Financial Planning Archives

If you want people buying your advice, then dumb it down!

by Tony Vidler When it comes to getting people buying your advice one of the best tips I can give is “dumb it down- but don’t treat them like dummies“. There is a big difference between “dumbing it down” and treating people as if they are dumb. The first is about simplifying the message in […]

Why we get fee resistance

by Tony Vidler Whether we like it or not there is always the possibility of fee resistance in delivering financial advice, and how we present our service is a large part of that problem. Price is always a problem in the absence of obvious value. It doesn’t have to be…we just need to think through […]

Practice Growth Requires Leadership More Than Management

by Tony Vidler The most frequent thing I see that prevents great practice growth and holds advisers back from developing their dream business is a lack of vision. I don’t mean “vision” in the namby-pamby buzz-word sense of having a beautiful set of words on a plaque on a wall that nobody really cares about. […]

How to take the “R” out of FREE Advice

by Tony Vidler Traditionally the financial services sector has been almost entirely remunerated via commission, and many advisers are still grappling with the basic question of how to make the transition – even if only in their minds – from working solely on commissions to charging clients directly for advice and/or service. Consumers perceived […]

Effective or Efficient? Which do Advisers need to be?

by Tony Vidler Which is more important when running an advice business: being effective or efficient? You chose Effective? Wrong. You chose Efficient? Wrong. The correct answer is that you have to balance both. In days gone by plenty of people in financial services could build a business just be being effective, regardless of how […]

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 […]

How do you know your financial advice is suitable?

by Tony Vidler Knowing that your financial advice is suitable for a client is something that every professional adviser is willing to attest to, but proving it when challenged can be incredibly dificult. Advisers are increasingly being challenged and therefore seeking assurance that their practices are robust and will withstand such scrutiny. Whether that scrutiny […]

5 Things You Need To Do Before Buying A Practice

by Tony Vidler For many advisers buying another practice or book of clients will be a serious growth strategy to be considered. It is a primary strategy for attaining scale and a viable (and relatively predictable) revenue stream quickly. However buying another advisers practice is usually a much more complex matter today than it was […]

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 […]

Building Your Reputation: Talk About The Elephants In The Room

by Tony Vidler When Accountants struggle to be highly trusted then financial advisers are going to have a real battle doing so. If the Accountants only get rated as “Highly trusted” in professional ethics and honesty by less than half the population then what chance that an Insurance Broker will rank higher in the […]

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