best practice advice Archives - Page 4 of 9

A financial advisers best weapon: The Meeting Agenda

by Tony Vidler One of the most powerful weapons in an advisers armory is the Client Meeting Agenda. Yet, so few use them regularly…. The client meeting agenda sets up the entire professional relationship – not just the next hour or so that you happen to be with a client. In addition; It minimises […]

The Art Of Giving Suitable Advice Which Is Defensible

by Tony Vidler The most challenging area in forming a professional opinion is ensuring that it is “suitable advice”, as what is suitable is subjective – until the time comes somewhere in the future to see if the advice actually worked. Despite the issue of nobody actually knowing whether advice really was suitable much […]

Describe Your Advice Services In Practical Terms To Get More Buy-In

by Tony Vidler Advice should, almost by definition, be “practical”. Your advice services should be practical in that can be applied in the real world to achieve real differences, and any advice in any of your areas of expertise should be a clear course of action that a client can use to achieve a […]

Best Practice Advice Means Meeting Client Expectations Too, doesn’t it?

by Tony Vidler What constitutes “Best Practice” advice process is a constant work in progress, but it does not develop as rapidly as either technology or client expectations do. In fact, there is a distinct probability that the gap between what professionals call best practice advice and what clients expectations of best practices are continue […]

How Much You Know Is Not That Important

by Tony Vidler Professional financial advisers know way too much to be used in any given client meeting or engagement. Yet too many think that how much you know is what matters. One of the great skills of the super successful professionals in fact is figuring out what stuff they know which is not […]

The Words We Use Can Break Or Make The Sale

by Tony Vidler We can break a probable sale or make the sale in an instant. It can turn on a phrase or sometimes even a single word. The words we use matter. When it comes to the words we use in conversation we all have our own idiosyncracies and quirks of speech, and […]

Client Focus or Compliance Focus?

by Tony Vidler I support a compliance focus 100% ….but I support a client focus 100% too. All too often it is impossible to achieve 100% for both simultaneously though. Where does a professional compromise? Or does one not compromise? I think this picture captures the challenge of delivering compliant “best […]

Scope Creep: The Number 1 Problem In Fixed Fee Advice

by Tony Vidler “Scope Creep” is the killer for the Holy Grail of professional services business models: fixed fee advice. That ideal model which so many aspire to is having clients who agree to ongoing fixed fees, and the practice income just rolls in month after month. Fixed fee advice being delivered on […]

Professionals Have, And Use, Processes

by Tony Vidler True professionals don’t just HAVE processes, they have processes they use everywhere in their work. All the time. Professionals are in fact process-driven. We need to learn from those professions where the outcome of a poor day on the job is literally life or death. That isn’t generally the case […]

Bring Back The Long Lunch…it will be good for your business!

by Tony Vidler Tom Peters suggested many years ago that one of the most effective marketing activities a professional could engage in were weekday lunches. 250 of them in fact over the course of the year. That is perhaps a bit excessive in today’s environment (and for ageing waistlines), but the concept […]

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