July 5, 2021 / by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments
It’s human nature to seek comfort in familiar habits and patterns. When anything comes along to threaten the status quo, we naturally feel uncomfortable, even anxious. Most of us will take great pains to cling to our comfort zone just to avoid those feelings, rejecting change and its unpredictability. The inevitable result for many people is to languish in predictable mediocrity. While they may feel safe, they eventually slip into obsolescence.
In the financial advisory business, if you are not constantly working at getting better, you are getting worse. That’s because successful advisors always strive to improve, to find ways to perfect their craft, which often requires breaking from familiar habits and stepping outside their comfort zone. They know that if they continue to live inside their complacency zone and do what they’ve always done, they’ll continue to get the same results. As a financial advisor, that is ultimately a formula for failure.
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Only Elite Advisors Step Out of Their Comfort Zone—Do You?
July 5, 2021 / by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments
It’s human nature to seek comfort in familiar habits and patterns. When anything comes along to threaten the status quo, we naturally feel uncomfortable, even anxious. Most of us will take great pains to cling to our comfort zone just to avoid those feelings, rejecting change and its unpredictability. The inevitable result for many people is to languish in predictable mediocrity. While they may feel safe, they eventually slip into obsolescence.
In the financial advisory business, if you are not constantly working at getting better, you are getting worse. That’s because successful advisors always strive to improve, to find ways to perfect their craft, which often requires breaking from familiar habits and stepping outside their comfort zone. They know that if they continue to live inside their complacency zone and do what they’ve always done, they’ll continue to get the same results. As a financial advisor, that is ultimately a formula for failure.
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Three Things That Clients Often Do – Even Though They Shouldn’t
October 15, 2018 / 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.
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Put in The Effort if You Want to Become The Most Sought-after Financial Advisor in Town
April 24, 2017 / by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments
To become a truly elite financial advisor you need to have an incredible work ethic. If you’re new to the business, you will need to spend most of your time actively prospecting and looking for clients. It could take years to build a solid client base – but when you have built up the right clientele, you will be rewarded with a pool of people who are happy and willing to provide you with referrals.
To achieve this enviable position, continually visualize yourself as a first-class advisor. Program that picture into your subconscious mind. Then work harder than any other advisor, perfect your soft skills, earn referrals and make this dream a reality.
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How to Get Prospects Off The Fence
February 20, 2017 / by Don Connelly / Prospecting / 0 comments
When a prospect turns around and says he or she needs to think things over they’re likely basing their indecision on fear or laziness. Maybe they’re fearful about the shaky economy, distrustful about paying you a fee, or just simply don’t want to leave their comfort zone. All their ‘reasons’, however, are based on emotion – and to break this inertia, you need to use techniques that will motivate them to act.
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Procrastination Will Ruin Your Chances of Success
December 19, 2016 / by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments
Procrastination can take different forms. You may consciously procrastinate and avoid what you know you should be doing, or you may unconsciously put off your top priority tasks by attending to a series of ‘never ending fires’. Whatever type of procrastination you suffer from it can be ruinous to your business. Here’s what to do instead.
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Why Both You and Your Client Need the Skill of Visualization
January 19, 2015 / by Don Connelly / Managing the Relationship / 0 comments
Naturally your clients read the papers, watch the news, and use the internet to see what’s happening to their investments, they’re interested. And there will be bumps in the road. Keeping clients fully invested in the face of bad news is hard to do, so how do you get them to grin and bear it?
When someone sees their portfolio go down it’s your job to refocus them on the road ahead.
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Convincing Your Clients to Sacrifice for a Reward They Can’t Visualize
December 8, 2014 / by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments
I am convinced the hardest thing in the world to sell is advice, especially when the reward for following said advice is so far down the road it can’t be visualized. “Trust me” is an understatement.
Convincing others to settle for delayed gratification is a challenge you face every day.
You must establish such a high level of trust with people that they allow themselves to be helped. You have to make them comfortable enough to tell you their goals and their dreams. You have to enable them to see themselves attaining those goals.
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5 Reasons You Should Get a Mentor
November 20, 2014 / by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments
When you first start out as an Advisor you’re given a set of products to sell, but unfortunately they don’t come with an instruction manual. You need to learn how to market and sell them yourself. This is where a mentor can step in, by helping you prospect, sell and manage your practice.
Mentors can also help you stay on track and improve, no matter how long you’ve been in business. Making sure you can still execute the fundamentals is key to becoming the Advisor you always wanted to be.
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