soft skills Archives - Page 2 of 6 - Don Connelly & Associates

The Importance of Your Storytelling Skills in Building Trust

/ 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

/ 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.

How to Create a Digital Marketing Strategy

/ 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?”

Why It’s Critical for Advisors to Build Online Influence

/ by Don Connelly / Marketing Yourself / 0 comments

The most significant transfer of wealth between generations is underway right now. For Financial Advisors, it could be an extraordinary opportunity, or it could threaten their very survival. Ultimately, it’s a matter of trust.

Do investors have trust issues with Financial Advisors? A study by the CFA Institute revealed that the financial services industry is among the least trusted industry. Only half of those surveyed indicated they trust the financial service professionals to do what’s right. In a separate survey, the CFP Board found that just 40% of investors trust financial advisors to put their interests first.

Of the emerging group of affluent investors, millennial and Gen Z investors – the ultimate beneficiaries of the great $30 trillion wealth transfer occurring over the next 30 years – may be the least trustful.

Becoming a Financial Advisor at 40? Yes, You Can!

/ by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments

This is for all you career-switchers, and those considering a career change move into financial advisory services:

Don’t listen to the nay-sayers and the haters: You absolutely can become a successful financial advisor as a second career. In fact, as a career-switcher, you’ll have many advantages over your younger peers in your training classes.

Here are some of the many pros of becoming a financial advisor mid-career – and a few of the obstacles you may encounter.

11 Must-Have First-Year Financial Advisor Goals

/ by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments

It’s tough making it through your first year in the financial advisor business. It’s going to be even tougher without some specific goals to give you focus. If you set goals though, you’ll have some framework for deciding how to manage your time and money.

Your first=year financial advisor goals should be as specific as possible – so you know when you’ve achieved them. And write them down: People who write down their goals are 33% more successful at attaining them than people who keep their goals in their heads.

Here are some of the most important objectives for your first year as a financial advisor.

4 Steps to Avoid the Commoditization Trap (And Justify Your Fees)

/ by Don Connelly / Marketing Yourself / 0 comments

Water is water, right? Everybody selling water is in the business of selling H2O. If anything was a hopeless case for commoditization and price collapse, it should be bottled water. Most cities in America can now deliver very clean, safe water right to the tap – at 0.0025 per gallon.

But bottled water companies like Waikea, Fiji, Aquafina and Desani have been tremendously successful in branding their products, affiliating themselves with target markets, associating themselves with positive lifestyles, creating a positive customer experience, and getting a premium price. Customers pay between 400 and 4,400 times more for bottled water than they do for tap water, and the premium water market continues to grow.

Financial advisors face a similar dynamic.

Three Things Elite Advisors Love That Average Advisors Fear

/ by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments

Average Advisors get held back by letting their fear of performing certain essential tasks take control. Elite Advisors on the other hand have learned that with practice and perseverance it’s possible to actively embrace previously daunting tasks.

Here are three challenging aspects of their job that Elite Advisors are keen to take on, thus guaranteeing their success.

7 Things Many Financial Advisors Don’t Do, and Fail as a Result

/ by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments

Much of the failure in this industry comes down to non-observance of the basics. Too many advisors fail not only to develop their soft skills but lack the necessary business acumen to remain viable. If you want to succeed as a financial advisor, learn from their mistakes and make sure you ‘do’ what they are ‘not doing’.

Here are some things that many advisors are not doing – but should be.

5 Creative Ways to Follow-up with a Prospect

/ by Don Connelly / Prospecting / 0 comments

In an ideal world every prospect would sign up with you at the first meeting, immediately recognizing they are in need of what you are offering. In the real world however, prospects may not yet realize your value or understand that they can trust you.

Don’t leave things to chance on the basis they may get back to you. Always follow up. Make sure to call prospects and speak to them directly. You don’t have to feel that you’re trying to push products onto people who are not in the market for your services. Remember, they have indicated that they’re actively looking for a financial advisor.

People tend to get distracted easily however, so here are some additional ways to remind prospects of your worth.

1 2 3 4 … 6