Podcasts

One of the most important skills for a retail financial advisor is the ability to make high-quality decisions for their clients and for their own business process. Every advisor is sensitive to the possibility of negative consequences from a poorly framed decision and wants to insure that they don’t miss anything important or concerning. Unfortunately, when it comes to buying another advisor’s business this commitment to careful deliberation and appropriate diligence is neglected by many acquiring advisors. In this edition Ken and Scott look at how “narrow framing” and other heuristics are activated when an advisor thinks about buying a colleagues business. The program highlights common decision-making errors that advisors make in the process and offers several practical suggestions for how to avoid these pitfalls

A socially active financial advisor may have dozens of opportunities every week to meet potential clients. Unfortunately, most advisors don’t know how to manage a first encounter so that the first conversation naturally leads to a deeper conversation. In this podcast Scott and Ken uncover the psychological principles that advisors can follow to create more compelling social encounters.

Everyone has heard the phrase “Target Marketing” but few advisors actually understand what a “target” market actually is. In this episode Scott and Ken look at what constitutes an actual target market and what is merely another way of talking about “people who have money”.

Experience working with advisors over the past 30 years has revealed that most advisors believe that the most important part of their job is to create superior performance in their portfolios.

In this fast-paced Podcast Scott and Ken explore the implications of narrow framing on individuals and families who accumulate wealth, and reveal how financial advisors can use this understanding from Behavioral Economics to work more effectively with both prospects and clients.

Wealth-management checklists help uniquely successful families understand the complexity of their wealth and allow advisors to keep track of a complicated number of deliverables. Scott and Ken explore how to use wealth-management checklists to engage new or prospective clients.

With the accumulation of wealth comes an increasing number of decisions that have potentially serious consequences. In this podcast, Scott and Ken show how checklists help clients understand their new, complicated situation and how the right list assists decision-making.

Many advisors are inhibited about their new business acquisition efforts because of a fear of rejection. In this podcast, Scott and Ken share their experiences of helping advisors find the courage to engage more directly with prospects.

Meeting with CPAs, attorneys and other professional centers of influence (COIs) is an efficient method of building a pipeline of prospective clients. Here, Scott and Ken consider how "the offer" creates more impact when meeting a potential referral advocate.

Many advisors are reluctant to think about retiring; some are deeply resistant. In this podcast, Scott and Ken explore this ambivalence about retiring and discuss how two parts of the brain impact the way advisors think about exiting the business.

Research from behavioral finance has revealed a stunning number of decision-making vulnerabilities that make it challenging for investors to successfully navigate capital markets. Hundreds of these heuristics have been discovered over the past few decades, and many are common behaviors that advisors see in clients every day. But advisors are people, too, and they are just as vulnerable to decision-making biases as clients.

As the saying goes, "Failure to plan is a plan to fail." And with global markets down significantly, many financial advisors are unprepared for the declining revenues that come from a reduced asset base or unexpected client attrition. However, an advisor "Go Bag"-specific, tangible resources to help your practice and clients-can make a big difference in this environment. AllianceBernstein Advisor Institute's, Ken Haman discusses how the brain naturally separates thoughtful preparation from motivated execution, why advisors often avoid preparing for challenging times, and more.

Over the past 40 years the discipline of Behavioral Economics has revealed hundreds of important insights into the way human beings make decisions. 50 years ago economists assumed that human beings were fundamentally rational when it came to financial decisions; today we know that there are hundreds of built-in mental mechanisms that can interrupt a client’s rational decision-making skills. In this fast paced conversation, Scott and Ken explore how the two “systems” or styles of thinking that researchers have discovered reveal themselves in client behaviors. Starting with the basic theory from Daniel Kahneman’s book, “Thinking, Fast and Slow” they look at several practical examples of “Fast Thinking” that advisor’s are likely to see in their clients and explore ways that advisors can move clients back to a slower, more broad-framed decision-making process that uses more information to arrive at better quality conclusions.

Academic researchers have discovered over 200 ways that the human brain is vulnerable to making financial mistakes. Most of these decision-making processes happen outside of our conscious awareness and can deeply impact the quality of a decision. Financial advisors are uniquely vulnerable to these heuristics because they must make complicated decisions that have consequences attached to them for their business in the context of complexity and constant change. The typical successful advisor must cope with the expectations of hundreds of different people and millions of dollars of capital deployed into the markets. This level of complexity creates the ideal conditions for advisors to shift from the logical “System Two” decision-making process to the more impulsive “System 1” heuristics. Ken and Scott explore several common decision-making errors that advisors make and then look at a 6-step checklist that advisors can use to protect themselves and their clients from over-simplified and hurried decisions.

Everyone has to make decisions that have consequences from time to time in life.

Ken Haman sits down with consultant CJ McClanahan to discuss the challenges that his high-achieving clients have with finding meaning and purpose in their lives. Many successful people struggle with a sense of emptiness after they have realized their goals for wealth and success, and CJ offers some practical insights for how an advisor can work more effectively with people who have reached this important milestone in life. To get in touch with CJ McClanahan, go to CJMcClanahan.com and to learn more about finding the right non-profit to get involved in supporting, go to Generosity-First.com

In this wide-ranging conversation Ken and Rob explore how the simple act of listening carefully to what a client is saying - and what a client is not saying - to more deeply understand what they actually need.

The annual client review is one of the best times for a financial advisor to strengthen client trust and support retention. To reach its full potential, an annual client review meeting should be distinct from a typical portfolio performance review, and advisors should have an explicit plan for how to deliver their message. In this episode, Ken Haman, Managing Director of AB’s Advisor Institute, details how to develop and execute an effective client review.

Wealthy families often face significant decisions about the ultimate dispensation of their wealth. Here, Scott and Ken show how an advanced financial planning tool can create a gifting capacity analysis to help families answer the question "How much can I afford to give?"

It's surprisingly difficult for newly wealthy clients to trust their existing advisor. Here, Scott and Ken explore the psychological challenges that people face when they achieve a higher level of wealth. They discuss why it is hard to surrender complete control of your financial destiny.

In a holistic wealth-management business model, the quality of the advisor-client relationship increases. Additionally, the relationship's focus shifts away from asset management toward wealth-management challenges. Here, Scott and Ken explain how to design client experiences that build stronger relationships.

As advisors transition from asset managers to holistic wealth advisors, their assumptions about client reviews must change to reflect a different business model. Here, Scott and Ken explore how to structure a review meeting that focuses on clients, not their investments.

For nearly 4 decades financial advisors have benefited from the growing number of insights developed by Behavioral Economics. Emerging ideas such as "loss aversion" and "availability bias" have become common ideas that inform the way advisors work with clients. In this fast-paced podcast, the Advisor Institute explores how the emotional impact of losses during volatile markets is magnified when those losses are not expected. The program focuses on how advisors can protect their best relationships by helping their clients anticipate negative events before they have happened.

Research has revealed that the human brain struggles to cope with complexity. Here, Ken and Scott discuss the latest information on narrow framing, how to help clients manage complexity and the challenges that advisors face when managing their own complicated businesses.

The first six months of 2022 have served as a stark reminder that market outlooks can quickly shift. Advisors who want to retain business must now prepare clients for the possibility of greater volatility, abiding inflation and muted returns. Clients have many reasons to be skeptical of change and financial advisors (FAs) who don't have these conversations now risk having painful discussions with disappointed investors. AllianceBernstein Advisor Institute's, Ken Haman discusses key insights about human decision-making and research in behavioral finance to look at the practical challenges of managing client trust during uncertain times.

Market headlines in 2022 have been dominated by inflation, tightening monetary policy, ongoing volatility and the Russia-Ukraine conflict. To get ahead of client concerns, financial advisors need to develop creative ways to turn difficult conversations into opportunities to build confidence. A clear and concise presentation on the capital markets can help solidify and restore lost credibility-and trust. Hear from Ken Haman, Managing Director, and Scott Tatum, CIMA, CFP, Director, as they discuss seven steps to organize a compelling capital-markets narrative.

One of the hottest topics among successful advisors today is how to build a high functioning team. Offices around the country are being reorganized to house larger and larger teams, and the most successful advisors now see building a team or being part of the growing number of mega-teams as the best way to advance their commercial success. Unfortunately, the process of building a team is complicated and time-consuming and it is precisely this kind of context that can trigger a shift from the slow, logical and deliberate thinking of System 2 into the more impulsive and impatient decision-making process of System 1. In this program Scott and Ken look at the common Behavioral Finance heuristics that they see operating in the typical advisor’s hiring process and offer some guidance on how to avoid those breakdowns with a better hiring process.

Formal research into workplace Burnout has only been expanding for the past 30 years. Insights from this growing body of research reveal that client-facing retail financial advisors are frequently working in conditions that are likely to lead to Burnout

There are few industries more data-driven than financial services, except when it comes to managing teams. Here, Scott and Ken explore the role of goals in managing high-performance teams and the importance of adding different types of goals to a team-management process.

Many advisors build teams to help scale their practice. Although some people feel that team meetings are a waste of time, in reality they are critical. In this podcast, Scott and Ken discuss the value of team meetings and how to use the three-meeting model.