To be a successful advisor, you need to understand how risk affects the decisions investors make and what you can do to make those decisions more objective and responsible. Demonstrating value at a time when investments are becoming more of a commodity is a popular topic in advisor-industry circles.

In an article last week, I discussed how an understanding of three behavioral biases (in-group, confirmation and illusion-of-control bias) can help you gather more assets. Today, I will tackle another prevalent bias – negativity bias – and provide suggestions for how to use knowledge of its effects to your advantage.

Jiu-jitsu is a gentle art. Instead of meeting force with greater force, skilled practitioners use their opponent’s force against them. Advisors can learn a lot from this principle.

Brokers are largely successful in selling inferior or conflicted services because they have superior sales skills. Bridge this gap and level the playing field by understanding the role that neuroscience plays in the decision-making process.

To convert more prospects into clients and grow your assets under management, a basic understanding of neuroscience is critical.

Every time I coach a group of advisors, I invariably learn something new in the process. Here is how my time working with practitioners led to an epiphany that changed the focus of my coaching – and drove better results for my clients.

Here's the question advisors have the most difficulty answering; and how you should answer it.

Most firms have marketing materials available on their websites and in hard copy. And every advisor communicates with clients via email and through periodic performance reports. I have yet, however, to meet an advisor who pays the same attention to these materials as they do to their clothes or the way their office is appointed.

You have a meeting with an important prospect, and you believe you have demonstrated that you are ideally suited and should be retained. You leave the meeting confident that you have won over the prospect. Subsequently, the prospect contacts you with the disappointing news; she has decided to go in another direction. What happened?

This interesting article on the role emotions play in making sales revealed some fascinating insights that savvy advisors can utilize.

A recent medical event involving one of my family members poignantly demonstrated the role emotions play in driving decisions. It also illustrated a fundamental misunderstanding about the decision-making process rampant among advisors.

Why do so many highly intelligent people with good paying jobs act in a way that is so obviously not in their best interests?

We all want to make our message persuasive, but few advisors pay attention to the peer-reviewed studies identifying the most efficient methods for doing so.

New research on speed dating has uncovered how to determine a woman's interest. Strangely enough, those findings also provide insight into why certain sales tactics with prospects are likely to fail.

You may be skeptical of the expression, "The harder I work, the luckier I get." But empirical evidence says it's true. While we often look with envy at people who get a "lucky break", the reality is that the vast majority of those people worked long and hard before they achieved success.

Are women advisors perceived differently than their male counterparts? If so, what can we do about it?

According to a recent article, the mindset of doctors is changing. Empathy skills are no longer dismissed as a "good bedside manner." Indeed, advisors can improve their own empathetic skills by looking at advances in medical training.

The financial media is engaged in a relentless pursuit of negative news items. They know it creates anxiety among investors, which increases viewers and readers. Understanding the role of negative news in your clients' lives will help you guide them toward sound and rational decisions.

This is not an easy time to be an investor. Market volatility, often represented in the financial media through triple-digit gyrations in the Dow), creates understandable anxiety. Here's how to assess the source of your clients' anxiety and some tips for easing it.

Before I became a consultant and coach to a number of financial planning firms, I used to run my own investment advisory firm. I believe the advice I give today is far superior to the actions I took when I managed my own firm. Now I understand why.

Your presentation materials may be eminently persuasive and your delivery equally flawless, but your prospect's mind may be on an entirely different topic. Here's how to tell if your prospect is listening and - more importantly - interested in what you are saying.

You are in a meeting with a prospect. You want to do everything you can to convert that prospect into a client. What actions can you take to maximize the possibility of success?

Every advisor knows that sinking feeling that arises when a prospect raises serious objections and a meeting heads downhill. Here's how you can open what appears to be a closed mind.

For many advisors, the issue isn't converting prospects into clients, but rather generating more leads. A recent article offered some helpful suggestions on how even small advisory firms can generate a flood of new prospects.

It's quite easy to empathize with a loved one. But how do you demonstrate empathy with your prospect, who is a stranger?

Monkeys love peanuts. To understand how that relates to gathering assets under management (AUM), let's revisit a study demonstrating that emotions drive decisions.

Television anchors have discovered something that has eluded many financial advisors, both male and female.

Here's how introverts can turn what may seem like a weakness into a significant advantage.

Here are some tips for how you can influence a prospect in the manner most likely to achieve a positive result.

The process of converting prospects into clients is more of a science than an art. There is peer-reviewed support that shows how you can skew the odds in your favor by following some basic rules. Here are some suggestions.

Here are seven evidence-based tips to improve your persuasive skills for converting prospects to clients.

To convert prospects into clients, you need to make an emotional connection. Lecturing, educating, presenting data or otherwise demonstrating your superior expertise in financial planning and investments will not achieve that goal.

Advisors spend an enormous amount of resources developing their knowledge in various areas of wealth management. Some of the credentials they obtain reflect years of study. Currently, however, no one has the "ME" credential, and for good reason.

What if a prospect makes a snap judgment that you are not trustworthy? How can you overcome that obstacle?

There's no shortage of information on the subject of success. The problem is defining what success means to you.

Nonverbal signals play a bigger role than you think in increasing your AUM. What you wear, your body language and "touching" have a meaningful impact on how prospects perceive you - within seconds of initial contact.

While competency is critical to your success, understanding how prospects make decisions is more important. Understanding the role of a chemical compound produced by your brain - oxytocin - will give you a tool to emotionally connect with prospects.

The disconnect between the rigorous, peer-reviewed data we require before making investment recommendations and the lack of comparable data when converting prospects into clients is an anomaly worthy of discussion.

In my coaching practice, I often suggest that advisors drastically change the way they conduct meetings with prospects. Here are the two recommendations that I make most frequently.

Based on merit alone, I would entrust my own portfolio to almost every RIA that I have met. But merit is not the governing factor in most decisions.

We have all had experience trying to convert difficult (sometimes really difficult) prospects into clients. In a recent article, I discussed some of the issues I have confronted when dealing with narcissistic advisors. But clients, or prospective clients, can display narcissistic behavior too.

The "Solin method" for converting prospects into clients works. And it's a radical departure from the norm. It involves, counterintuitively, less work by the advisor, no selling and very little presenting. That's where I have run into trouble with advisors who exhibit a particular personality trait.

Telling someone how to become a better manager is easy. But motivating the advisors at your firm is surprisingly difficult. Doing so effectively is a simple way to increase your AUM.

Establishing a bond with a prospect through shared interests - such as hobbies - is a powerful way to improve your chances of them becoming a client. But what if those common interests don't exist?

We take ourselves too seriously. As investment advisors, it's appropriate that we view our responsibilities with a solemn sense of mission. After all, we are often accountable for the prudent management of our clients' life savings. But that doesn't mean our relationships with clients should be humorless.

A colleague of mine calls it "assumicide" - trying to convince a prospect to say yes by offering a careful and exhaustive presentation of a proposal's assumptions and merits. There's a more powerful route to yes, however: using heuristics to align yourself with your prospect.

Here's some insight on how stress reduces your ability to work effectively - and what to do about it.

Some traditional advisors feel pressure to lower their fees to compete with robo-advisors, even though the services they offer are more comprehensive. These advisors have succumbed to the basic premise used to justify robo-advisors' existence: Cheap is good. Expensive is bad. Do the data support this premise?

I have often wondered what kind of data resonates most with prospects and moves them to choose an advisor. It turns out that it's not any of the investment-oriented subjects advisors typically spend so much time discussing.

There is a considerable amount of sound data on how to acquire referrals. But the initial issue you must address is whether you should ask for them at all.