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The Client-centred Blog

Welcome to The Client Centred Blog; Free content that shares a fresh approach to thriving as a financial professional in a rapidly changing environment.

This blog has its foundation in a new understanding of the human mind that gives you the ultimate platform for creating better results, thriving under any circumstances and living the life you want.

I invite you to explore the materials, reflect upon how it relates to you and your business and enjoy the benefits.

Why movie montages can ruin your business

John Dashfield30 October 2024

Closing the gap between where we are now and where we want to be in our business doesn’t happen overnight. It takes sustained, disciplined and focus work.

John Dashfield4 September 2024

Do you want to build a better, more profitable practice but finding progress is painfully slow? You have probably heard of ‘The law of attraction’. The idea gained huge popularity when the film and then the book, ‘The secret’ was released.

John Dashfield29 May 2024

Are you committed to delivering exceptional client service? If so, employees who genuinely care, communicate well, and take responsibility are essential. This article takes a look at how to bring out the best in your team.

John Dashfield1 May 2024

Have you ever considered publishing a book? I recently spent six months as part of a group of 36 coaches in the AJC Coaching Career School. Of those 36 coaches there were at least six people who were published authors of a book (some people more than one).

John Dashfield6 March 2024

No matter how long you have known your client what is the secret to continuing to add massive value? Imagine when you first meet a new client and the early period of your relationship. In the beginning…

John Dashfield29 February 2024

Have you ever found that self-doubt, a low mood, or feeling fearful has held you back? I’m sure this has been the case for all of us and it can have a big impact upon the quality of our results. In this article I am sharing how you get past...

John Dashfield7 December 2023

What is your experience of goal setting? For me, I would set goals because it seemed like a good idea to know where I wanted to get to. Yet I found that, at times, the process could often become quite stressful. I have also heard many people share that this...

The value of knowing your value

John Dashfield30 November 2023

Last week I was in London for three days attending the AJC Coaching Career School. This is a six-month long school, run by Ankush Jain, for coaches who want to build a more impactful coaching practice. For me, one of the most important things about being in business is that...

Why elevator pitches don’t work

John Dashfield31 August 2023

What prompted me to write this article about elevator pitches was reading an article published by Asana. It said: “A good elevator pitch can be the difference between landing your next big opportunity or falling short of the competition.” Really? Does this stack up?

Be the casino, not the gambler

John Dashfield27 July 2023

Are you happy in your job as a financial planner or adviser? I often speak with financial planners or advisers who feel stuck in a rut and want to reinvigorate their work. Maybe they have been doing the same thing for a long while and simply want to change. Sometimes...

John Dashfield20 July 2023

One of the biggest challenges for a financial adviser is getting stuck on a plateau they cannot seem to move past. Can you think of a recurring problem or limitation in your business?

John Dashfield30 June 2023

I have found that goal setting can be a double-edged sword. On one hand we want to achieve things that are important to us, so aiming at something makes sense. Yet for many people pushing hard towards their goals also causes them a lot of stress and compromises their quality...

John Dashfield3 March 2023

Although there seems to be plenty of information on the process of increasing your financial planning fee, there is far less on the thinking behind it. So, in this article I am taking an alternative look at fee charging. Read on to discover: 1. How most firms set fees 2....

John Dashfield22 February 2023

I read a survey conducted with financial advisers asking what their biggest challenge was. Number one was getting clients. It would be easy to believe that all is required to solve this problem is finding a reliable source of potential clients. Yet this is not always true. As I discovered,...

John Dashfield8 February 2023

My client Fulva Giust is one of the UK’s most successful female financial planners, operating for over thirty years. Fulva has built a thriving practice serving wealthy families and individuals built upon rock solid foundations of trust, caring, and kindness. She takes a deep interest in the lives of her...

John Dashfield19 January 2023

How can you begin to deeply serve a client from the very first moment? When meeting with a potential client there are likely to be at least three important questions on their mind: 1. Do I like them? 2. Can I trust them? 3. Can they help me?

John Dashfield15 December 2022

Do you love working with your existing clients but hate selling? If so, you would not be alone. Yet rather than enduring this essential aspect of being a financial planner what if you could learn to love what is often perceived as the hard part? If this is you then...

John Dashfield24 November 2022

Have you ever considered what creates the very highest value for your financial planning clients? I am going to suggest it is not, important as they are, the financial arrangements you recommend and put in place for them. No. It is their own mind shifts.

John Dashfield13 April 2022

Do you want to know the hidden secret of where you find financial planning clients? Most of the advice on how to find financial planning clients is prescriptive. It tells you what to do or where to look. Yet how helpful is this?

John Dashfield6 April 2022

Do you ever find your role as a lifestyle financial planner being overly complex? Would you like it to be simpler, more productive, and more rewarding? If so, this article considers that there are only three core roles of a lifestyle financial planner.

John Dashfield2 February 2022

Why do people’s careers stall, stagnate, become mundane, fall short of expectations, and, ultimately, lack the rewards they want? In my experience it is rarely lack of…

John Dashfield19 January 2022

This article explores why your financial planning fees must never be an issue with clients. Just recently a financial planner client of mine came to our coaching session wanting to talk about a fee situation with a client of his.

John Dashfield8 December 2021

There are three types of financial planning client you can build your practice around. And because the three types are defined by what the client values, it can make a massive difference to the quality of your business.

John Dashfield1 December 2021

Creating happy, enthusiastic, loyal financial planning clients for life requires you to do one thing well, and consistently. What is that one thing?

John Dashfield22 November 2021

Financial planning is not a commodity. It is experiential and conversations are right at the core of this.

John Dashfield7 September 2021

Why do some financial planners seem to effortlessly find clients whilst others experience growing their practice as a constant struggle?

John Dashfield26 August 2021

There is a critical factor in growing your financial planning business that is often misunderstood.

John Dashfield14 July 2021

Why are an increasing number of financial planners choosing to work with a coach? Is it something that could help you accomplish your most important goals and realise more of your potential as a financial planner? Read on to discover why coaching works…

How to have bigger impact with clients

John Dashfield9 April 2021

How much impact am I having? This is a great question to reflect upon when it comes to your client relationships. Whether you have just met someone new or have been working with someone for a decade or longer the amount of impact we are having in that person’s life...

Telling clients your truth

John Dashfield10 February 2021

Building a thriving practice, based on making a bigger difference to clients has many aspects to it. One of the most fundamental is that client relationships are based on truth. It can feel uncomfortable (at first) to share your truth with clients and allow them to do the same with...

John Dashfield21 January 2021

If I had a penny for every time I’ve been asked how to get more clients as a financial adviser, how to grow a client base, and the best lead generation tips, well, I’d be very rich. Getting your first financial planning clients is actually rather straightforward…

John Dashfield20 August 2020

Something extremely valuable I learned from my coach is that every system is perfect for the result it creates. For instance, … If you are only getting half of the business that you want, then your current system is perfect for that result. If you are working fifteen hours a...

John Dashfield30 May 2020

A few years ago, I attended a conference in Oslo and one of my memories is of Dr. Aaron Turner making a particularly powerful point. Aaron shared a story about a time he was holidaying in Hawaii with his family. They were spending some time on the beach and he...

The most-read blog posts of 2019

John Dashfield14 January 2020

I was looking back over 2019's blog posts and I wanted to share the 5 most read with you again. You never know which ones are going to have the most reads and sometimes it can be a surprise. I enjoyed re-living the inspiration for each one and hope you...

John Dashfield19 November 2019

What is stopping your business becoming a much better business? It is an interesting question to reflect upon, isn't it? One of my clients, Noel, is an entrepreneur who has started several successful companies. His latest creation is a tech business in the financial sector, and it has gone from...

John Dashfield22 August 2019

Do you lead a team of people? Do you want to get the best from them but avoid the downsides of pushing them too hard? It has often been said that 'an organisations greatest asset is its people'. I believe this has to be true because without people there is...

John Dashfield11 July 2019

Towards the end of last year, I was privileged to be invited along to a focus group for a financial planning client of mine. A group of the firm’s clients had been invited along to a half-day event where an external marketing agency explored with the group a number of...

John Dashfield4 July 2019

Is twice the productivity, with half the effort and none of the stress a realistic goal for you and your business? And whether you think it is realistic or not, how much difference would this make to you? Many business people, if not all, are on the lookout for edges...

Where do you find new clients?

John Dashfield18 April 2019

What prompted this article was recently reading that 70% of advisers are actively seeking new clients. I know from working for myself for over twenty five years and working with dozens of my own clients that consistently bringing on new clients can seem a big challenge. Typical questions that people...

Without the fear, what would you do?

John Dashfield5 April 2019

Fear, if misunderstood, is such a debilitating emotion. When I began my coaching practice it soon became obvious that the business and personal challenges that people experienced were almost always some kind of fear in disguise. I noticed that when people were stuck or struggling - to get clients, build...

John Dashfield29 March 2019

Being able to sell with integrity is an essential business skill. Yet many people seem to struggle with it. So, what is the factor that makes the biggest difference of all? A while back I met up for coffee with a friend who runs a business networking group in London....

Giving up the illusion of control

John Dashfield25 February 2019

I am writing this piece whilst on a train back home from meeting a valued and trusted client in London. An idea for a new programme had occurred to me and it had been percolating in my mind. I had met with my client to ask, "What do you think...

Getting clients to come to you

John Dashfield29 November 2018

If you are building your practice then having an increasing number of people seeking you out and wanting to work with you is the ideal situation. What could be better than having great conversations with interested people and hearing them say the magic words... 'So, where do we go from...

John Dashfield11 October 2018

Going back over ten years to the early days of my coaching business I was walking along Piccadilly on the way to see a client one day and, quite by chance, I bumped into my friend Jamie who is also a business and corporate coach. We both had a little...

John Dashfield27 September 2018

Although the term 'sales' can have negative connotations these days, if you are providing a professional service then engaging new clients and re-engaging existing ones is often an important part of your business. So, what can give you a significant advantage? A while back I came across some research that...

No pain, no gain vs. no pain, no pain

John Dashfield13 September 2018

Dusan Djukich wrote in his book 'Straight-line Leadership', "Most failure comes from quitting too soon." I guess we have all had projects, ideas and changes we intended to implement but, as he says, we have quit too soon. If we had stayed in the game, then we would have created...

Your ultimate competitive advantage

John Dashfield3 September 2018

I recently read about a study that revealed that most businesses lose, in profits, around 25 to 30 percent of their annual sales figure due to something called 'COPQ' - the cost of poor quality. Where does 'COPQ' originate? It comes from good, caring and intelligent people making mistakes, errors...

John Dashfield13 August 2018

Trust is often thought of in terms of behaviours - do trustworthy behaviours and people will trust you. Also, in financial services many people believe that technical mastery is something that builds trust. The idea being that if you have qualifications and professional designations, then this leads to higher trust....

John Dashfield5 July 2018

Have you noticed how resilience has become a hot topic in business? There are TED talks on it, it is being written about in the Harvard Business Review and organisations are beginning to realise that high resilience levels are a major factor in creating sustainable success. Often, the most successful...

Charlie Everest20 January 2016

"Why is it that with all the information available today on how to be successful in small business, so few people really are?" Michael Gerber When it comes to building a better business and one that provides more of the rewards that you want there are two kinds of change...

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

John Dashfield spent 14 years as a self-employed adviser. Since 2006 he has been a coach, mentor and author helping advisers create transformations in their business and personal lives.

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