Three decades ago, directly out of university, I stumbled my way into the financial services industry. Fell into it might be a better description, given I had no connections within the business and absolutely no knowledge as to the workings of the industry. But, into it I got, thanks to a friend sharing a recruiting ad from the financial firm that ultimately hired me.
During the following thirty-plus years, I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out exactly what makes the top producers within our business great at what they do. The first ten years as a financial advisor/planner, I worked to build my own practice, while trying to glean ideas and strategies that proved successful for my colleagues, my peers and, specifically, those top producers that I was able to meet or read about. The next twenty years I spent training and coaching financial advisors and planners; trying to pass on the education that I had acquired up to that point, while still pursuing the “magic bullet” for superior performance in our business.
It took all of those years, working the business, sifting through hundreds of books on the business, talking to dozens of top producers, and delving into the reams of empirical research on top performance, before I felt that I had finally figured it out: the magic bullet is confidence. But not just confidence in general. Rather, three distinct – but interrelated – types of confidence that form the backbone of every top-producing financial advisor. These three confidences consist of:
The Confident Mindset:
- They all have growth mindsets and are students of the business.
- They all know how to harness and appropriately direct their intrinsic motivation.
- They set goals and work towards those goals; discarding only those that no longer make sense or prove to be unattainable.
- They all have the learnable trait of grit (passion and perseverance for long-term goals, as psychologist and researcher, Angela Duckworth, terms it).
The Confident Business Structure:
- They build a business structure that taps into all the financial/legal experts they’ll require to service their clientele.
- They select an “Ideal Client” that they focus on, become an expert about, and market to, exclusively.
- They develop a Unique Value Proposition that outlines: Who they serve; Why they serve them; How they serve them; and, What those clients achieve through their services.
- They create some form of operational playbooks that documents all they, and their teammates, do within the business.
Confident Growth:
- They develop business strategies around all key aspects of their business.
- They build a marketing plan across multiple media that targets their Ideal Client and highlights their Unique Value Proposition.
- They know their prospecting strategies and work them effectively.
- They build a succession plan early, and communicate it to their clients, thereby giving their clients peace of mind.
So, what does this thirty-year journey of working with, and learning about, top-producing financial advisors provide the industry? Simply this. By putting together the three confidences of top-producing financial advisors, and emulating their best practices, an advisor can quickly achieve business growth beyond what they could ever have thought possible. In doing so, advisors will build big, beautiful, sustainable businesses, providing them and their families with the lifestyles they’re looking for while building the framework for their professional legacies.
Daniel Collison is Co-founder and Managing Partner with Advice2Advisors, which trains, mentors, and coaches financial advisors of all tenures.
To learn more, contact us at: www.advice2advisors.com
The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.
