Given some of the trends beginning to take shape in financial services there must be serious questions about how to accurately value an advisory firm. The short answer to what is an accurate value wil …
Compliance has a lot to answer for. One of the truly negative consequences of evolving best practice advice standards is the trend to torture clients. Now torture is a rather harsh word, and I am sur …
Finally I’ve worked it out after years of wondering why a “Practice” is called a “Practice”. I think it is because the business is mostly practicing to be a business. When a “practice” has made it ev …
One of the most common options for leveraging your professional practice is to hire more advisory personnel, however it is often a path to frustration and disappointment for business owners because it …
Let’s talk about one of those elephant in the room things: not all clients are equal for a professional service firm. As human beings they might all be equal, but as clients they are not. Each client …
A professional service business built around a product is not a good service business. A professional service business should be built around either the “service” part, or the “professional” part. Or …
Silent gratitude achieves nothing. Yet, gratitude is one of the most powerful emotions because it highlights to others that you value them, or what they have done. But gratitude is worthless if you ne …
Trust is built over time. It is earned. It is not given automatically to most professionals by most prospective clients at the outset. That’s a reality. The very best we can hope for when someone do …
A few years ago a university in New Zealand conducted a study to find out where consumers were turning to for financial advice. At the time they found that the number one source of financial advice fo …
When all else fails and you are at a loss to market your particular value as an adviser, the safest marketing path is to sell “convenience”. We all know, because we all do it, it is simply more conven …
Every financial adviser hopes to retire in luxury one day on the proceeds of their business sale. And so they should celebrate and cash in on the decades of building a great business which are usually …
I was given this question in the headline recently and the quick answer is: “When it is delivering the income and lifestyle that you imagined.” However, that benchmark is perhaps misleading. It is po …
One of the toughest things for professional services firms to do – especially those that operate in the advice space – is settle on a strategy to guide the decisions in building the business. It is he …
Sometimes when professional advisers are struggling to engage meaningfully with prospective clients, or struggling to get them to engage at all, the solution is to go back to the very basics and quest …
Why is it that everyone tells jokes about lawyers and begrudges their work, yet lawyers tend to do pretty well in business? How is it that lawyers who tend to be pretty awful at marketing their servic …
By now pretty much everyone has got the mantra that people do business with people that they know, like and trust, but which comes first? Where do you start on building that presence, or relationship …
A quick Google search on Time Management books threw up 714,000,000 results…so there is no shortage of information out there for busy professionals looking to organise their work, and themselves, bett …
Here are the Top 10 things that separate the top advisers from the rest: 1. Have a vision of success The process of building a great, sustainable practice starts with having a clear vision of what you …
For many professional services firms delivering value from actively lifting service levels is also a means of differentiation from the competition – and it is an excellent strategy that leads to a goo …
At the most basic level “Value” can easily be defined: Value is Benefits less Costs. That simple definition doesn’t highlight the enormous range of definitions for “Benefits” though, which is why tryi …
Where do you start when it is time to get a makeover for your business? How do you even know when to do it? Well I’d suggest “when” is driven by whether your business is growing at the rate you expec …
It may seem an obvious question to many however understanding who the most valuable clients are to a firm is not actually universally known it seems. There is often an innate understanding of who the …
Everyone would like to achieve more in less time. They would like to have better business results for less work, and have more time away from the business. Personal productivity – or business effici …
A constant question from average professional services firms is “how do high growth firms do it differently?” It is certainly a question worth asking, as the performance difference is often dramatic. …
What do you want most from your marketing: 1. More customers, or, 2. More revenue? Most marketing efforts are aimed at trying to convince strangers to bring their business to you. New clients are g …
Referral business is pure gold…it is the Holy Grail for advisers to be running a business where they are only working with referrals. Most have the problem of having to sit back and wait for clients o …
Advisers often struggle to articulate their point of difference, yet they usually can easily express well thought out beliefs and philosophies about money and planning. So most advisers think carefull …
Consumers increasing need solutions which require collaboration between professionals, and while plenty of suggestions can be found about how to collaborate with others from other professions, there i …
They say that the easiest people to sell to are the people who sell for a living, and there is a bit of truth to that. Who the advisers turn to for advice in their business affairs often astounds me. …
Getting referrals consistently is how many great advice businesses achieve systematic growth. “Consistently” is the key word that should be linked to “growth” here…and some research a little while ag …
What financial advisers do is valuable, but it is often not compelling. Retirement is so far away…there’s plenty of time to do stuff, right? Insurance is important, but I’m probably not going to act …
Unless you plan to work to the grave all practice owners need to be thinking “succession planning” at some point – preferably as early as possible. Maybe right even from the beginning of your pr …
One of the questions that continually vexes professionals is “what do customers want?” In the life insurance area of financial services the answer is even tougher to find than usual, because insurance …
Advisers frequently settle for being average, and it is definitely not because they want to be average, but because they don’t really know what it takes to elevate their performance exponentially. The …
One of my favourite quotes of all time is by Einstein: “If you cannot explain it simply then you do not understand it well enough” And nowhere is this more true than in providing advice in complex are …
We are awash with recommendations on how to “improve the advice business”. Regulators, politicians, consumer groups, product manufacturers…competing business models that look to bypass advice en …
Content Creation appears to be the Number 1 barrier for professionals wanting to use digital marketing tactics. Inevitably I seem to hear: “……Yeah, I think social media would be useful….but I ha …
I once listened to a good friend, who is also a client and a good centre of influence and an advocate, explain what I do to someone else. It provided a shining example of why some prospects see …
There is no doubt you can advertise pretty much anything, anywhere, these days. Many of the methods and techniques are highly questionable now though in terms of effectiveness, or ROI. The majority of …
It is a simple enough question in the headline, but knowing the right answer could make a profound difference to a professional’s business success. So what are you really selling? Peopl …
There is a lot of material prepared by well educated, articulate and thoughtful professionals that leaves me going “Huh?” when I read it. And I am not talking about their compliance-focusse …
“The modern sales professional doubles as an information concierge – providing the right information to the right person at the right time in the right channel. Socially surround your buyers and …
In days gone by Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems were used as little more than simple marketing machines. They contained enough information to know who your clients were and how to conta …
What happens if you don’t have a clear Value Proposition? The short answer: you are commoditised. To the typical consumer all professionals are approximately the same, unless there is a clear br …
Perhaps the toughest task any adviser faces is challenging a clients’ own thinking, but without getting into a confrontation. Most of us find ourselves occasionally dealing with a client who alr …
In the absence of a strong system referrals will simply be received on an ad hoc basis, drifting in whenever a particular customer is especially motivated to do so, or when an adviser remembers to try …
The Expert or The Counselor It is a question many struggle with, and the ideal position is actually: “be either depending on what is required” This choice is not really a question of …
One of the key concepts that advisers must grasp is the need to be valued for the advice and coaching they provide, rather than their value being linked to a product solution. A massive opportu …
Your fingerprint is a unique identifier. Nobody else has the same one as you. There…we have firmly established that every reader is unique. So why do so many professionals struggle to identify t …
The opportunity for financial advisers to use social networks as part of their marketing and positioning still seems to be immense despite social media being a well entrenched communications system. I …
As many advice businesses reach maturity it is common to consider whether they should “buy to grow”. Should they buy another practice, or more commonly, should just buy a book of business from a …
I have no doubt that many financial advisers are struggling to understand what happened to their previously successful marketing methods. For years – decades perhaps – they have been …
Clients leave us, and most times we blame someone else…we call it “twisting” or “churning”. The immediate inference is the client only left because somebody else – who is less ethical – took perfectly …
A constant question for many advisers, particularly when they’ve been sitting about over a break quietly contemplating the road ahead, is what do they have to do to prepare, or adapt? Obviously t …
One of the time-tested techniques of sales is to obtain referrals by dropping a “who do you know” bomb on them…and it is dumb. It has never actually worked all that well really, and it works ev …
Everyone wants to grow their business, and everyone is looking for new ideas to do it. But nearly everyone wants the magical original idea that nobody else has ever thought of before, that will …
One of the most popular articles I have written was a short piece on the necessity for reducing Statements of Advice in size. It seems the message to reduce the complexity – to stop producing d …
What is more effective: running a client seminar with 100 guests, or running 5 client events of only a dozen or so at a time? Research suggests that the best financial advisers tend to run smal …
How to stay on top of your game, get the results that you want in business, and maintain peak performance….it all comes down to having a system, or a process. Consistent output does after …
Everyone wants business to be as easy as possible, yet we so often make it harder than it has to be. What’s wrong with living on some low hanging fruit if there is more of it than you can …
One of the areas which you would think would dominate our prospecting activities is one where many professionals struggle: getting friends and associates onboard as clients. A fantastic adviser that I …
Every lead is gold, and ideally every lead would result in conversion to a client. The conversion rate really is often the difference between getting a good return on your prospecting and market …
Just how much opportunity is sitting inside the typical adviser practice? How much new business is waiting inside that existing database? It Is Usually A Goldmine. A report from a couple …
The single marketing topic that advisers WANT to know how to absolutely nail it is how to get more referrals. Get this right, and prospecting problems are fixed forever. The theory really isn’t …
When it comes to advising clients to change course or do something new we should remember the reasons why people buy anything, including “advice”. If we want our advice to be effective (and lead …
The best way to generate constant referrals is by having “centers of influence” delivering qualified and interested prospects to you regularly. It is a simple idea, and like so many other thing …
Many firms facing increased overheads and infrastructure costs in the next few years are considering acquisition or merger strategies as a survival or growth strategy. Generally there appears to be …
The difference between a good (but not spectacular) professional and a truly magnificent performer is the ability to succinctly articulate what makes them special. This is often referred …
How much do you really think a good client is worth to you? Most financial advisers will easily work through the basic formula of the average fee/sale per client multiplied by the number of tra …
The most challenging area of financial advice which is subject to perpetual testing is the question of “suitability”. WHY was a particular piece of advice appropriate for a particular cli …
More clients is good, right? How many are enough for a typical adviser though? 1,000? 2,000? 200? And then the plan is “drop some clients, and build it back to up whatever the ideal number is/w …
My advice to staff and advisers alike may seem odd….”get out and make more mistakes” Dangerous advice! Reckless even perhaps… However it is the best way to grow. It is also the only way t …
Nearly every professional gives an initial “no obligation meeting” to prospective clients, and nearly everyone delivers value to those prospects during that initial meeting. But hardly anyone se …
Sooooo much is done via digital engagement today by our clients and prospects that there literally hundreds of “moments of truth” for our practice on a daily basis. A “moment of truth” is that i …
When it comes to providing advice in writing to a client there is undoubtedly unnecessary complexity. In fact the proverbial “Statement Of Advice” has become anything but a “statement”. It …
Advisers attend plenty of webinars, but very few seem to use a webinar marketing program themselves for marketing to potential clients, and it is a marvellous opportunity (if done well) to really posi …
Succession planning is a major issue with an ageing adviser force, many of whom are wondering how to get their decades of accumulated equity out for their own retirement in the next 10 years. Th …
Most financial advisers acknowledge that things are likely to change when it comes to fees, initial commissions, renewals or AUM fees and so forth in coming years. Yet they behave like the frog being …
There’s a classic cartoon that shows the way forward for advice firms when it comes to how they must evolve. It is called “The evolution of an entrepreneur” and even though it is aimed at those …
Asking financial advisers what THEIR risk tolerance is seems odd to many at first glance. However, when contemplating what changes should be made in response to more regulatory reform this is t …
You will gain or lose potential clients in just 8 seconds….well, actually it is a lot less than that. The clock is ticking…and a lot faster than many realise. In reality you have 3 seconds or le …
Heresy: The Professionals’ needs matter as much as the Clients’ wants. It shouldn’t be heresy to say this aloud of course…. But; the ideal practice is one which surely achieves this bal …
Disruption has long been a feature of financial services distribution. Generally disruption occurs with new market entrants, product innovation, shifting strategic focus on the part of sup …
Advisers know that changes to our business are coming thick and fast, and advisers know that clients are changing in their expectations of service, solutions and experiences. So what do we have …
The hot issue for many advisers right now is what they need to do to adjust for incoming regulatory reform…again…and the focus is almost always upon the short term. Knee-jerk reactions become th …
For most of my advisory career there has been a very real opportunity for advisers to operate “lifestyle” businesses. It has enabled them to largely choose when they will work; who they will wor …
No matter how hard you try to get it right, some prospects are just not right for you. You are wasting your time and would be best to just cut your losses and move on quickly. The proble …
When it comes to the words we use in conversation we all have our own idiosyncracies and quirks of speech, and often do not realise that they can make or break us in business. The actual words that we …
In the continual search for differentiation strategies and creating a strong sense of “value received” by clients one of the ways to think about how to stand out is to consider where you choose to try …
I support a compliance focus 100% ….but I support a client focus 100% too. All too often it is impossible to achieve 100% for both simultaneously though. Where does a professional compromise? O …
“What do we have to get right for prospects to become clients?” “Remove or negate the barriers to them deciding to business” “What barrier?” “All of them…..” There are many barriers which can prevent …
Creating and keeping happy clients IS essential for the success of a professional practice. There is no question about that. But is it enough to help a practice grow at a greater …
The question of whether client contact frequency makes a discernible difference to the strength of the adviser-client relationship, or enhances the perceived value of the adviser to the client, is one …
Click on image above to watch full video “Poor positioning of yourself and what you can achieve for your ideal clients is the number 1 reason for ideal business opportunities not comi …
There appears to be plenty of research from larger markets such as the USA to suggest there is a new type of financial adviser out there, dubbed the “e-Adviser”, who is winning way more business than …
Perhaps the greatest challenge for practices wishing to grow their people, profitability and professional standards is determining what behaviour to reward. And what you reward must be a reflect …
“Two Ears but only one mouth”…blah blah blah…sales training 101, right? We know how important it is to “listen” to clients, and we know the danger of losing touch with what they want and wha …
You probably want more business for your practice, and almost certainly want to do more business with higher value and more challenging client cases. Well, something has to change. Someth …
If one forms a business alliance and one party gets more out of it than the other, is that alliance likely to last long term? Of course not. It is not equitable. One party at some point is going …
Working with a very good adviser recently who has just taken on staff of his own for the first time in his career he asked me if I could get his new people up to speed for him, as they weren’t quite w …
For just about any practitioner to lose 56% of their clients in a year would be a disaster. It is enough to jeopardise a practice entirely of course, but even in a best case scenario it will hur …
I have a strong sense that a lot of advisory firms are “going out of business” at the moment and don’t even realise it. Markets are going well, and commission and fee rates are still at the high end o …
The most important word in the headline is “help”, which is very different to “convince”, which is the typical marketing approach. A great marketing process helps prospects move along the …
Becoming cyborgs is the way to go for financial advisers…blending robotics and humans into one organism. You see, I am convinced that robo-advice models will succeed and prosper. I am also convinced t …
While I am a fan of “measuring to manage well”, some things just can’t be measured accurately. That’s why I believe we should forget what the ROI of social media is, in the conventional sense. …
The mantra of “customer is king” is rubbish. And I keep hearing it from professionals as if it were a commandment which, if breached, will send you straight to hell. A King or Queen suppos …
Getting referrals is usually a very hit and miss thing for professionals…If they remember to put the issue on the table at all. Then there is the angst-filled question of when it is best t …
While talking to a very experienced and successful adviser recently I asked him what he put his phenomenal success down to. He said: “I am dependable”. As simple as that…a 40 year rec …
It is difficult to work out how much of your expertise you should give away for free isn’t it? Most professionals give away free hours as part of their marketing to try and engage new clients, …
To get prospects to buy you and your advice you have to “sell emotion” and support it with logic, right? Not quite….there is a piece missing in this formula which is is largely accepted as …
I think that it is time to re-think what advisers think they know about their customers. Insurance is sold, it isn’t bought, right? People don’t value advice, right? Really? If you haven’t had a look …
Focus. It is one of the noticeable differences between those who are successful, and those who are frustrated. The ability to focus on the things that matter that is often what separates them. It is h …
Just one question should be dominating practitioners minds at this stage of the year: How will next year be better? HOW is the critical word here. Professionals are great at setting goals and targets. …
I reckon our household is pretty common really. We are probably what could be called a pretty “common client”. It’s a pretty common target market for most professional services, and how the peo …
Loads of social media channels are great for business, but nothing fills the marketing funnel quickly quite like Twitter in my experience. Everyone understands the “fill the funnel” concept of …
In a time where so many professionals struggle to identify and articulate their value to consumers, I have to wonder why aren’t more professional financial advisers using their designations and qualif …
Creating great capital value for a professional services firm is usually one of the owners primary objectives as they more often than not see their business value as a critical part of their own finan …
We know that time is money. We know that marketing costs money. But the most successful advisers know that effective marketing costs more time than money. One of the most successful a …
Professionals sell time and knowledge primarily, however our dilemma is that in order to escape the transactional nature of simply selling units of time we promise to provide an ongoing service. …
One of the essentials for practice growth is to build a marketing machine. A combination of mini-systems and components that keep the whole motor running at full speed. Most professionals have …
The first rule of business is “be profitable”, and that is a concept which appears to be causing financial advisers especially some real issues. In any number of countries, there is debate driv …
Advisers are finding success using social sites to cull prospects, build their brand, communicate with clients and improve their referral network,” according to a recent article by Liz Skinner. …
Connecting with clients on social media can lead to genuine friendships and closer relationships, which equals greater lifetime value of the client, right? But then….it can kill professional client re …
Finding the right opportunities to build trust and connection with consumers who don’t know you yet, but who are thinking of engaging with someone like you, is the perennial marketing challenge. …
Building a profitable practice is the first objective for practitioners, but building a sustainable profitable practice which has significant capital value is even better isn’t it? Many good pr …
It is hard work perhaps but creating a strategic alliance is one of the smartest business building moves a practice can make. Perhaps it is because it is not an easy or quick thing to do …
Earlier this month I was asked, “When should I slow down or stop the marketing?” Answer: “Your marketing never stops. Never.” The rationale behind the question was the adviser has a good and la …
Delivering the right advice consists of getting 2 things right: Delivering advice that will work for the client, and Delivering it in a manner which will result in the client taking a …
Growing productivity – or getting financial advisers to grow themselves and their business capability – appears to be a problem no matter who you talk to in financial services. And it doesn’t ne …
There can be as much value in the blink of an eye as in months of rational analysis. ~ Malcolm Gladwell I am really poor at valuing the advice I give. Always have been I think. But then, that isn’t un …
The W.I.I.F.M. – The big “what’s in it for me?” question is the only question that matters to a prospect isn’t it? Strip away all the behavioural psychology and best practice advice p …
I’ve been running a terribly unscientific survey to find out if advertising for lead generation is dead for todays advisers. Basically the deeply analytical process has consisted of asking advis …
The Challenge: Getting prospects to buy into the financial advice planning process. The Solution: Show them HOW the process works. The keywords there are “show” and “ …
“Innovation” and “delivering advice” do not usually go together do they? The way advice is delivered by tens of thousands of professionals tends to gravitate to the same methodology. T …
The financial adviser is supposed to be an influencer…our purpose is to influence others to make better decisions than they would otherwise have made. In order to become a more effective …
Professionals underestimate the importance of frequent contact with clients and prospective clients. “Frequent contact” does of course mean being in touch often. How often is often enough though? …
The prospecting method that keeps on delivering the most opportunities is Referrals. A distant second in the source of new clients for advice firms is Centre of Influence referrals. Research by t …
Creating a value proposition that truly differentiates a professional and resonates with the target market audience is one of the hardest things to create, and one of the most important. It is THE thi …
Vision is the thing that initially drives all progress. Somebody’s view of how something can be…will be….is the catalyst for achievement of great change. Who will ever forget the power of …
Forming and then delivering an opinion is what professional advisers do for a living. With every client and every engagement opinions are created and expressed. Virtually every incoming phone ca …
The perennial challenge in selling advice is positioning it as valuable, and we should think and talk of it as it really is: coaching. Giving advice is all about analysing the desired outcomes for cli …
Do you really know what your clients want? A classic mistake that professionals tend to repeat is assuming that their clients all want the same thing, which coincidentally is the very thing …
Old folk don’t take on new tech, right? There is a seemingly continuous lament about the ageing of the financial advisory business and it is certainly true when you look back at photo’s after a confer …
“Only 2% of consumers would go to a financial planner to take out life or other personal insurance” “Only 9% of consumers would go to a financial planner for retirement planning” “12% of consumers wou …
The nirvana for most professionals is to work only with affluent, and acquiescent, clients. The challenge in doing so is that the affluent will inevitably become more difficult to get in fr …
How can we create or transfer enthusiasm to a customer when: Our products are as boring as the boring-est thing ever. The Value that customers receive from financial services products could be ye …
It has been impossible to ignore the DoL “fiduciary rule” news out of the U.S in recent weeks. It has been the dominant story in financial services, and clearly the jury (in the form of market pa …
For most professional services firms today the Number 1 strategic challenge is determining what the the right strategy for the firm actually is. It would easily be THE single thing that firms I talk t …
Building a great business is rarely the result of a single champion taking on the world. The champion business owner is usually the captain of a team that has taken on the world. Of cours …
As a consumer, a user of professional services myself, I’m tired of hearing from professionals that they should be trusted just because they are labelled professionals. Recently, and for only about th …
The great news for anybody actually reading this post is that the headline already turned a bunch of your competitors off. That word “process” is just deadly for so many advisers today that too many w …
One of the major benefits of the intense interest and investment which has gone into creating Robo-Advice models is that institutions are investing a heck of a lot into researching why and …
While financial advisers have been figuring out how to get compliant over the last few years, consumers went and pulled a dirty trick while we weren’t watching closely: they changed how they buy stuff …
Smart professional service firms today focus on demonstrating their value to prospects. Having a prospect who is interested enough to hear what you have to offer has always been a necessary step on th …
I’ve just been reading through a very interesting piece of research that came out of the last census here in NZ, compiled by Statistics NZ, and it immediately highlighted some problems in our process …
Remember when everyone starting in a sales role was told to just “see the people, see the people, see the people!”? Remember when the expectation was that our fame and fortune would be assured if …
Identifying a potentially great Centre-Of-Influence (COI) for your professional services business is not something that should be left to chance. Nor should the process of building the relation …
In the absence of a clear and compelling value proposition for a customer, planners will often struggle to obtain buy-in from prospective new clients. We name what seems to be an expensive fee, and in …
Whether we like it or not there is always price resistance in delivering financial advice, and how we present our service is a large part of that problem. It doesn’t have to be…we jus …
Regular readers will know that I am a massive fan of using social media and other digital marketing tools and tactics, especially in professional services where we are trying to market our expertise, …
If you aren’t emailing video’s to clients and prospects yet, why aren’t you? It seems an odd thing with everyone having smart phones that can take high quality video’s on the spot, and with every …
What’s the cunning plan to make this year truly awesome? What is the strategy? Those 2 questions are actually the same question. The cunning idea, or the strategy, is THE single thing that will …
Written by: Fred Dodds, CEO of Institute of Financial Advisers One of the key themes for the IFA for 2014 is Being Successful on Purpose and at the recent MDRT meeting one of the best s …
A traditional – and still quite common – marketing practice for financial advisers is sending “pre-approach”, or sales, letters to prospective clients. I am often asked if they are worthwhile, and if …
This is the time of the year when many advisers begin seriously thinking about how to lift their game for next year, but many are stuck in their existing paradigm of doing business they way they’ve al …
“Thought leaders are the informed opinion leaders and the go-to people in their field of expertise. They are trusted sources who move and inspire people with innovative ideas; turn idea …
Effective email marketing is a lot tougher now than just 2 or 3 years ago, yet it is still one of the most effective marketing methods available if we get it right. In the old days, say 4 years ago, a …
Strategy. Probably the most misunderstood concept in business. Especially in professional services. Guess what happens in professional services then? Businesses get busy without having a clear s …
A genuine challenge for advice firms right now is how to find the time to deal with clients as well as do all the work necessary to lift standards and improve business systems. The pressure is constan …
During a panel discussion this week with a collection of professionals from various parts of industry, one of the speakers was the CEO of one of the largest national real estate firms, and she dropped …
A while ago I was doing some work with an insurance company and as we were digging through some of the data it transpired that there was a consistent natural attrition rate of about 5-6% of its custom …
It is terribly simplified of course, but if you want to grow a great business then you need to grow some great people at some point in the process. If we want to learn how to grow great people t …
There is an increasing rush to provide Robo-offerings from institutions and an increasing amount of angst from advisers wondering how to combat it. The way to combat it is for us – the advisory side o …
We should sell off or sack “C” grade clients, shouldn’t we? Maybe not….there just might be a better way…. The arguments for getting rid of them that are continually put forward seem to be: They don’t …
Customer complaints are a fact of life. It is virtually impossible to run a service business where everyone is happy 100% of the time, as human beings are involved and they are unpredictable cre …
Management is doing things right, leadership is doing the right things — Peter Drucker The most frequent thing I see that holds advisers back from developing their dream business is a lack of vision. …
One of the things I often suggest to professionals as a costless and effective way of marketing themselves is to get quoted in industry, local or national media. When that happens you then shoul …
A simple idea which pays off every year is simply re-connecting with those who I spent time with, but did not do any business with in the last year. There are always people we are seeing who …
The problem with “FREE” is nobody believes that whatever you are offering is actually free. It might be free in terms of there being no invoice or obvious price tag, but that doesn’t mean it is “free” …
If there is one area that continues to bug me about advice process it is the “Scope of Service” documents that are used by so many advisers. Too often they are just rubbish. If I was a consumer …
“How much would you spend to get a new client onboard?” While the answer will vary for everyone of course, the typical answer I hear from advisers is “it depends, but maybe a couple of hundred dollars …
I encourage you to try this: fire a client. It is liberating, and it moves your thinking and sense of self worth onto a different professional plane. Pretty much everyone who has …
Despite a couple of decades of positioning, developing and improving technical knowledge and qualifications, many financial professionals are struggling to get enough clients to engage in holistic pla …
There is no doubt that financial advisory practices are evolving rapidly into professional practices, with many already fully there. There is also no doubt that a number of financial advisers an …
One of the great recurring questions from advisers in the regulated environment is “how can I be sure that my advice will pass the test?” It is a great question given that often the test is somewhat v …
“Despite ongoing efforts to improve service, positive customer experience levels decreased significantly across the world” This was from a superb report released by Capgemini recently on the performan …
Anybody who has had the privilege of seeing the Great Pyramids up close will recall how perfectly symmetrical and “in balance” they are from a distance as you approach them. When you are right t …
Try as I might I just cannot remember the first time I received or sent a text. Or an email. But I do remember being a young communications specialist in the navy and looking in wonder at the technolo …
Well..it has happened. Life Insurance sales commission in Australia is regulated to lower levels, albeit with a phase in period. (See: Life Insurance Commission Reform is Happening In Australia) …
If I had a dollar for every adviser who has expressed an interest in buying another advisers business I’d be retired now. It seems to be the primary strategy for attaining scale and a viable bus …
Is it appropriate to share success with influencers? Or, to put it another way, should you share remuneration or the spoils of the sale with referrers? It is actually just a little more complicated th …
No matter what else you are doing with prospective customers, and no matter what they think they want, you should always be pushing to close the business and make a sale. Really? Does ANYONE want to b …
It is not unreasonable to have reasonable expectations, is it? Whenever we enter into an agreement with somebody else to work together on anything it is fair to say that we both have expectations abou …
I am going to put it right out there and probably make a few new enemies: Pretty much all the referral generation techniques and methods you’ve ever been taught and have tried won’t work wit …
You know we have a battle on our hands when even Accountants only get rated as “High” or “Very High” in professional ethics and honesty….what chance that an Insurance Broker (for example) will rank hi …
Kindergarten teachers know it, so why don’t the leaders of professional services firms know it and use it? We tend to get the behaviour we reward repeatedly. I have been reminded of this simple concep …
On some things you just have to roll the dice and take your chances in life. Asking someone for a date….getting on a plane…or asking for referrals. It doesn’t always work out of course, but as a …
There are not many things that a room full of financial planners or investment advisers will agree upon – but an area sure to gain consensus is the need to work with High Net Worth (HNW) clients. Howe …
One of the greatest challenges for professionals working with complex ideas and products is to keep conversations and explanations as simple as possible – without being patronising. Nearly all c …
One of the greatest challenges for professionals working with complex ideas and products is to keep conversations and explanations as simple as possible – without being patronising. Nearly all c …
Robo-advisers, direct marketing, 24/7 online transaction facilities, product kiosks and over the counter solutions to shoppers at supermarkets…these are all choices for financial products today. …
Not long ago I met the son of a (former) client…a young man in his mid-twenties now, who is well on the way to pursuing his own professional career and carving out his own place in the world. To …
We gnash our teeth trying to articulate value in a way that makes sense to customers and come up with a variety of ways to demonstrate the value of good advice. And then this hits the media: “an alarm …
Like many others I have considered the concept of the professional services firm consisting of individuals focussing on what they do best to be an ideal worth pursuing. The concept of a professional f …
I admit that I have always been a little uncomfortable with some aspects of MPT, and have long held the view that broad portfolio diversification is often a safe path to average performance. A superb …
Which do you think is more effective with todays educated and sophisticated consumer? 1. Clever sales technique that has you taking the dominant position and “winning”, or, 2. Pre-empting the predicta …
Whenever the topic of the “advice process”, or compliance, comes up most advisers imagine themselves as the plane: Sure it is a drag for everyone involved – including clients – when compliance require …
