How Do Financial Advisors Manage Stress?

Being a financial advisor is a stressful job. You’re not alone if you’re feeling a little rundown and burnt out. In fact, you’re in the majority. 71% of financial advisors report feeling moderate to high levels of stress.

Consolidated Planning is a comprehensive planning firm with over 100 financial advisors in the southeast. We’ve built advisor resources to support our advisors in ways that reduce stress and make their job more enjoyable.

Over 40 years we’ve gained a lot of insight and experience with stress management. We’ve compiled the top 6 tips to stress management that we’ve found our advisors to have success with. Use this list to help get keep your stress levels under control so you can focus on what matters most.

 

What Causes Stress For Financial Advisors?

Before we dive into the tips to help you reduce and manage stress as a financial advisor, let’s explore what causes stress for financial advisors. We’ve found that financial advisors face potential pressure from a number of sources, including:

• The challenges of growing a client base
• Market fluctuations
• Managing client expectations
• Achieving personal income and professional goals
• Compliance and regulatory oversight

 

6 Tips For Financial Advisors To Reduce Stress

 

Tip #1: Keep A Full Calendar

Consolidated Planning considers a calendar to be full when you have 30 future appointments.

These appointments will help you detach yourself from the outcome of any particular meeting because you know there are 29 more if the results don’t go the way you want. Importantly, a full calendar removes desperation from the equation and prevents the dreaded “commission breath.”

 

Tip #2: Follow A Model Work Week

A model work week is just that – a model. A best case scenario for how your week should look. We know how easy it is to think you don’t need a schedule as a financial advisor but scheduling your work-week can help keep you on track and ensure that nothing and no-one slips through the cracks.

A model work week consists of two buffer days and three focus days.

Mondays and Fridays

• Admin (client notes, research, meeting preparation, data for APG)
• Trainings (CPU, Continuing Education)
• Consolidated Planning Meetings
• Reviewing prospecting lists

Tuesday, Wednesdays, and Thursdays

• Client meetings
• Client phone calls
• Anything where you’re in front of people

During your buffer days, your goal should be 15 meetings. These 15 meetings will be broken down as follows:

• Four new client open meetings
• 4 – 6 existing client planning meetings
• Two center of influence meetings
• Three target market meetings

As a financial advisor at Consolidated Planning, you own your practice and we want to help you hold yourself accountable to your goals by following a model work week.

 

Tip #3: Talk To Someone With Experience

All new advisors at Consolidated Planning are assigned a mentor. This mentor’s primary role is to help you keep your mental game strong. The ups and downs of this career will drown you if you let them. Talking to someone who’s walked in your shoes does wonders to reset your spirit.

 

Tip #4: Outsource Non-Revenue Generating Tasks

If you’re feeling bogged down and overwhelmed by mountains of paperwork and pesky administrative tasks, then you need to outsource those tasks. Paperwork and administration are necessary evils that come with the career, but that doesn’t mean you need to be the one doing the work. Outsourcing these non-revenue producing activities gives you more time to do the part of the job that you love and puts money in your pocket.

At Consolidated Planning, we offer a number of services to our advisors to outsource non-revenue producing tasks:

• Advisor Performance Group – Financial Planning Case Design and Strategy
• New Business Hub – Paperwork
• Marketing Administrative Practice Solutions – Turnkey Marketing Solutions
• Virtual Assistant Program – On Demand Assistants

As an advisor, your skillset is working with clients. Give the other work to someone with the right skill set and focus for the task.

 

Tip #5: Don’t Get Emotionally Invested In Client Outcomes

It’s natural to want your clients to follow all of your recommendations to the letter, but that’s not reality. Your job as a financial advisor is to present the options to the client, educate them thoroughly, and advocate for their best interest. Ultimately though, the decisions are theirs to make. When a client chooses not to follow your recommendations, pick yourself up and move on.

 

Tip #6: Stack Positives

Have you ever had a day where one thing after the other seems to go wrong? Of course you have. By the end of the day, your negative attitude is all consuming and you’re just waiting for the next shoe to drop.

But why?

We naturally stack the negatives in our life and allow them to compound. It’s in our nature unless we do something to disrupt the cycle. At Consolidated Planning, we disrupt the cycle in our monthly goal planning meetings by taking the time to intentionally stack the positives in our life and looking for ways to expand upon that success.

Give it a try the next time you are feeling down.

 

How Will You Manage Stress As A Financial Advisor?

You will manage your stress as a financial advisor the same way you manage stress in other areas of your life. This can be a stressful career if you don’t take the time to protect against it and set yourself up for success.

You may have found this article because you were considering this career and wanted to know how to handle stress, or you are already in this career and are looking for ways to manage your stress. In either case, you take these 6 tips and apply them to your practice today.

Now that you are better equipped to handle this career’s mental and emotional rigors, what are your next steps? The ball is in your court.

If you think the stress is worth the success as a financial advisor, reach out to our recruiters to learn more.

 

 

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