5 Priorities Financial Advisors Must Have to Succeed in Our Business

5 Priorities Financial Advisors Must Have to Succeed in Our Business

As you might already know, financial advisors need to be good business people to succeed, which entails having a solid business plan, creating an ideal client profile, developing project management skills, and acting and thinking like a CEO. Those are critical foundational elements for any financial advisor with ambitions of growing a successful business.

However, on a day-to-day basis, success in the financial advisory business requires a constant blending of priorities such as strategic focus, interpersonal skills, and industry knowledge. Here are the five top priorities financial advisors must focus on to thrive in their careers:

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7 Common Mistakes Financial Advisors Make that Repel Clients

7 Common Mistakes Financial Advisors Make that Repel Clients

To be successful, financial advisors must work tirelessly to master their craft while putting in countless hours to build their business. Some have an easier time of it than others because they avoid the many missteps that can drive prospects and clients away. Even the most well-intentioned advisors can sometimes engage in behaviors that unintentionally repel potential and existing clients, creating an enduring uphill battle to grow their practice.

You spend a lot of time and resources to gain a foothold in this business. But if you’re not aware of the crucial mistakes many advisors make in trying to build relationships, you are less likely to avoid them yourself, making your job much more difficult—maybe even impossible. Here are seven common missteps many advisors make that you must avoid to have any chance of success.

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How to Become Your Client’s Trusted Confidant

How to Become Your Client's Trusted Confidant

We’ve frequently stressed the importance of building deep and trusting relationships with clients. Practically speaking, the stronger and more enduring your client relationships, the greater their lifetime value to you in terms of repeat business, growing assets under management, referrals, and family legacies. For financial advisors, the profit truly is in the relationship.

The most successful advisors seek to take the relationship even deeper—to the point where they become a trusted confidant of their clients. They want to be the first person their clients think of when any significant issue arises, be it a family milestone (i.e., birth, college graduation, engagement), family tragedy (i.e., divorce, death), career change, or any major family decision (i.e., new home purchase).

To some, that may seem like going above and beyond. After all, isn’t it enough to have the family’s trust to act in their best interests in helping them manage their money? Is it appropriate to try to insert ourselves into every aspect of their lives? What do we gain from that? What does the client gain? Why would a client want their financial advisor as a trusted confidant?

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

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

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.

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Your Best Practices Checklist for Resolving Client Complaints

Your Best Practices Checklist for Resolving Client Complaints

Client complaints—it happens to the best of us. Some financial advisors go for years without receiving a client complaint. But it will happen, and when it does, it can seemingly come out of left field. Most client complaints are unexpected, which is why advisors must be able to quickly shift into rapid response gear or risk losing a client.

We’ve posted in the past about the importance of having a systematic communications strategy in developing solid, trusted, and enduring client relationships. As part of that strategy, advisors need a well-conceived, written process for responding to client complaints. The hope is that you will never need to use it, the same way pilots hope never to have to execute emergency landing procedures—but they know the procedure inside and out.

While losing a client’s trust is not nearly as consequential, it can be avoided, even strengthened, if you adhere to your own procedural checklist of best practices for effectively handling your next client complaint.

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Clients not Giving You Referrals? Here’s Why That May Be

Clients not Giving You Referrals - Here's Why That May Be

We devote a lot of space here on how to generate referrals, and with good reason. Generating quality referrals is critical to building a sustainable and profitable practice. Many of our articles address the ‘how,’ even addressing how to overcome the reluctance to ask for referrals. Based on my decades of experience, I’m confident that advisors who study those articles and incorporate the tips and practices into their process can generate more referrals.

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What Advisors Need to Do to Help Set Client Goals

What Advisors Need to Do to Help Set Client Goals

According to a Morningstar study, what clients want most from their financial advisors is to help them reach their financial goals. That should be good news for financial advisors because, generally, people with clearly defined goals and ambitions for the future have the conviction to adhere to a long-term plan to achieve them.

However, it could also spell disaster for advisors who fall short in helping their clients articulate their most important goals and fail to gain their commitment to achieving them. To inspire action, client goals must be well-defined and quantifiable with genuine intrinsic value. Anything less is a hopeful aspiration, and hope is not a strategy.

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How to Build Immediate Personal Connections Naturally

How to Build Immediate Personal Connections Naturally

Gaining the trust of a prospective client is an absolute must if the relationship is to amount to anything. Plain and simple, people don’t do business with financial advisors if they don’t trust them. Building that kind of trust can take time, but successful advisors know how to accelerate the process—by first establishing a connection, which can be done when first meeting with a prospect.

If you think back on all your relationships—personal and professional—you’re likely to find that your best and closest relationships started with an instant personal connection. Something just clicked between the two of you that allowed you to lower your guard and open up to one another.

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First Meeting with a New Client—Preparation Checklist

First Meeting with a New Client – Preparation Checklist

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.

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