use analogies Archives - Don Connelly & Associates

Coronavirus: An Opportunity for Financial Advisors to Strengthen Client Relationships

/ by Don Connelly / Investing Wisdom, Managing the Relationship / 0 comments

As I write this after the market close on March 9th, 2020, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is down 1,800 points on the day, for a loss of 7.8%. The S&P 500 is down by 7.6% – the worst single day on for U.S. equities since the 2008 crisis.

This Monday loss follows some significant volatility late last week that already had a lot of investors on edge.

No doubt, most of you advisors out there are receiving some nervous calls and emails from your clients, wondering what’s going on.

This is where great advisors can earn their money. As a matter of fact, you as financial advisors may well not have as great an opportunity to add value for your clients for a very long time as you do today.

Three Situations when Analogies Can Help Allay Clients’ Concerns

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

As their advisor it’s your job to stop clients from worrying unnecessarily and making bad decisions. You need to find a way to check their behaviors and reassure them that they should follow your lead.

Analogies are a great way to allay clients’ concerns and get across why what you say makes perfect sense. Here are three situations where it will pay you to use analogies to keep things on track.

How to Help Clients Make Good Decisions

/ by Don Connelly / Managing the Relationship / 0 comments

Your job is as much about managing relationships as it is about managing money. You need to establish close ties with your clients so you can become a positive influence in their lives over the long term. Unless you can steer your clients into making good decisions you not only risk losing them as clients – but you are doing them a disfavor – because you are allowing them to make potentially disastrous financial decisions.

Here are a few things you can do to influence your clients’ decisions positively.

Three Things That Clients Often Do – Even Though They Shouldn’t

/ by Don Connelly / Investing Wisdom / 0 comments

During your career, you’ll find over and over again that emotions cloud clients’ investment decisions – clients are not always inclined to act in their own best interests. At times like these you need to step in and be a behavior coach for them – otherwise they’ll end up regretting their decisions down the line.

Here are three things that clients want to do – but shouldn’t, and how to counter them.

Poor Communication Is The #1 Reason Advisors Get Fired

/ by Don Connelly / Managing the Relationship / 0 comments

The chief reason clients fire their advisors is not, as you may have thought, poor performance – it’s poor communication. A survey by Financial Advisor Magazine revealed that 72% of clients said they fired their advisors due to their advisor’s failure to communicate on a timely basis.

The best advisors put their communication strategy at the very heart of their business – and so should you. Not only should you build in time to communicate with clients – but take time to develop your soft skills so that you communicate effectively.

4 Behaviors to Avoid if You Want to Allay Client Concerns

/ by Don Connelly / Managing the Relationship / 0 comments

In the first meeting with you, prospective clients may be unsure if investing is the right thing to do. They may also have concerns about whether you are the right person to advise them. How you behave in your first meeting will dictate what happens next. You need to act to allay not only their objections around the investment process itself, but to eliminate any concerns they may have about working with you personally.

To make sure you leave them in no doubt about your ability, never do the following four things.

Be Prepared – Don’t Ever Run and Hide

/ by Don Connelly / Managing the Relationship / 0 comments

What do you do when the market takes a turn for the worst? Do you wait for the storm to pass and simply do nothing – or do you reach out to clients and reassure them things will get better? According to recent research carried out by Financial Advisor Magazine failure to communicate with clients on a timely basis is the number one reason advisors lose clients. The upshot is you need to be prepared to talk to clients both in the good times and the bad times.

Remind Your Clients Investing Is a Marathon

/ by Don Connelly / Investing Wisdom / 0 comments

Despite regular and sometimes frightening dips markets continue to rise incrementally over time, continually setting new highs. The problem is that many clients disbelieve this; they panic when the market temporarily falls. As their financial advisor, it’s your job to keep them on track.

You need to get them over their short-termism and make them see that their focus should be on 20, 30 or 40 years from now – not on this afternoon or next week.

Use all the tactics at your disposal to illustrate that investing is a marathon not a sprint.

Never Forget that Clients and Prospects Are Real People with Real Concerns

/ by Don Connelly / Managing the Relationship / 0 comments

Clients and prospects are real people so the best way to reach out to them and win them over is to appeal to their humanity – not wow them with financial jargon.

People won’t warm to you simply because you know your way around the stock market. Your prospects and clients make their decisions based on whether they like you and trust you – not on your ability to make the numbers add up. People overwhelmingly tend to make decisions based on emotions rather than on hard rational thinking. So put away your graphs, numbers, pie charts and statistics and convince people to trust you rather than the numbers.

Investing, Self-awareness and Tolerance to Risk

/ by Don Connelly / Investing Wisdom / 0 comments

Before you can embark on any financial plan on behalf of a client it’s essential that you understand their tolerance for risk. You must also know what their goals are, ensure they are achievable and keep them committed to the plan for the long term.

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