Originally posted at fa-mag.com by Mitch Anthony, September 1, 2024. It’s a frigid winter day. You go outside to start your vehicle and hear nothing—not a crank, not a turn, not even a whine. You try to flag someone down who might have jumper cables. Fortune smiles at you and someone stops, eager to help. [...]
Originally posted at fa-mag.com by Mitch Anthony, June 1, 2024. Let’s say you’re my client, and that I know your name, your address, your Social Security number and other account numbers. I know the whereabouts of those accounts and the balances within them. I know where you work and your adjusted gross income. I know [...]
Originally posted at fa-mag.com by Mitch Anthony, April 4, 2024. I once received a phone call from a local advisor I’ll call Mick, who had spoken to a friend of mine and heard I might be interested in a loan against my mortgage. Using this friend as a reference, Mick made a cold call to [...]
Originally posted at fa-mag.com by Mitch Anthony, February 6, 2024. Several years ago my 12-year-old niece had a phone conversation with her grandmother. After she hung up, she turned to her mother and said, “That was weird. I said something to Grandma, and she listened. Then she said something, and I listened. And we just [...]
The classic mistake that many financial professionals make is to assume that every client (or potential client) will automatically plug in to their style of communication. They won’t. If you expect clients to accommodate you, you’ll be sorely disappointed. Instead of enjoying a fruitful relationship, you’ll experience a communication breakdown and disintegration of trust. And [...]
Being emotionally intelligent means being both smart and sentient. To think otherwise is, frankly, just not very smart. The door of awareness stands between your emotional and rational selves. When this door is closed, you make poor decisions––regardless of how smart you are. When the door of awareness is opened, however, the emotional and rational [...]
As an advisor, there are three traps you––and by extension, your clients––can get caught in: 1. Predicting the future 2. Executing perfect timing 3. Focusing on outperforming last year’s returns You could argue that these are simply goals and a reflection of confidence in yourself as an advisor. That may be true, but you’re also [...]
When clients (or potential clients) think about working with a financial advisor, it’s a monumental decision—unlike most other decisions they’ll face. What other product or service carries this level of emotional impact? Certainly buying a car or a house is an emotional event but doesn’t compare to turning over the trust regarding the fruits of [...]
It’s no secret that the biggest focus on retirement planning has been on how much your clients have, and how much they’ll need. It’s a critical issue—if your clients don’t have enough money once they retire (even if they choose to continue working on a part-time basis), they’ll end up facing unnecessary challenges just [...]
As many advisors know, I’m a big proponent of getting to know your clients before you even start to talk about investing their money. Part of the process includes understanding their goals and transitions (and how those are different from each other). But even before you do that, you need to understand the mindset behind [...]
Originally posted at fa-mag.com by Mitch Anthony, September 1, 2023. Brett was just a green attorney, fresh out of law school when his father, a respected financial advisor, brought a client in to see him about an estate planning issue. His father, who was a master of understanding the emotional side of the business, brought [...]
Originally posted at Appenmedia.com by Lewis Walker, CFP, August 31, 2023. In Newtown Park in Johns Creek there is a free lending library in what looks like a big birdhouse. Walking in the park almost every day, I always check the library to see if there’s a new book that piques my interest. Recently I [...]
Originally posted at Appenmedia.com by Lewis Walker, CFP, July 8, 2023. On radio and television you constantly hear ads about planning for a well-funded retirement. Suppose with the help of a financial advisor, and/or through pluck and true grit, you do it. You wake up on Day One of your next 10 years in retirement [...]
Originally posted at fa-mag.com by Mitch Anthony, October 1, 2022. “Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect.” —Steven Wright Have you ever watched the political talk shows where there are four or five columnists, all brimming over with opinions to the point that none of them can let any of [...]
Originally posted at fa-mag.com by Mitch Anthony, December 1, 2022. The financial advisory profession has done a great job getting quantitative information from clients, processing that information, and then analyzing it for reports or plans. But when it comes to finding qualitative information—knowledge about our clients’ experiences, principles and deepest hopes and fears—the industry often [...]
Originally posted at fa-mag.com by Mitch Anthony, June 1, 2023. In my previous article in April, I introduced a number of questions that advisors could ask their clients to get a sense of their personal principles when it comes to investing. Among the questions I asked in Part 1 of this story were: • If [...]
Originally posted at fa-mag.com by Mitch Anthony, April 1, 2023. During the several years I’ve tracked the concerns of financial advisory clients, I was surprised to learn that one of their more important interests was re-examining their investment philosophy, something up there with worry about their aging parents and their children’s college. I guess I [...]
Originally posted at Appenmedia.com by Lewis Walker, CFP, May 15, 2023. Ask people about retirement goals and you get a wish list ─ travel, play more golf, spend more time with family and friends, etc. Retirement is seen as a time to do more of the things you enjoy doing. But in some advisory circles [...]
Originally posted at Appenmedia.com by Lewis Walker, CFP, June 7, 2023. In the 1960s, and prior to that, financial advice, such as it was, came largely from purveyors of products such as stockbrokers, insurance agents and bankers. Each had a vested interest in selling their company’s products and solutions. Training primarily was based on techniques [...]
Originally posted at fa-mag.com by Mitch Anthony, February 1, 2023. Advisors are usually encouraged to talk to their clients about their goals, to ask questions like, “Where would you like to be in five years?” But how much richer would the conversation be if we asked them instead, “Where have you been in the last [...]