Financial Planning for Pinoys: Productivity Hacks for Financial Advisors I Learned from Eric Feng

I was browsing through YouTube for new things to learn and came across a video by Eric Feng. Eric Feng is one of the world's most acclaimed motivational speakers. His voice is broadcasted live over thousands of people around the world. He delivers speeches to thousands of people worldwide.

His mission is to help service professionals globally to become known, loved and respected.

I found his content to be of value, and so I am sharing key takeaways with you in this post. Below are productivity hacks for Financial Advisors:

1. Have a strong why

As Financial Advisors, we are often faced with rejections, seen zones, criticisms, and disappointments, among others. And when these things happen, a strong why will give us the strength to persist until we succeed.

According to him, "When you don't find a strong why to stay in the business, you will have hundreds and one excuses to quit this business the minute you face a challenge."

I believe it's time we go back to our vision boards and ask ourselves why are we in this business to begin with? If you do not have one yet, create your mission statement. So that each time challenges happen, you will find a bigger reason not to quit.

2. Do not be scared of failing

I remember a quote from Thomas Edison. He said, "Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time." FAIL is just First Attempt In Learning. And failure is just feedback. Do not take it personally. What matters is that we can always try again; and more importantly, we learn from these failures, and that we learn fast.

In addition, Eric encourages us to reflect on the following questions:

What did I do/not do that led to this "failed" outcome?
What can I learn from this?
How can I do better the next time around?

3. Do not be too salesy

According to Eric Feng, there is a fine line between being salesy and being helpful. When you talk about your products, you are being too salesy. But when you talk about problems you helped solve, you are being helpful. Instead of being product-focused, be customer-focused.

4. Love insurance

Determine your energy level when you talk about insurance to your friends and prospects. Where does it fall below?

1 - Fearful

2 - Uncomfortable

3 - Apathetic (no feelings)

4 - Pushy

5 - Passionate

Fear may come from uncertainty. You also likely believe that your prospect has a negative sentiment towards insurance.

Discomfort comes from a lack of knowledge and confidence. You can overcome this through sufficient practice.

Apathetic means you are not emotionally connected with what you are selling, that you are just providing information about your product. If so, your prospect will prefer buying from a website instead.

For number 4, you feel excitement during your presentation, but that becomes a problem as well, as this excitement merely comes from closing the sale. You become pushy, and thus becoming salesy.

The best energy level is at 5 as your equally excited and passionate because you know how amazing insurance is, and you are excited to share this good news to the person in front of you. Focus on your client's benefit, not on your benefit.

5. Do not expect overnight success

There are a lot of rewards that come with being a successful Financial Advisor. We often see the six figure monthly income, all expenses paid trips, luxurious vacations and a comfortable lifestyle. But what we do not see is the hard work, sacrifices, and long hours that have to be made in order to achieve this kind of success.

Success is not overnight. But rather, success is over time.

6. Manage your time well.

Time is our most important asset. Block time for prospecting and appointments. This means use your time intentionally. If we are not protective with our time, many other things will try to take away our time.

Set aside time daily for prospecting, at least 10 hours per week. The goal of prospecting is to help you get leads, who you can then set for appointments.

As Eric Feng showed in his video, I began plotting my schedule in a spreadsheet.

Reasons why you need to block time in advance for appointments:

Seeing the empty time slots will motivate you to fill them up with names
If you don't block the time in advance, someone else will end up taking it away. It could be your mom, your friends, or your pet dog.
It makes it easier to fix appointments with your prospects. Instead of letting them think of when they are free (which may take forever), you give them options based on your available time slots. This makes it so much easier to fix appointments.