Identifying the four stages of transition for widows
While the journey through grief and widowhood is unique to each widow, it will likely progress through four stages of transition. The following are the four stages and what you...
Tag Archives: advising clients
10 things to do if you don’t want to increase your income
I’ve given some thought about how not to grow a successful financial services practice or increase your income. I came up with these guidelines of what you do not want...
How I convinced my father that he needed more coverage
You’ve got to take care of your family first when you’re in the business. Looking at the situation with my own parents, I saw that my father didn’t really have...
What’s in your critical illness toolkit?
If you are a plumber, a financial plumber, and you are going on a job, you don’t arrive with a single monkey wrench expecting to fix everything with it. You...
Questions that grab a client’s attention
Sometimes the advice we give clients about what products they need to protect their income and family can be ignored if they aren’t yet ready to receive the information. By...
Questions that won’t trigger clients’ fight-or-flight state
Asking questions is key for financial advisors to identify critical information about their clients. It is important that quality questions are asked to promote a safe space for clients to share...
Creating loyal clients in an uncertain world
When people face a world that is too complex to understand and constantly changing in unexpected ways, they put up barriers of distrust and caution. This environment creates debilitating distress,...
Unexpected trends to look for in 2022
The pandemic has etched unexpected deep lines in the landscape of many people’s professional and personal lives. Financial advisors in the past few years have likely seen this in some of...
The importance of fact-finding and naming heirs
My client was a business owner in his 80s with four children. After he died and we were going through probate, the attorney took me by surprise when he said...
Secrets for achieving high performance amid disruptions
While change has always been a constant in the financial services profession, the sudden pivot required in the early months of 2020 at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic tested...
When clients seem unable to budget
We’re a very process-driven practice, and we do budget sessions with clients. I’d say 85%-90% of clients accept the budget process and thrive on it once they get rolling on...
Top soft skills every financial advisor must have
While hard skills are necessary to keep the business running, soft skills enhance business opportunities. Our profession is mostly about interacting and coordinating with clients and prospects. As a result,...
Ideas to motivate clients
Try these Round the Table ideas to motivate your clients to take action and invest in a more financially secure future. A simple budget Younger clients generally don’t think they have enough...
Applying on-the-job lessons to your own family
I had a young client who lived in a bad neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago, Illinois, USA. He was the one person who was successful in the family....
2 tips to improving your income
All advisors would be happy to increase their income, but it isn’t always a one-step process. Ian Green, Dip PFS, a 23-year MDRT member from London, England, and the 2021...
