Breakaway Brokers

In your meetings, hand the reins to the client. You may find that your initial assumptions weren’t valid.

As advisors, it is up to us to help prospects and clients appreciate our full value.

The process of influencing people to do business with you – or to take a certain course of action – involves selling.

Picking the few "monster" stocks among the many thousands of underachieving ones is extremely difficult. But for those who guessed right and had the discipline to stick with those winners through bull and bear markets, the rewards have been truly remarkable. Here are the 20 best-performing stocks of the past 30 years.

It’s that time of the year where we reassess relationships, segment our client activity and look at where we want to spend our energy in 2022. This year, the topic of centers of influence (COIs) has come up.

Social proof is integral – no one wants to hand over their life savings to an unknown entity or someone they can’t be sure whether to trust.

Service offerings that were premium yesterday may be considered ho-hum today. To keep your clients loyal and attract new business, you need to continually create “delight” with strategic updates.

Do you believe any advisor can become a strong salesperson?

Financial advisory practices using only a handful of team members to prospect and engage in traditional business development will be usurped by teams that are trained to be causative.

Here are three reasons marketing will get harder for financial advisors next year and beyond. Yet the situation isn’t hopeless. You can adopt strategies that make your marketing easier even with the changes on the horizon.

Behind every advisor’s success story is a well-laid and executed plan, which starts with effective goal setting. Let’s see how this works in action.

When guiding advisors on how to transition their practices to the RIA model, this is a question I commonly address.

We’re all salespeople in some sense, fiduciary financial advisors included.

There are ways to be different, but few advisors are willing to adopt them.

Here are some things to do to incorporate feedback more consistently into your daily practice with your team members.

Most of us believe we’re “right” about our basic beliefs like politics, religion, how we make decisions, live our lives and perhaps how others should live theirs. The reality is we’re not objective.

Pushing referrals is disrespectful to our clients.

To expand your reach beyond your existing network, outsource your marketing.

I hold every one of my clients accountable for doing what they say they're going to do – that's how they get the results they're after.

The idea that growth and success can be achieved at the expense of clients, diluting the value they receive rather than deepen it, is a myth. If you follow the 10 shifts in this article, you will deliver deep value to clients and run an excellent practice that allows you to enjoy the ride and the rewards.

If you’re struggling to attract new clients, it’s because prospects have a difficult time differentiating you. Prospective clients face four realities that will overwhelm their decision-making process.

Randy Dippell, a partner and advisor for AdvicePeriod in Chicago, describes how he uses Asset-Map to organize his clients’ financial affairs.

Gender-based stereotypes have an insidious impact on how women advisors are perceived, their ability to attract clients, and their career path in corporate environments. I blame it on John Gray.

Let’s look at four reasons why COIs don’t refer you and what you can do differently to influence better results.

Here are nine things every female solo advisor should know about launching and growing a wealth management practice.

Here are the trends we can expect to see for different marketing strategies in 2022, and how you can meaningfully apply them for your own success.

Here is my interview with Eric Negron, an advisor, about how he uses the Asset-Map software.

You have reached the end of a road with a team member, and it is time to move on.

We want to be effective communicators. But achieving that goal isn’t possible unless we overcome barriers we don’t know exist. Here are four of the most formidable ones.

If you are responsible for bringing in prospective clients, closing those prospects and servicing clients, you’re in sales.

I’m gratified to see the “asking questions” bandwagon gaining so much traction. Unfortunately, there’s a massive amount of misinformation about this subject.

This article addresses the best practices when an employee is not making a transition and you are losing faith that the person will be able to do what’s needed in the role.

To show how exclusive you are, there’s nothing like turning away a billionaire. Two members of the three comma club were among those nominated to join R360, a new, invitation-only investment and networking group for people with net worth of $100 million or more.

We have been ranked as the most-read electronic newsletter among financial advisors for the third year in a row by Erdos & Morgan.

Advisors may have the most informative videos on their site, but it’s likely that few prospects will watch them.

What do you do with an intractable advisor?

Here are five steps to adjust your professional networking skills for a post-pandemic world.

The best-conceived marketing plans will be derailed if you allow yourself to be victimized by these two misconceptions.

In part two of this series, I review three additional robos: Albert, Ellevest, and Stash.

Using my company’s data that shows the performance of various subject lines, I’ll discuss the types that are working best and how to write your own version to communicate with clients.

We transitioned from scrambling to manage priorities to a technology-driven company where everything is viewable (and actionable) with a mouse click. Here’s what worked for us.

There are a dozen activities that permanently increase our personal happiness equation.

Marketing revolves around words, and no two are more important than these…

At a congressional hearing on Tuesday, former Facebook Inc. product manager Frances Haugen didn’t need to convince lawmakers that the company has a big problem.

The impulse to advance one’s interests will be self-destructive for advisors when they fail to listen carefully and demonstrate curiosity.

When AC Milan host Atletico de Madrid in the Champions League on Tuesday evening, it will be a clash between Italy’s most successful team in Europe’s elite soccer competition and last year’s Spanish title winner.

I understand the need for refreshing marketing, but the quote we received (for $40,000.00) is outrageous.

The advice to master an “elevator pitch” in your prospecting efforts is not helpful for many reasons.

There are five steps to every message you present. This sequence will help you in constructing any presentation for any group. In fact, it doesn’t matter whether you are speaking to a college class, a peer group, or to seniors for a seminar on Social Security.

Every great advisor site shares similar features to attract clients. Among them, five key elements stand out.

When you understand the reasoning behind the approach used by psychiatrists, you are well on your way to better meetings with prospects and clients.

Having counseled numerous clients through the retirement process, I realized there was a missing piece – purpose! To be happy, retirees need something meaningful to wake up for every day. Here are some resources – paid and unpaid – to let them do that.

To understand how generational gaps impact your marketing strategy, we’re diving into the digital media that can be used to connect with prospects in different age groups.

If I was still a wealth advisor, I’d consider another career.

Is it common for advisors with employees returning to the office to get requests like, “Can I get gas paid for?

Here are the 10 best books I read from September 2020 through August 2021.

Creating a special advisory board will foster a better understanding of the questions facing seniors as they plan for retirement.

We’ve known about the need transition clients to a new advisor for three years, but suddenly we are running out of time.

Unless your planning contemplates the negative physical and mental health ramifications of widowhood, which include “psychological distress, physician visits and institutionalization, and higher rates of morbidity and mortality,” it’s not comprehensive.

LinkedIn is not for everyone, but if you’re in the camp that loves it, listen up. If you don’t love LinkedIn, let me convince you to take a second stab at it.

Here are five cost-effective strategies advisors should use to reach Millennials:

Many of you have a higher purpose. It’s inspiring. Here’s how I realized what my higher purpose is.

While rationale for putting a plan in place for the development and servicing of next generation of investors is simple, the plan is not.

Being a speaker at a networking event is not uncommon. Being a knockout speaker is!

Advisors tell me that my research into neuroscience and decision making has helped them close prospects and grow their practices. But its most profound impact has been from conversations I’ve had with my wife.