6 Essential Investment Tenets to Instill in Your Clients for 2024

6 Essential Investment Tenets to Instill in Your Clients for 2024

The stock market has taken investors on another wild rollercoaster in recent years. The market recovered from a bear market in 2022, and after a solid up year in 2023, there’s bound to be another one at some point. Going into 2024, the market will keep investors guessing, which is why helping your client maintain a long-term perspective is essential.

We can’t know what stocks will do today, next week, or next month. But we know that, over the long term, stocks will continue their century-long advance. Reacting to short-term swings in the market means moving in and out of the market at the wrong times, locking in permanent losses, and often missing out on the biggest gains in the market.

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The Slippery Slope from Empathy to Role Reversal, and How to Avoid It

The Slippery Slope from Empathy to Role Reversal, and How to Avoid It

Successful financial advisors know that expressing empathy is critical in helping them to connect with clients and solidify their relationships. Clients need to know you understand their circumstances and what they may be going through at any given time. However, empathy taken too far can backfire when advisors find themselves sharing the same emotional distress as their clients, which can threaten their objectivity and compromise sound planning advice.

At the extreme, this can lead to advisors relinquishing control of the relationship to their clients and acquiescing to their desire “to fix the problem” in the short-term at the expense of their long-term plan. This type of role reversal is not uncommon for advisors who become emotionally vested in their clients, wanting to do what they can to ease their pain. Suddenly, the relationship is no longer being guided by rational, objective advice; but rather the behavioral impulses advisors are supposed to prevent, such as selling into a steep market decline, or abandoning the long-term strategy just to alleviate the immediate suffering.

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How Financial Advisors Should Manage Emotional Clients

How Financial Advisors Should Manage Emotional Clients

People aren’t rational. We’re all creatures of emotion. Good salespeople bear that in mind. Whatever your training and education, as financial advisors, we’re not engineers. We’re not technicians. Not in the sales interview.

We deal with people first.

Not numbers. Not machines.

Advisors who understand this are going to do better than advisors who don’t.

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