It’s still early in 2014, and now is a perfect time to consider what you can do to add value to your client experience. Chances are, your competition is currently prospecting with your top clients, so you can be sure that a few of them are wondering what value they’re getting from retaining you as their financial advisor. Since value …

With the Olympics underway, we are hearing from athletes that they want to “peak” for their event. They also are planning out their strategy, checking out who their competitors are, and figuring out how they’re going to use their strengths and abilities to bring home the gold. The same process can be used for financial advisors to create their best …

As consumers, we have so much choice in the marketplace, and marketing efforts don’t always effectively convince us to buy. The one type of “marketing” that holds the most sway over any decision we make is the enthusiastic referral of someone we know. The same is true for financial advisors. Prospective clients have a lot of choice, but a referral …

Starting out as a financial advisor promises a steep learning curve as you try to learn about how to provide valuable advice while ramping up your business with relentless prospecting at the same time. Fortunately, you don’t have to start out “cold,” and you can avoid many of the mistakes made by financial advisors who have gone before you. If …

When you sit down with a prospect or a client, you probably open the conversation with a brief comment about the weather followed by a discussion about families, or work, or a news headline. At some point, the conversation shifts, and you discuss some aspect of the client’s finances or portfolio—perhaps listening to their ideas or giving advice from research …

Our modern day methods of communication value fast, short, and information-rich conversations. With the rise of social media and texting as key ways to communicate information, conversations seem to be abbreviated. But, it hasn’t always been this way. For thousands of years, long before we had mobile devices or even the printed page, communicators have relied on one key tool …

Most conversations start off with innocuous questions like, “What do you think of the weather?” If you want to build rapport and trust with clients, you need to have conversations that go deeper than that. The way you ask the questions will dramatically affect the quality and value of your conversation. Certain types of questions can expand the conversation, and …

As your plane taxis down the runway, the person beside you strikes up a conversation. The what-do-you-do-for-a-living question will usually come up. When it does, you know that they will inevitably follow it up with another question—perhaps something like: “My brother-in-law is really into gold stocks. Do you have any hot tips?” Many professions have these dreaded questions. In social …

When you have a toothache, you don’t go to your local mechanic’s shop to have a cavity filled; and when your car isn’t running properly, you don’t pay a visit to your dentist. Rather, you go to the professional who has the education, experience and qualifications to solve it. You go to the expert. As a financial advisor, you have …

Before embarking on a road trip, you need to know a few important facts: not only your point of origin and your desired destination, but also a detailed map of the route you want to take. Your prospects go on a similar journey on their way to finding financial services. Their point of origin is the realization that they need …