Picture this, your best friend wants to bet on the football game that you are about to watch with him or her. Neither of you is a fan of either team so it doesn’t matter to you who wins or loses. But you know one thing that your friend does not: one team is known for running elaborate plays while the other doesn’t even have a playbook. Which team will you bet on? I think it’s obvious, the one who is prepared! 

This leads me to the question, do you have a pipeline playbook? Do you know exactly how many people are in your sales pipeline at any given time? Do you have a strategy (or a play) for systematically adding people to the pipeline and moving each person to the next step?

Do you have a strategy (or play) for every type of tactical situation that could happen in each stage of the pipeline? Do you know what clogs are in the pipeline and how to unclog them? 

Most financial advisors, insurance agents, wholesalers, branch managers, and even agency managers don’t have a pipeline playbook! This is because they have never viewed “Building a Pipeline Playbook” as a stepwise process for knowing what to do in every possible situation and how to have a strategy to put people into and through the pipeline.

This episode shares how successful advisors and agents can utilize a stepwise approach to understanding, creating, and maintaining a sales pipeline by having a pipeline playbook.

Picture being in your parent's car at 3 years old and you drive under a green light. You notice the color green, but you don’t know what it means. But your parents know! They know that green means go, yellow means yield, and red means stop. You don’t find that out for a year later. That’s what I refer to as a GREEN LIGHT MOMENT-it’s a moment where something happens, and you know exactly what to do…

What if there are several GREENLIGHT MOMENTS in your business and you have no idea when to look for them, what they are and how to respond? Well, now you will!

Do you ever wonder what it takes to make lasting change? Do you understand the areas of your business that need improvement and how to implement changes to transform your business? 

Most financial advisors, insurance agents, wholesalers, branch managers, and even agency managers don’t know how to elevate their business. I coach my clients with a step-by-step process for practicing The Principle of Strategic Replacement, a four-step process for getting to the root cause of bad habits and then what it takes to replace bad habits with good ones to create the results in your business that you’ve always wanted!

In this episode, learn what other successful advisors and agents have done so you, too, can take your business to the next level.

Do you ever feel like your pipeline is stuck? You know why prospects need to take the next step, but for some reason, they don’t seem to have any urgency to want to meet, send you their statements, or even make a decision on the recommendations that you’ve worked so hard on to help them reach their financial goals.

If so, know this… YOU, are not alone.

Most financial advisors, insurance agents, wholesalers, branch managers, and even agency managers don’t have a well-thought-out process for creating urgency in their sales pipelines and maintaining momentum!

The reason is that they’ve never really learned the processes to help their prospects want to take the next step. Rather, they accept the prospects’ start-stop mentality as a natural part of the prospecting process as well as thinking that prospecting is purely a numbers game, living by the law of averages in the percentage of people that just won’t take action.

In this episode, learn about how to create a sense of urgency and maintain momentum in your sales pipeline so that you can effortlessly add people to have move them through it.

Do you know your clients well? Sure, you know who they are and what they do. You might even know a lot about their lives and what relationships they care about the most. But do you know what their relationship is with money? Do you know their money mindset? And do you know how to help them have a healthy relationship with money?

Most financial advisors, insurance agents, wholesalers, branch managers, and even agency managers don’t understand how their clients view money. They don’t know it because they have never really learned The Psychology of Money, a fascinating field that explores how our beliefs, emotions, and behaviors around money shape our financial decisions and wealth-building choices. Also, they don’t know their clients' money mindset and personality type.

The role of a financial advisor extends beyond just managing portfolios and providing investment advice. It also involves helping clients develop a healthy relationship with money. This relationship is crucial as it influences financial decisions, impacts financial health, and ultimately shapes the quality of life.

But if you don’t understand the various ways that people relate to money, how they form their mindsets and personalities, or how to help clients have a healthy relationship with money, then you are doing yourself and your clients a disservice. 

This episode shares how successful advisors and agents understand how clients and prospects form a complex relationship with money.

Do you ever feel like you over-promise and under-deliver when it comes to your client servicing system? Do you have the type of system that turns clients into raving fans? If not, then know this…you, are not alone!

Many financial advisors, insurance agents, wholesalers, branch managers and even agency managers want to service their clients in the best way possible but most fail to understand the essential “How To's”. Rather, they have a reactive client servicing system that results in interruptions and thus fractured efforts.

In this episode, learn about a process that other advisors and agents apply to create an effective client servicing system!

Have you ever sat down to do something that you feel is important, such as prospect new people, follow up with prospects stuck in your sales pipeline, or prep for an appointment, only to have the moment hijacked by client interruptions? It might start with a quick client email, then a call from a client about their portfolio, followed by a text from a client to reschedule, and the next thing you know, an hour has gone by. This process could continue, and the entire day might pass without you ever getting to the essential things you intended to do. If that sounds familiar, know that you are not alone!

Most financial advisors, insurance agents, wholesalers, branch managers, and agency managers have never learned how to master what I call a Defensive Client Servicing System, which is a set of strategies that help you protect your time, minimize distractions, while still providing clients with excellent service. Often, advisors treat each distraction as a fire that they need to put out immediately. They end up thinking a reactive approach rather than a responsive one is a badge of honor, buying into the idea that being “always available” equals excellent service. Unfortunately, constant reactivity isn’t sustainable, not for you, your team, or your clients.

This episode shares practical strategies that successful advisors and agents have used to identify, build, and benefit from a Defensive Client Servicing System, so you can control your day instead of letting others control it for you!

Do you need help with challenges in your financial services business that are leaving you frustrated?  Well, I wrote a book about that topic, my inaugural book, 101 ADVISOR SOLUTIONS: A Financial Advisor’s Guide to Strategies that Educate, Motive and Inspire!

Many professional development books about financial services focus on the facets of time management, prospecting, or sales. While these books serve a purpose, if you are looking for specific areas to work on, they often fall short because lasting change requires attention to multiple facets of your business, as they overlap and don’t operate in silos.

101 Advisor Solutions is a curation of short stories about real-world challenges and solutions. It covers eight vital elements of having a financial services industry business.

In this episode, learn about 101 ADVISOR SOLUTIONS and hear about relevant takeaways that could help move your business forward.

Are you looking for an excellent book to help you reach the next level in your business? I suggest my latest book, ADVISOR LIFE: A Business Coach’s Collection of Short Stories with Tools, Techniques and Transformational Momentum. Available for purchase now!

Most books about the financial services industry focus on one facet of the business, such as time management, prospecting, or sales. Or, the focus is on one specific topic, such as how to get referrals. 

Advisor Life is unique because it is a curation of short stories about experiences with my clients over my last decade of coaching. They are arranged into three categories: tools, techniques, and transformational moments. 

Why would you want to hear about my second book? If you can understand the backstory of my book, how and why I wrote it, and what other advisors and agents have done to get to the next level, it could offer you takeaways that could help you and your business.

In this episode, learn about ADVISOR LIFE, and listen to how you can get the most out of your business on a daily basis!

Do you run your business, or does your business run you? One way to know the answer is if you are typically overwhelmed, run-down, and/or exhausted at the end of the day. If this sounds like you, it’s because you don’t have suitable systems in place.

Most financial advisors, insurance agents, wholesalers, branch managers, and even agencies have never been taught best practices for how to create great business systems. 

The reason is that they’ve never really looked at their business as having a series of systems. The interesting thing about that is that even if you don’t have a system, that’s a system; it’s winging it! And unfortunately, winging it doesn’t work.

In this episode, learn how to create business systems so that you can run your business efficiently instead of your business running you down and draining you.