best practice advice Archives

How To Get Buy-In From Clients To Full Advice

by Tony Vidler Clients often want advisers to deal with just one element of financial planning…their current “burning issue” that triggered the need for advice to begin with. Getting them to engage in full advice can be tough and they need to understand what you CAN do for them, and where your knowledge and skills […]

Are you sure your clients know what else you COULD do for them?

by Tony Vidler All too often advisers are disappointed to find that a client has done business elsewhere…that their “main” adviser could have done for them! The reason is usually a very simple one: the clients do not know everything we could do for them. Or perhaps they did know, but forgot. Or worse, […]

A Statement Of Advice should be a “statement”

by Tony Vidler When it comes to providing advice in writing to a client there is undoubtedly unnecessary complexity usually. In fact the proverbial “Statement Of Advice” has become anything but a “statement”. It generally takes the form of a tome… And a “tome is a scholarly work…usually large, heavy and laborious in its detail“. […]

Pro Bono work: it is still professional advice

by Tony Vidler Oddly, I was asked whether pro bono work is still considered professional advice, implying immediately that it carried some lesser responsibility on the part of an adviser simply because they were not earning revneue from it. Why would pro bono clients deserve any lesser standards of ethical behaviour, professional competency or […]

Blending Old Ways With Modern Comms To Get Attention

by Tony Vidler Blending the old and the new can be a great way to get attention in the digital world, and there are few better examples than this one from an older adviser who was happy for me to share it. He generates excellent engagement and responses…and it is so simple! Remember the […]

Clients need to be reasonable and meet expectations too

by Tony Vidler It is not unreasonable to have reasonable expectations, is it? Whenever we enter into an agreement with somebody else to work together on anything it is fair to say that we both have expectations about how the arrangement is going to work. That applies whether the arrangement is moving into a […]

The 5 Levels Of Professional Competence

by Tony Vidler Professional competence is now a clearly demonstrable thing isn’t it? Or is it? Can an adviser be considered as having competence and incompetence simultaneously? I think so. Competence has been a primary focus of regulatory reform, and that’s fair enough. Consumers have a right to expect it from their advisers and […]

How to do client video testimonials the right way!

by Tony Vidler Testimonials are good for business – but we all know that, right? Video testimonials are even better for business – and not everyone has got THAT yet. Being able to see the body language, and hear the inflections in a clients voice as they talk about their positive experience, are far […]

10 Ways To Build Trust With Prospects

by Tony Vidler Trust is not given automatically by consumers. You have to build trust with prospects in todays market over time. That’s a reality. It is earned. The very best we can hope for when someone doesn’t really know us yet is to be trusted enough to be given a chance to prove ourselves. There […]

How to create a MORE effective client report

by Tony Vidler The typical financial planning report or statement of advice produced for clients is ineffective. An effective report gets the key points across as quickly and as simply as possible, so that the reader understands them, and is then able to make decisions relatively quickly and easily. It will engage, motivate and rapidly […]

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