Our clients frequently ask us to actively participate in pre-call planning sessions as advisor teams plan for prospect meetings. From these engagements, we’ve identified five fundamental mistakes that we see occurring time and again. The reality is these mistakes also undermine the results of many experienced advisors as certain habits unwittingly developed over time become…

There are some very compelling statistics that confirm the critical importance of equipping new, “next generation” advisors to fill the talent gap the wealth management industry will be facing over the coming years. For example, look at some of the following statistics: 55 The average age of financial advisors 20% Number of financial advisors who…

Schedule a Call Pre-call planning, once perfected, is one of – if not THE – most powerful practices we know of to accelerate revenue growth while enhancing your teams’ ability to consistently deliver truly differentiated value in their prospect and client calls Yet, the reality is that many do not even do pre-calls prior to…

Schedule a Call Generate high-quality referrals from Commercial Bankers using this information. One of the top priorities we consistently hear from wealth advisors is to generate more leads from Commercial Banking.  Makes total sense, as commercial clients (business owners) provide the greatest opportunity for growth on the wealth side of the business, as these clients…

Schedule a Call In our last few blogs we’ve been highly focused on the topic of EQ.  The reason for that is because we are clearly recognizing that in today’s world of wealth management, EQ skills are proving to be the key differentiator that separates the best advisors from the rest. In our February blog,…

Does EQ really matter? And what IS EQ? Is it simply about having good “people skills”? Or is it more than that? And is it worth working on and perfecting these skills? Our firm recently concluded our first Forum, collaborating with 16 advisors from various firms across the industry to help them further develop and…

While every firm touts planning to be central to their value and differentiation, the reality is that most clients are not getting this in their relationship. This is not opinion; the facts confirm this. One leading financial planning software platform publicly touts that they have over 60,000 advisors using their planning software and that advisors…

If you haven’t read Atomic Habits by James Cleary, pick it up (and a thank you to Joe Sicchitano, Head of Financial Planning at SunTrust for the recommendation). Like many books, it’s a good read that in the end you might say is “common sense”. But the realities are that he makes the challenge of…

Let’s face it, the entire financial services landscape has been changing in significant ways. While, in the past, financial services firms and banks were the place that individuals and businesses turned to address their needs, the reality is that new entrants to the marketplace have encroached into the competitive space. When you add to that…

Planning software firms like eMoney and MoneyGuidePro are exponentially growing in terms of the number of firms and advisors utilizing their planning software (with currently well over 100,000 advisors in the U.S. equipped with eMoney or MoneyGuidePro, not to mention the numerous other planning platforms). Yet, the vast majority of firms incorporating these capabilities are…