Whether you\u2019re an experienced financial professional or just starting your career in financial services, you will occasionally fail. Failure comes in many forms: losing a sale, declining workshop attendance, missing a referral opportunity, to name a few. For some of us, it can feel like a personal defeat. It is not. Failure is an event, but never a person. While failure is never enjoyable, please keep in mind that you will likely learn more from failure than you will from success. That\u2019s something to enjoy.<\/p>\n
If you\u2019re like me, your collective experiences have produced some important life lessons. Here\u2019s four reminders to help you stay the course as you navigate through the sometime stormy seas of a financial professional\u2019s business life.<\/p>\n
Enjoy the wins and don\u2019t take the losses personally.\u00a0<\/strong>When you chose to be a financial advisor, I bet you were focused on the money, the self-branding, the opportunity to design your life and business. You didn\u2019t realize that the life of an advisor is hard and is full of rejection. You want people to like you, but remember that most potential clients don\u2019t really know you. To them, you\u2019re just another advisor. First, make peace with that. Then try to change their minds every single day.<\/p>\n Some things are beyond your control.\u00a0<\/strong>We want to close every single prospect, but in reality, not all become a client, nor should they. By now, you\u2019ve had plenty of prospects and meetings that didn\u2019t result in a sale. Maybe the prospect got cold feet or decided to remain with their current advisor. Maybe the client insisted on a product you don\u2019t offer or recommend. There\u2019s nothing you can do about that. It will hurt a lot less when you realize you did everything you could to close the sale.<\/p>\n Take a break.<\/strong>\u00a0 I don\u2019t recommend you take a month off, but it\u2019s healthy to briefly step back from the business after a significant failure. Review the processes that lead up to that situation. What factors contributed to the shortfall? What can I do to change the outcome the next time this happens? After reflecting and possibly correcting, give yourself a boost by surrounding yourself with family and friends. Once refreshed, re-engage with your clients and serve them with renewed vigor. Just remember to take a day when you need to.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not about you.\u00a0<\/strong>Ultimately, a career in financial services is a career in\u00a0client<\/em>\u00a0service<\/em>. It\u2019s about putting a client\u2019s needs ahead of your own. Sometimes, I get wrapped up in my sales volume and my brand and my blah blah blah. When I stop thinking about me, I\u2019m reminded there is no better feeling than hearing a client say I helped them solve a problem or improve their position. That is why I do what I do. I\u2019m pretty sure it\u2019s why you do what you do, too.<\/p>\n Super Bowl winning coach Mike Ditka put it in perspective when he said, \u201cSuccess is never permanent and failure isn\u2019t fatal. The most successful advisors will learn from their mistakes and grow to be better salespeople, employers, and business owners.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Whether you\u2019re an experienced financial professional or just starting your career in financial services, you will occasionally fail. Failure comes in many forms: losing a sale, declining workshop attendance, missing a referral…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":4204,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[364],"tags":[321,320],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.figmarketing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4000"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.figmarketing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.figmarketing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.figmarketing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.figmarketing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4000"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.figmarketing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4000\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4007,"href":"https:\/\/www.figmarketing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4000\/revisions\/4007"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.figmarketing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.figmarketing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.figmarketing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.figmarketing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}