Career Agency Financial Manger Coaching Mash Up

I am always asking financial advisors and financial advisor managers the following question.

Here is one manager’s question along with my reply.

Question

What are your three biggest business challenges?

1. Finding enough quality candidates 2. Helping senior Advisor’s raise their production 3. Being more effective and efficient

Reply

Please note that some of this is stating the obvious and some of it may not be so obvious which could reveal some hidden motivational strategies.

• Financial Reserves

• Networkable

• Attraction

• Referrals & Testimonials

• Year End Review

Financial Reserves

Does the financial advisor have a reasonably strong track record of financial planning in either their personal life or the life of their surrounding family members?

Networkable

Is the financial advisor networkable? On a scale of 1 – 10, how connected are they to these workable networks? What actions can they take to increase their participation in these groups to add value to the community and receive referrals at the same time?

• associations

• church

• college, school, university

• previous career

• sports

Attraction

What are the attitudes, behaviors, characteristics, and strengths that you want in a financial advisor?

The laws of attraction are absolute; you will attract what you focus on. Think of your best financial advisors and think about the attitudes, behaviors, characteristics, and strengths. Write these down as the more you focus on them, the more you will be able to attract, teach these qualities to other advisors and point out these qualities in other advisors. Use the philosophy from the One Minute Manager; “catch your people doing the right things”. For more on this please click the following link to Behavioral Marketing & Sales Characteristics.

What are the positive beliefs, feelings and values that the best financial advisors exhibit? As an exercise, speak to your best advisors about these and in doing so you will help them to remember these inherent qualities that are within them. Ask your best advisors to write you a storey about a time when they were really challenged and they were wondering if they were going to make it through and how they used their positive beliefs, feelings and values to break through. As part of the exercise, provide them with the Values Inventory and Feelings Inventory and ask them what Values & Feelings did they exhibit? This exercise will help them to associate to the passion that runs within them. Please contact me for the Values Inventory and Feelings Inventory.

Referrals & Testimonials

Have each of your financial advisors make a list of their best clients based on; they like them, they have a strong association or business/corporate network, they have money;

Have the financial advisor ask their best clients the following questions;

• What do you like best about the products and services that I offer you?

• What do I do for you that you did not expect?

• (Write down the answers to the above questions – type set / grammatically edit them so they look – the next time you see the client ask them to proof/edit/change and for their permission to share their words with prospective clients that you are talking with. You will also get a huge hit of inspiration hearing and writing the words that your clients share.)

• What do I need to do to improve my service? (If there is a service requirement, complete it.)

• Who do you know that would appreciate the same kinds of products and services that I offer?

• Wait three seconds … Do you know what, most of the time, when I ask this question, a person does not have a person’s name on the tip of their tongue … but when I call back in ten days to two weeks, a person just like yourself will have crossed their path … would it be OK if I check back with your in ten days to two weeks?

Year End Review

Schedule a meeting in advance and ask your financial advisor to come prepared to answer the following questions … let them know that you will do the same in kind to prepare for the meeting;

• What abilities, qualities, strengths and talents did you exhibit in 2009?

• What do you believe were your biggest successes for 2009?

• How does that make you feel?

• What can you improve upon?

• What additional action can you take?

• What results will you create as a result of taking these additional actions?