Advisors come to me for coaching as they find themselves working harder and harder focusing on what they want their outcomes to be only to find that at some point they inevitably are not living up to their own expectations. When this happens, they are feeling frustration and disappointment and end up exhibiting anxiety.
Successful advisors know that they must dedicate themselves to working smarter by figuring out what is working for them and leading them down the path to greater success and what activities are time wasters and are better off retired. The mantra needs to be “never give up on reaching your goals, just find innovative ways to persevere”.
William Feather said it best when he said, “Success seems to be largely a matter of hanging on after others have let go.” In order to keep “hanging on” you must have defined your purpose, be continuously evaluating your activities and let your progress guide you to your destination!
Let’s take a deeper look at some best steps for this process and how they have helped one advisor:
Step 1: Know Your Purpose
If you want to see any great endeavor through to completion you have to find a great reason to keep going and the best reason of all is knowing your purpose. The most important thing to do initially is to define “why” you want to accomplish your goals not necessarily “how” as that is secondary.
Todd D., a fifteen year veteran financial advisor was frustrated at being on a production plateau when I first started coaching him. He asked me how he could work smarter and not just harder. Before getting into the details of what to do, I first needed to know his “why”. He confided that his mission was to help as many people as he could to be setup for experiencing a comfortable retirement.
Step 2: Evaluate Your Activities and Actions
Once you landed on your purpose it’s important to understand what’s working (or not). In other words, you must evaluate your activities and action steps to analyze if what you are doing is leading you in the right direction.
In Todd’s case, it didn’t take long to determine that he was working hard because he was using the wrong tools. Look at it this way, if your goal is to chop down a tree and you use a baseball bat it’s going to take you a long time (if at all)! All Todd needed to do was understand what prospecting tools were best for him, learn how to use them and establish a systematic way to evaluate the results. Over time, we did just that and he started to move people into and through the pipeline.
Step 3: Let Your Progress Guide You
When you know your purpose and you sharpen your skill sets you will no doubt increase the likelihood of successful outcomes. If you are struggling, it is so important to remember that “Nothing succeeds like success” and to continue moving forward by using your recent milestones as stepping stones to reach new levels.
Todd saw the fruits of his labors and was excited because he was helping more people and with much less effort than he had ever done before. In addition, he was no longer frustrated because he was off the production plateau that had prompted him to want to be coached. As a result, I explained that if he wanted to keep helping more people he had to regularly reinforce his purpose and fine tune his skill sets.
Why The Advisor’s Guide to Perseverance Works
The reason why this way of thinking works is because you have a tangible process for motivating persistence. In tough times when you feel like giving up it is important to have a proven technique for creating tenacity!