trust you Archives - Don Connelly & Associates

Three Stories about Trust to Use with Prospects and Clients

/ 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.

4 Things You Can Only Achieve with Effective Communication Skills

/ by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments

Effective communication skills are essential if you are to achieve successful outcomes for your business. Here are 4 relationship goals you should be striving for, along with the requisite soft skills you must possess if you are to realize them.

How to Convince Someone to Trust You

/ by Don Connelly / Managing the Relationship / 0 comments

How to Establish Trust with Prospects and Clients

Whether you’re a new or well-established advisor you may find it difficult to establish trust. It’s incredibly difficult to develop trust quickly. How can people know whether you’re honest, sincere and trustworthy when they first meet you? And people today tend to suffer from an inherent lack of trust. Their belief systems about investing have been shattered by a seemingly endless stream of bad news.

How Much Value Do You Bring as a Financial Advisor?

/ by Don Connelly / Don Guest Authoring at..., Managing the Relationship / 0 comments

What determines your value is not up to you to decide. It is left for the client to decide. And that decision is a lot simpler than you might think.

When selecting an Advisor, three things are of value to a prospective client.

That person must like the Advisor, that person must trust the Advisor and that person must think the Advisor is smart. There is very little else to factor in initially.

Prospective clients generally are not looking for more information.

4 Things Elite Advisors Do that Average Advisors Don’t Do

/ by Don Connelly / Best Practices, Don Guest Authoring at... / 4 comments

This is a guest post by Don Connelly published on the website of FA Magazine earlier this week.

Elite Advisors are not born elite. They ply their craft for years, making mistakes and learning from them.

Once such mistake is to assume that numbers matter. Newer Advisors talk about the numbers because that’s the focus of our training. We have to learn our products and processes and we have to pass the tests. When we get in the field, we naturally lead with what we know.

Objection Handling – Is It Possible to Forestall Objections?

/ by Don Connelly / Don Guest Authoring at..., Prospecting / 0 comments

This is a guest post by Don Connelly, originally published on FA Magazine website.

The late Zig Ziglar observed that every sale has five basic obstacles: no need, no money, no hurry, no desire, or no trust. Which of these obstacles is a Financial Advisor likely to experience and can they be forestalled?

We can eliminate three of those obstacles as unlikely.

How Interpersonal Relationships Lead to You Being Trusted

/ by Don Connelly / Managing the Relationship / 0 comments

By now you know my belief about gathering assets. If someone likes you, trusts you and thinks you are smart, you get the assets. If another Advisor ranks higher in those categories, he or she gets the assets.

Follow the Golden Rule and you will be likable. Simplify the business so that your listener can understand every word you say and you will be perceived as smart.

Do what you say you are going to do and you will earn the other person’s trust.

Like most things in life, the solution to each of these perceptions is simple. It’s not easy, but it is simple.

Communicating as Intended Is Vital to Your Success

/ by Don Connelly / Presentation Skills / 0 comments

Financial Advisors Success - Communicate as Intended

Since it is your job to influence and persuade, what you say is not nearly as important as what the other person hears. To be successful, you’ve got to communicate as intended.

When folks say to you that they want to go home and think about what you proposed, they are most likely telling you that they haven’t fully understood what you said. They aren’t rethinking their decision to retire comfortably. They simply don’t want to buy into what they don’t understand.

Why are we misunderstood and what can we do about it?

Self-awareness Helps You Understand How People Perceive You

/ by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments

As a Financial Advisor, your image is all-important. You’ve got to get it right. The burden is on you to decide how you want people to perceive you. As you are crafting your image, be reminded that every word you say and every move you make are advertisements. In too many cases, there is a big difference between what the Advisor thinks he is sending as an image and what the world perceives.

People Are Deciding about You, Not the Numbers

/ by Don Connelly / Marketing Yourself / 2 comments

Do Business with You - People Decide about You and Not numbers

When you are trying to convince someone to do business with you, you must earn that person’s trust. When you use charts, graphs and numbers to make your point, you are asking the person to trust the numbers. Asking someone to trust the numbers is really saying there is no need to trust you.