soft skills Archives - Don Connelly & Associates

Top 5 Critical Acquired Skills Financial Advisors Need for Success

October 16, 2023 / by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments

There was a time in the not-so-distant past when the only skill you needed to succeed in financial services was how to sell. The business of selling investments was almost entirely transactional, and all a financial advisor needed to do was shake the bushes for prospects and close them on a product sale. It was not easy by any means, and only the most tenacious advisors survived.

Certainly, that required some skill, but most were learned through memorizing scripts and drilling on closing techniques. The rest was all about persistence in dialing the phone.

Fast forward to today, and the game has changed drastically. With compensation coming largely from recurring revenue from assets under management or planning fees, advisors have had to develop an entirely new skill set. Tenaciousness, persistence, dogged determination, and knowing how to sell are still essential, but they take a back seat to more critical skills needed to succeed in the business today. Here are five such acquired skills you need to master.

Addressing Communication Breakdowns: 5 Common Communication Challenges Financial Advisors Face Today

August 14, 2023 / by Don Connelly / Managing the Relationship / 0 comments

We spend a lot of time and space here harping on the importance of client communications because, more than anything else you do in this business, it can make or break you.

We’ve discussed that 72% of clients who fire their financial advisors do so due to poor communication. We’ve pointed out studies that show clients value solid communications the most in an advisory relationship, yet many feel they’re not receiving it.

We’ve also outlined the reasons why it’s critical to build a systematic communications structure designed to keep your clients engaged, cultivate loyalty, and instill confidence in your advice and then provided a framework for building it.

Above all, we’ve stressed the importance of continuously working on your communication and requisite soft skills for building trust and solidifying your relationship.

However, all that will do you little good if you don’t recognize the communication challenges you face on a daily basis, especially the communication breakdowns that lead to conflicts, such as miscommunications, misunderstandings, and a lack of clarity.

Here are five of the most common communication challenges financial advisors must recognize and overcome to build and maintain solid client relationships:

How to Get Your First Client as a Financial Advisor

August 7, 2023 / by Don Connelly / Prospecting / 0 comments

All financial advisors start in the same place—with no clients. Getting that first client (who’s not a relative) is a significant hurdle but not insurmountable. And, as many successful advisors will tell you, once you clear that first hurdle, it’s off to the races.

While getting your first client can be a challenge, you can succeed with the right skills, a solid game plan, and a hefty dose of persistence.

Stop Justifying Your Fees and Start Explaining Them in the Context of What Your Prospects Value

March 6, 2023 / by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments

The financial services world has undergone significant change in the last few years, mainly for the benefit of those seeking financial advice. They have more options, investment costs are decreasing, and they have more protections thanks to the regulators. However, for financial advisors, the more things change, the more they seem to stay the same—at least as it relates to fees. Advisors still find themselves in the unenviable position of having to withstand fee compression while, at the same time, justifying them to their clients.

Advisors Who Don’t Want to Sound “Salesy” Need to Master Soft Skills

January 9, 2023 / by Don Connelly / Marketing Yourself / 0 comments

Many financial advisors don’t like to be thought of as salespeople. In fact, they despise it. In part because they work hard at earning the distinction of being an “advisor.” Also, the public has been conditioned to avoid salespeople masquerading as financial advisors. But in reality, anyone in the business of building a clientele and offering services has to be able to sell.

To convert prospects into clients, advisors must sell themselves and then their solution. To make money, they must get their prospects and clients to act on their solution, which requires sales skills. Most advisors understand that, but their greatest fear is coming across as a salesperson or sounding too “salesy.”

If that is your fear, let me put your mind at ease. First, it’s important to understand what it means to be “salesy.” That term is generally applied to a high-pressure approach that makes prospects uncomfortable. People don’t want to deal with salespeople who are pushy and don’t listen to them.

That’s not you.

What No One Tells You About Being a Financial Advisor

October 24, 2022 / by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 2 comments

In my opinion, there has not been any better time to be a financial advisor. At a time when the world is inundated with chaos and hyperbolic media noise, financial advisors are proving their worth. An increasing number of people are seeking guidance and clarity beyond the cookie-cutter world of robo-advisors and financial pundits.

Those who seek a career in helping people achieve their life ambitions with personalized advice have the chance to be very successful and personally fulfilled. However, with less than 300,000 practicing financial advisors in a country of 330 million people, relatively few people are choosing that path, and even fewer are succeeding.

How to Build Immediate Personal Connections Naturally

August 1, 2022 / by Don Connelly / Managing the Relationship / 0 comments

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.

3 Soft Skills Advisors Need to Refine for an Immediate Connection with Prospects

May 16, 2022 / by Don Connelly / Managing the Relationship / 0 comments

Not to diminish the hard work, effort, and time that goes into becoming a financial advisor—few professions are as demanding—but the essential skill advisors must acquire is the ability to sell. Perhaps a more acceptable term would be “the art of persuasion.” Whichever way you want to frame it, if you have difficulty persuading or convincing people to take action, you stand little chance of success.

Of course, that’s true of just about any profession that requires changing or influencing people’s behavior. It just happens to be more challenging when selling financial advice and expecting to get paid for it. Advisors must understand that buying an intangible service requiring people to trust that the advisor can deliver that intangible value is scary for most people. It’s far less threatening to stay with the status quo and do nothing.

The trouble is, if you can’t convince people to follow you or your advice, you aren’t accomplishing anything. To overcome the inherent trust deficit and open prospects’ minds, financial advisors must constantly refine three critical soft skills, or they will have fewer chances to demonstrate their highly trained competencies.

The Importance of Your Storytelling Skills in Building Trust

March 8, 2021 / by Don Connelly / Storytelling, analogies and power phrases / 0 comments

Now and then, financial advisors must be reminded that they are in a relationship business and that what they have as a clientele is a direct by-product of trust.

The cold hard reality is that people need to trust you before they will engage with you. Especially these days, people are almost instinctively cynical, overly careful to approach others they don’t know with a heavy dose of skepticism. So, when we want to connect with any group of people, our first task must be to break through their defensive shells so we can build trust. Without trust, there can be no connection, no relationship, and no channel through which vision and ideas can flow.

Working Mostly Online in a Post-pandemic World Is Especially Hard on New Advisors

December 28, 2020 / by Diana Marinova / Best Practices, Connelly Corner / 0 comments

This turbulent year is almost over and looking back, we see a few clear trends of topics that interested Financial Advisors the most on our blog during 2020. We’d like to share some of them with you now, in case you missed them the first time around.

Here are the first three topics most requested and read by our community of financial professionals in 2020.

1 2 3 … 6