Introduction

The Million-Dollar Financial Advisor is about developing a successful financial advisory business. This book provides a glimpse into the best practices that make the top producers so successful. The author writes this book for financial advisors who want to take their business practice to the next level. As I am interested in the financial planning industry, I want to see what these best practices are.

Author

David J. Mullen, Jr. is a 30-year industry veteran and former Managing Director at Merrill Lynch, where he trained more than 500 financial advisors. The success rate of his advisor training programs have been significantly higher than the industry average.

Contents

There are an introduction and 16 chapters in The Million-Dollar Financial Advisor. The chapters are divided into 2 parts. The first part is The Lessons which contains 13 chapters. Part 2 is Putting the Lessons Into Practice and contains the remaining chapters.

The chapters are

1) Lesson #1: The Top Advisor Mindset

2) Lesson #2: The “Leverage of Size” Principle

3) Lesson #3: Professional Development

4) Lesson #4: Specialisation

5) Lesson #5: Relationship Focus

6) Lesson #6: Marketing Best Practices

7) Lesson #7: Professional Referral Networks

8) Lesson #8: Nonprofit Organization Involvement

9) Lesson #9: Long-Term Orientation

10) Lesson #10: Creating a Team

11) Lesson #11: Wealth Management

12) Lesson #12: Commitment to Service

13) Lesson #13: Time Management

14) Taylor Glover: Lessons from the Very Top

15) Henry Camp: Going from Good to Great

16) The Asset Challenge

Review

The Million-Dollar Financial Advisors organises the information obtained from the author’s extensive interviews into 13 distinct lessons and provides the specific steps to implement the lessons.

The Basics

The first step to build a successful practice is identifying what strategies and techniques are missing from your business. To achieve success is an evolution, not a revolution.

Financial advisors need to have a high degree of confidence in themselves, as well as their investment process. Financial investments usually contain some element of risk and inherently have uncertain outcomes. Risk can be offset to some degree by a good investment process, but the overall outcome remains uncertain. Thus, it is important to show the clients that you have complete confidence in your own skills. Confidence comes from preparation, experience, and a commitment to professional development. Turning down business is one of the highest forms of demonstrating confidence.

Advisors are not selling specific financial products, they are selling themselves. “Trust” is the product that financial advisors are really selling.

Client acquisition and retention

Marketing and the ability to deal with rejection are essential to ultimate success in this business. All types of marketing involve the potential of rejection, thus advisors must have the fortitude to face rejection.

100 affluent clients are sufficient to have a lucrative practice. Advisors should have frequent and consistent contact with clients, ideally once a month. Giving proactive contact and world-class service requires at least 10 hours per year for each client.

Clients entrust advisors with the oversight of their financial health and reaching their objectives. Thus, investing for other people must be done in the context of understanding their emotions, current life situation, and what is most important to them. Fear and greed will always affect investment decisions, so it is important for advisors to advise clients out of bad decisions.

Some client attrition is inevitable, but the goal is to lose less than 5% per year.

Wealth management

Advisor should engage in true wealth-management practice to help people financially. Wealth management is a comprehensive and holistic investment process that integrates the long-term goals of an individual with financial solutions, using a planning-based and consultative approach. Wealth managers focus on understanding the client first, and spend whatever time is necessary to do that before making the first investment.

The author mentions that the investment style of the advisors are conservative but did not provide much details regarding the asset allocation and the target return.

Business management

Long-term orientation relates to 3 important business strategies: client focus, marketing, and retained earnings (the top advisors in the book reinvest an average 15% of total compensation in their business).

Choosing team members are almost like choosing a spouse, and do not always work. The most important elements are having the right fit and the same commitment level, and sharing a common vision and goals. To take the team to the next level involves 6 important practices which are shared values, vision, accountability, frequent and open communication, fair compensation, and succession planning.

A positive client service experience is important to achieving top advisor status. Providing a differentiation that is attractive to the buyer makes the difference between success and failure in a highly competitive industry. The goal for each client is to have 6 different appropriate financial products and services

Every aspect of this business is process-based, meaning there is a process in place for every important function of the job. Schedule is important but surprises happen each day that make it impossible to follow a schedule perfectly. Thus, time management is an important skill of a successful advisor.

One-sentence summary for The Million-Dollar Financial Advisor

To become a top advisor, one needs to have the right attitude and the appropriate strategies and tactics to attract the right clients.

Quotes

1. Having high goals is not enough; it’s the daily execution of the right activities that will determine their successful outcomes.
2. Mastery is only achieved when you know a subject matter so well that you are able to teach it to someone else.
3. If you want someone to become a client, treat them like a client.
4. A trusting relationship is earned through actions, not words.
5. How you spend your time is the biggest determinate of a successful financial services practice.

Rating

Interested in The Million-Dollar Financial Advisor?

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Get the print book from Shopee Malaysia here

*Disclosure: The above link is an affiliate link. Thus, I may earn a small commission when you purchase the book through the link.

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