Is New Financial Advisor Failure Preventable?

Perhaps if we study why a new financial advisor tends to fail at such an alarming rate we’ll be able to find ways to prevent it.  In this blog post I have captured a few articles that grabbed my attention lately.  You should find a broad scope of articles here for people who are captive agents, independent agents and from the world of online insurance sales.

While Why I Failed as a Broker is a little dated (2006) many aspects of the article still ring true for today’s new financial advisor.  For example, the author of this article said that he was attracted to the business because he wanted the chance to manage money.  Later in his stay he realized that he could only afford to spend about 5% of his time on actual money management because he needed the other 95% of his time to prospect for new business.  Another interesting point about the article is that the author is not complaining — he does not blame his company.  Click through to the article to learn more.

Why Agents Fail talks about the importance of new financial advisors having good communication skills, staying up to date with your product offering and keeping pace with new technology.  It is written by a company that does online insurance sales.

The Top 7 Reasons New Insurance Agents Fail to Reach Success offers some good insight for those who are able to take advantage of an independent insurance agent platform.  For those of you who happen to be on an independent platform, this article is quite good.   New financial advisors who are captive agents may face a few restrictions in implementing the approaches listed here.
Why 77% of Insurance Agents Fail Within the First 6 Months appears to be a sponsored article written by a company that sells a marketing system.  The four primary steps of their system are Interrupt, Engage, Educate and Offer.  What I like most about this article is the all-too-real depiction that the author gives of what a new advisor faces in his or her first few years.

Why do 95 percent of Insurance Agents Ultimately Fail? is written by Lew Nason out of Dallas, GA.  Lew’s stance in this article is that hiring a mentor is a really good idea, and he gives you some advice on how to properly hire a mentor that will provide you with a positive return on your investment.

Here are two others that caught my eye while researching.

In Are Financial Advisers Failing the 99% the author makes the case that the average american just isn’t being served well by the typical financial advisor.  The reason: advisors just don’t make a great deal of money on people who have less than $100K of investable assets.

In Financial Advisors Flunk the Undercover Sting we find role playing taken to a new level.  Only the advisors didn’t know they were role playing.  Researchers from MIT and Harvard hired actors to play affluent couples and sent these prospects to visit firms in the Boston area.