advice process Archives

There are 2 big questions before you fire a client.

by Tony Vidler I encourage you to try this: fire a client. It is liberating, and it moves your thinking and sense of self worth onto a different professional plane. Pretty much everyone who has been in professional practice for more than a year has at least one or two clients who are just a […]

Client Complaints: Fight it, or just Fix It?

by Tony Vidler Client complaints are a fact of life. It is virtually impossible to run a service business where everyone is happy 100% of the time, as human beings are involved and they are unpredictable creatures with ever-shifting expectations. The art of good client complaint handling is knowing when to fight and when to […]

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 […]

How can you be sure that your advice will pass the test?

by Tony Vidler The nagging worry for financial advisers in today’s environment is “how can I be sure that my advice will pass the test?” The concern is understandable given that policymakers typically do not understand the difficulty of applying any sort of objective assessment of suitability to professional opinions – which is fundamentally what […]

How to balance client time with practice development

by Tony Vidler An ongoing challenge for advice firms is balancing client time with all the practice development work necessary to have a better business. There are after all only so many hours in a day, but then there are deadlines for when new standards and rules have to be met if one is to […]

Is Insurance Churn Really The Issue We Think It is?

by Tony Vidler Any time an insurance product is replaced by an adviser with an alternative one someone complains about “insurance churn” or the “twisting of policies” and the immediate inference is that something unethical just occurred. Sometimes that is true of course, and there are undoubtedly bottom feeders in the industry who survive by […]

Professional Practice Evolution: What Separates Modern Professionals From The Past?

by Tony Vidler There are lessons to be learned from the evolution of the modern professional practice for those who are not quite there yet. When you compare the two – the modern professional financial advisory practice, and the historic product-focussed financial services brokerage business – it seems there are 5 distinct points of difference […]

The Top Challenge In Shifting From Product Sales To Advice Delivery

by Tony Vidler Lots of financial advisers are still figuring out how to get paid for advice delivery, not just implementation of product solutions. Now, the simplistic answer is of course: “easy…just position for it and tell clients that’s how you work now.” That answer really is glib though and doesn’t touch upon the […]

How much client contact is too much contact?

by Tony Vidler Getting the frequency of newsletters or regular client communications right is a real challenge. How much is too much, and runs the risk of you being a nuisance? How much is too little, and runs the risk of you being forgotten? The right answer is “it depends”. It depends on your audience, […]

How to make sure email marketing is effective

by Tony Vidler Effective email marketing is a lot tougher now than just 2 or 3 years ago, yet it is still one of the most effective marketing methods available if we get it right. In the old days, say 4 years ago, a good mailing list together with a branded email platform and great […]

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