7 steps on how to be a successful female financial advisor

Becoming a successful female financial advisor in today’s male-dominated financial-services industry is not a task for the faint-hearted – it takes hard work, perseverance and always doing what is right for your client. Two high-performing female advisors share advice for moving a practice from good to great.

Step 1: Be open to opportunities that come your way. Susan L. Combs, a Women in Insurance and Financial Services’ Circle of Excellence Award winner, said that for her, the times when she has gone to the next level have been when she has been open to opportunities that came her way. Combs is president and CEO of Combs & Company.

There are always times in your life when you can go left or you can go right, but oftentimes, Combs pointed out, you don’t know where it will take you until much later. She recently talked about this and laid out a timeline of situations in her life that have led to different opportunities.

“Some of my pivotal moments when I look back that have launched me forward have been when I decided to start my own brokerage at 26, deciding to get my P&C license and diving head first into the Affordable Care Act and using that as a springboard to grow out the consulting and expert-witness side of my firm,” she said.

Combs added that she has also had opportunities to do things completely outside her industry, which ”light my brain up in a different way by owning commercial real estate, farming and being a best-selling author.”

These activities are completely unrelated to insurance and financial services, but they engage her brain in a completely different way, which, in turn, gives her a “reset” to advance her chosen career in insurance, she said.

More steps to success

Step 2: Ongoing Education. Asalyn Coachman is with Financial Architects, Inc. and was featured in 2015 as a top female professional by the Ohio National Life Insurance Company. According to Coachman, the success that she has achieved in working in financial services is due to a combination of factors, starting with being prepared to help clients.

“I had to put time into learning financial tools and strategies so I could effectively help clients,” she said. “Educating myself is an ongoing process, even years into my career. The fun and challenging part of this business is that things are constantly changing, so to be successful I must embrace the changes, be flexible, and always be open to learning a new process, tool, or strategy.”

Step 3. Stay Positive. Since business can ebb and flow from month to month, another key to success is staying positive and having a glass-half-full mentality, she added. It is easy to get mired in the problems, disappointments, and frustrations that inevitably occur; so, what she calls “conscious positivity” must be practiced every day.“ That means, find something good that happened in your business and share it with others,” she said.

“Encourage colleagues to do the same, and surround yourself with positive people. If you talk about problems, that is where your mind will focus. Instead, focus on the good things happening and let that be your focus.”

Step 4. Make Daily Progress. In addition, when it comes to building your business, make progress on something every day, and ideally, do something that requires you to leave your desk, Coachman advised.

“Big or small, do something that propels your momentum forward,” she said. “That means making a phone call to a client just to say “hi”, inviting a referral source for lunch, or stopping by a prospect’s business just so they see your face (even if they can’t meet at that time). Like the law of physics, an object in motion stays in motion, an object at rest stays at rest. I have met the best people just being out in the world, going from one place to another.”

Step 5. Be Social. This leads to another thing that has helped Coachman’s business grow – which is to be social. She tries to attend as many events as possible where she thinks she will see existing clients and meet possible clients. These include events hosted by professional organizations, sorority events, and golf outings. “I find events that are of genuine interest to me or my clients and buy tickets, sponsor events, and invite others to attend,” she added. “Sometimes, just being seen will plant the seed for the next time someone sees you out.”

Step 6. The Importance of Mentoring. Finding success in this business has been a combination of these things done by Coachman, along with things done for her. The key to her success, she said, is having been surrounded by mentors who wanted her to succeed.

“If you want to be successful, you need a mentor or mentors,” she said. “When I started, there was one man who spent time teaching me how to meet with clients and the nuances of the conversation, such as how to relate to them, what to say, what not to say, and how to help them open up about their fears and concerns. He taught me how to build relationships that transcended the transaction of the meeting.”

Step 7. Build Relationships. Building relationships, Coachman said, was the most important lesson he taught: Build a relationship with people, a genuine connection, and they will become clients.
“In this business, if you help people, you can also get paid,” Coachman said. “This is why I love what I do and why I look forward to each day. Who will I get to talk to? Who will I get to help? Whose burden can I lessen? To whom can I bring some clarity? Each day people welcome me into their world and trust me to be a positive influence. I can’t think of a better way to spend my time.”

Ayo Mseka has more than 30 years of experience reporting on the financial services industry. She formerly served as editor-in-chief of NAIFA’s Advisor Today magazine. Contact her at [email protected]. 

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