronavirus Pandemic
/ by Don Connelly / Prospecting / 0 comments
Back in 1998, physician and author Spencer Johnson wrote a best-selling book called “Who Moved My Cheese?”
It’s the story of four mice who live in a maze and who have grown accustomed to cheese being deposited in the same spot every day… until one day it didn’t happen. The rest of the book explores their strategies for coping with change – both successful and unsuccessful.
The moral of the story is this: “Change happens.” It’s inevitable. Not everyone can roll with the punches, but you’ve got to adapt, improvise and overcome. You’ve got to move with the cheese.
Well, friends, the cheese just got moved!
Now, don’t get me wrong: The cheese hasn’t gone away. It’s still out there! People still want and need help managing their money. In fact, they want and need it now more than they have in years. But the way to get to the cheese is now radically different.
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5 Advantages Young Financial Advisors Have Over Older Advisors
/ by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments
When it comes to asking people to handle their money, having a few grey hairs does bring a small advantage. People are just naturally reluctant to trust people with managing their money who are younger than their own children.
But there are some huge advantages to being a younger advisor, as well. In fact, I can tell you after decades in this business, there has never been a better time in the history of the financial services business to be coming into this business as a young advisor, or even a career changer under 40.
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When Do People Get a Financial Advisor?
/ by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments
No two clients are exactly alike. People generally get a financial advisor for a number of reasons. Therefore, you need a flexible process in place when it comes to approaching different prospects in accordance with their reasons for seeking financial advice.
Here are some cases when people get a financial advisor, along with their reasons for doing so and some recommendations on moving things forward.
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Why You Need to Be a Good Business Person to Succeed as a Financial Advisor
/ by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments
A large percentage of financial advisors fail, not because they aren’t good at what they do, but because they lack the core competencies of running a business.
If you want to succeed in this profession, you need to become a business person.
Let’s look at what this entails.
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