Being a Financial Advisor Isn’t So Scary: Five Tricks to Learn from Halloween Movies
Much like Halloween movies, the financial advisory world can be full of suspense and thrills. They both keep you guessing and sometimes make you want to curl up into a ball.
But did you know hidden among all of those jump-scares, gore, and well-timed humor, there are valuable lessons for being a successful financial advisor? And we don’t just mean obvious things like not running up the stairs to get away from a crazed maniac when the open front door would have been much better of a choice.
So, as a treat for you this Halloween, we’ve put together five tips and tricks financial advisors can learn from Halloween movies:
CAUTION: MOVIE SPOILERS AHEAD!
Movie No. 1: Paranormal Activity
In Paranormal Activity, a couple moves into a new suburban home and immediately starts sensing a supernatural presence. So, naturally, they set up a camera to see if they can see what is haunting them.
Trick: Prepare for Unforeseen Scares
Like this couple, you need to arm yourself with the tools to better prepare for unforeseen obstacles like changes in regulatory obligations and unexpected scares like identifying potential Code of Ethics violations. Implementing a comprehensive in-house compliance suite like Orion will give you firm-wide compliance oversight, including employee trade monitoring, and help streamline your firm’s oversight obligations.
Movie No. 2: The Nightmare on Elm Street
The classic Nightmare on Elm Street features gruesome Freddy Krueger haunting teenagers in their dreams, which also haunts them in real life. Eventually, one of the teens realizes that Krueger is powered by his victim’s fear and has to calmly face him in real life in order to escape the grim fate of her friends.
Trick: Turn Financial Planning into a Dream
Being a financial advisor, you work with prospects and clients every day who have financial dreams and either aren’t taking steps in real life to make those dreams a reality or are far behind the milestones they need to reach them. But you can help show them that financial planning doesn’t have to be a nightmare. In fact, the opposite is often true—especially with solutions like Orion and our financial planning tool powered by Advizr.
The best financial planning tools provide advisors a way to connect your clients’ overall financial goals with the investment management you’re already doing. Plus, your clients should have access to an intuitive user portal to look up reports and track their progress to goals. In the end you will be able to deliver quicker, more personalized planning experiences and your clients can organize their finances and be empowered to realize their financial dreams.
Movie No. 3: The Blair Witch Project
Best known for its shaky camera, The Blair Witch Project follows three college film students as they travel to a small town to work on a documentary about a local legend of the same name. When the students end up lost in the woods, they begin hearing horrific noises. Obviously, this frightening turn doesn’t end well for the students. But never during the entire movie, does the footage ever show the witch.
Trick: Don’t Stay in the Dark About Business Data
The lesson here for being a successful financial advisor is that sometimes the most important thing could be what you can’t see. So how do you make sure you have a clear vision of your firm? With business intelligence tools like Orion offers, you can easily gather critical data and intel, perform objective analysis in real-time, and make better, more informed business decisions. Whether you completely immerse yourself in billing patterns, AUM numbers, and revenue targets or gain an overall high-level but concrete understanding of your business, you’ll be able to attribute value to the right areas and see clear opportunities to grow.
Movie No. 4: I Know What You Did Last Summer
In this ’90s horror flick, four teenagers are involved in a car accident with a local fisherman and decide to hide the evidence instead of reporting the incident. A year later, they start receiving anonymous letters about the crime, and are haunted by mistakes from their past.
Trick: Stop Suffering from Bad Reporting
Unlike the teens in the movie, as advisors, you don’t have to be afraid of creating accurate, detailed, and customized reporting for your clients. Reporting tools, like those found within Orion, can help you create a range of custom views of investment performance to show both your clients and your firm. And features like drag-and-drop functionality as well as extensive filtering capabilities will help you quickly and easily highlight what’s most important to your clients. There’s nothing to be scared about with those kinds of reporting options.
Movie No. 5: Ghostbusters
A comedic look at supernatural activity detection and elimination, Ghostbusters follows a group of disgraced science professors who start their own one-of-a-kind business to capture and contain ghosts using high-tech equipment. By the end, they are the heroes of New York City and everyone knows who to call when there’s something strange in the neighborhood.
Trick: Stand Out with a Unique Client Experience
Like the Ghostbusters, delivering an unforgettable client experience is how you can stand out in the increasingly crowded financial advisory services field. And also like the Ghostbusters, using high-tech solutions like Orion can help you streamline your operations and your clients’ experiences. A customized client presentation dashboard that allows you to deliver interactive performance presentations in real-time and event-based notifications that enable you to communicate with clients on their terms are just some examples of how tech can help you take the fright out of your clients’ experience. Whatever you do, just don’t cross your energy streams.
Being a financial advisor doesn’t have to be scary. Unlike many horror movie characters, you aren’t alone. Orion offers a full stack of technology solutions to help you fulfill your fiduciary responsibilities and help grow your firm.
Download this case study and see how other advisors are crushing their goals with Orion Advisor Technology.
1117-OAS-10/29/2019