measure your results Archives - Don Connelly & Associates

Getting SMART About Setting Goals for You and Your Clients

/ by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments

Anyone who has ever accomplished anything of significance started with a goal. Professional athletes, entertainers, business titans, and the millionaire next door will all tell you that they began with the end in mind, visualizing their destination and then mapping the road to get there.

We’ve written about the importance of goal setting and the significance of writing them down and keeping them in front of you to remind you of what’s possible. However, the process of goal setting is often marred with unrealistic expectations or ambivalence about what you want to achieve, resulting in unachievable or unmeasurable goals.

Financial advisors on the path to success can’t afford to wallow in hopes or pipe dreams. You need clearly defined, actionable goals that reflect your professional and personal ambitions. Although goal setting isn’t rocket science, it does require a deliberate process to ensure your goals are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. In other words, it requires the SMART goal-setting framework.

Developing a Business Process for Your Advisory Business

/ by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments

Advisors embarking on the challenge of growing an advisory business understand that the key to sustainable growth is to be able to specialize in their core business of business development and client management. However, with that growth comes increasingly complex operations in all facets of the business, which can consume resources and hinder growth.

Smaller advisory businesses are disadvantaged by the lack of scale and resources, so they must rely on clearly defined, repeatable, and well-documented business processes to optimize their resources.

Essential Working Habits to Ensure Your Success as a Financial Advisor

/ 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.

For Financial Advisors, the Road to Success Begins with Solid Prospecting Habits

/ by Don Connelly / Prospecting / 0 comments

For financial advisors, there’s nothing like the thrill of signing a new client. But it doesn’t take very long in the business to realize that, without prospecting, those thrills can be few and far between. While signing new clients is the opportunity all advisors relish, they must first create those opportunities, which can only be done through continuous prospecting.

Most advisors consider prospecting to be the most challenging aspect of their work. The challenge for many is doing it consistently and effectively enough to produce sufficient opportunities. For some advisors, prospecting is an afterthought, only becoming necessary when their pipeline dries up. But with the typical lead-to-prospect conversion process lasting as many as six months, that could mean weeks or months before signing a new client.

Successful advisors know that the key to sustainable growth is a constantly replenished pipeline through persistent prospecting. The only way that happens is by building solid prospecting habits.

Here are the essential success habits advisors must develop to become effective and consistent prospectors.

Creating Your Financial Advisor Marketing Plan

/ by Don Connelly / Marketing Yourself / 0 comments

The biggest growth challenge for financial advisors is finding qualified leads. But before that can happen, advisors must be able to attract enough of the right people who might become qualified leads. That’s what marketing does for you. It doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It can’t happen by aimlessly wandering around. Most advisors have enough trouble managing their time between being an advisor, running their practice, and prospecting. What’s needed is a marketing plan.

5 Reasons to Develop a Repeatable Process

/ by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments

It’s essential to develop consistent patterns of behavior if you are going to build a successful business. By continually changing direction and trying different things every quarter you won’t be able to hit your goals or measure the results of your progress. Without a measure of consistency you won’t become accountable and you’ll fail to win your clients’ trust or get them to invest with you for the long term.

Check out these 5 reasons you should develop repeatable processes.