Enjoy the current installment of "Weekend Reading For Financial Planners" – this week's edition kicks off with a recent academic study that evaluated the activities that advisors engaged in with their clients in the midst of the pandemic and its market volatility last spring, which found that clients of financial advisors really did appear to sell less and buy more during the downturn, driven in large part by an uptick in proactive communication that advisors engaged in with their clients that helped keep client expectations positive (i.e., that the markets and economy would bounce back soon enough).
From there, we have several articles on the value of financial advice itself, including:
- A reminder that in the end, financial advice isn't just about helping people identify and set a path towards their goals, but in navigating the complexities that arise along the way (that can block us from achieving those goals, without an advisor's help to navigate around them)
- A framework to define an advisor's value across three dimensions of Portfolio, Planning, and Personal (and how to vocalize it in a prospect meeting)
- Why it's so important to frame a value proposition in terms of how the client benefits, not just the positive traits of the advisor (e.g., "I'm a CFP professional" or "I'm a fiduciary")
- How the value of financial advice is increasingly shifting towards financial wellness because of the way that money touches virtually everything in our lives
We've also included a number of articles focused on improving client communication:
- 6 'simple' but impactful actions that can be taken to show clients that you really care and are thinking about them
- How the Asset Map software helps provide a one-page visualization to simplify a client's complex financial life
- The power of being a client's "Chief Empathy Officer" (CEO) when often the blocking points to our goals are mental, not financial
- How a personal finance columnist engaged a financial planner himself to navigate the challenges of his father's ALS diagnosis, and what she did to provide value to him along the way
We wrap up with three final articles, all around the theme of how we can try to become a little happier and wiser:
- Why it's how we spend our time (not how we spend our money) that becomes the biggest driver of our happiness and wellbeing
- The incredible impact that a simple compliment can have on making someone happier and more content
- How the path to knowledge is about reading and learning, but also getting the broader perspective that often only comes with trying something and making a mistake, providing a pathway to wisdom through self-reflection and self-correction
Enjoy the 'light' reading!