say it so it makes a difference Archives - Don Connelly & Associates

Three Stories about Trust to Use with Prospects and Clients

February 22, 2021 / by Don Connelly / Managing the Relationship, Storytelling, analogies and power phrases / 0 comments

The most fundamental principle of building a clientele is understanding that people do business with people they like and trust. While it’s easy for many advisors to be likable, trust has to be earned—quickly and often. As an advisor, you can never lose sight of that because trust not only binds a client to you but it also enables them to follow your guidance with confidence and conviction, which is critical to their long-term success.

If you’ve been following this blog for any length of time, you know I believe in the power of storytelling to drive home concepts and change a client’s perspective. I offer these three stories about trust to you as an advisor to drive home the crucial role trust plays in your client relationships.

9 Must-Haves for Your Financial Advisor Website to Attract Prospects and Clients

January 18, 2021 / by Don Connelly / Marketing Yourself / 0 comments

Most Advisors today have a professional website to represent themselves online in front of potential or current clients. In a post-pandemic world where even meetings are conducted online, it’s not really a matter of if you should have a website, but a matter of what website you should have.

Should it be one of those static pages filled with general information, serving as your online business card? Or should it be an engaging piece of online real estate to keep your prospective and current clients hooked and looking for the phone to call you for more? Or should it be somewhere in between?

Here are a few things you must have on your website if you want to stand head and shoulders above other Advisors.

Educate Clients about Market Volatility so They Can Confidently Stick to the Plan

January 4, 2021 / by Diana Marinova / Best Practices, Connelly Corner / 0 comments

Happy New Year from all of us at Don Connelly & Associates! Hopefully everyone will enjoy good health during the new year, achieving great success both personally and professionally.

As promised, this week we’re posting the second part of the recap blog post, covering two more popular topics our community of Advisors was most interested in during 2020 – market volatility and how to communicate with prospects and clients about it. We’ll also share a few stories and analogies you can use to convince clients to stick to the plan, no matter the market conditions.

How to Create a Digital Marketing Strategy

December 21, 2020 / by Don Connelly / Marketing Yourself / 0 comments

An increasing number of financial advisors are catching on to the fact that most of their clients and target market reside in a digital world where, if they fail to connect with them there, they risk becoming irrelevant or obsolete. Email, the internet, and social media have transformed the way consumers conduct their lives, and their influence now surpasses all other forms of persuasion, including television and print media. The critical question financial advisors must ask themselves now is, “How much digital influence do we have over our target market?”

How Financial Advisors Should Manage Emotional Clients

November 9, 2020 / by Don Connelly / Managing the Relationship / 0 comments

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.

How to Build Your ‘Why I Am Here’ Story

August 31, 2020 / by Don Connelly / Storytelling, analogies and power phrases / 0 comments

Your ‘why I am here’ story is an essential market differentiator. First of all, not every financial advisor even has one – other than to make money. And out of those who really do have a client-centered reason for being in this business, not all of them are able to express it. So if you have a real reason you come to work every day, and you’re able to articulate it in a way that makes sense to the clients and gives them a reason to work with you, you’re already way ahead of the competition.

That’s why you need a “why I am here” story.

But the ability to articulate your story in a way that makes it stick is essential. You don’t want to get lost in the details. You don’t want to get sidetracked. You don’t want to get interrupted while you’re trying to tell it. And you don’t want to bore the listener!

Communication in a Post-Pandemic World: How to Connect with Prospective and Current Clients

June 22, 2020 / by Don Connelly / Managing the Relationship / 0 comments

All of us are affected by the coronavirus and the shutdowns. The virus is slowly running its course but social distancing will be with us for a very long time to come.

That means most of us are going to have to change the way we market and sell our services. “Meet and greet” networking events will be out of the picture for a while. When they do come back, they’ll be different. They may look more like ‘show and tells’ with slide shows than mingling sessions.

Even walking into businesses and asking for the owner is going to be fraught. The small ‘handshake’ ritual that has been with us since antiquity will be changed as we figure out our new forms of etiquette and social conventions.

So, what’s the best path forward?

How to Build Your Story-Benefit Matrix

May 25, 2020 / by Don Connelly / Storytelling, analogies and power phrases / 0 comments

Last week I blogged about a useful sales tool called a story-benefit matrix, and why you should develop one for your practice. Just going through the process is beneficial: It forces you to think through a number of different ways your prospective client will benefit by working with you – and gives you an opportunity to help tell an illustrative story that will cement that case.

It’s basic “soft-skills” at work.

But it’s helpful to understand how to build one yourself, so let me help you with that.

Why You Should Create a Story-Benefit Matrix

May 18, 2020 / by Don Connelly / Storytelling, analogies and power phrases / 0 comments

Recently, in my post ”Never Underestimate the Power of a Good ‘Who I Am’ Story,” I mentioned the concept of building a good “story-benefit” matrix. I wanted to take a little time and drill down that concept.

Many salespeople are familiar with the concept of a features-benefit matrix – a handy little cheat-sheet that helps sales and marketing people translate product features into benefits for the customer.

Here’s how a features-benefit matrix works in a nutshell.

4 Reasons Financial Advisors Should Invest in Education and Self-Development Early On

May 11, 2020 / by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments

Why Advisors Should Invest in Education and Self-Development Early On

“If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it away from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.”

— Benjamin Franklin

Warren Buffett is perhaps the most successful investor there ever was. Not from just one or two big hits, but from a long string of investment successes over more than six decades. But he didn’t get where he is now without studying very hard at Wharton, then at Columbia, where he studied with the legendary Benjamin Graham.

Further, like a Roth IRA, self-development pays off the most when you do it aggressively early in life. The benefits of learning and knowledge compound over time (as long as you keep learning).

Here are four reasons why you should start investing in education and self-development as early in your Financial Advisor career as you can.

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