best practice advice Archives

Want Prospects To Open Up? Learn from the Pro’s who make millions doing it for a living…

by Tony Vidler We need prospects to open up if we are to to do our jobs well and help them as much as possible. That takes a bit more thought and skill than merely flicking between open and closed questions. In today’s world with it’s much greater emphasis upon individual opinion and with our […]

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 […]

Give COI’s the experience of what you do

by Tony Vidler One of the most effective things you can do to create confidence and support from prospective COI’s is take them through your client experience. Actually do the job that you do, for the Centre Of Influence. It is incredibly powerful and effective, and the chances are good that you will pick them […]

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 […]

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