The IFP’s second keynote speaker Dan Sullivan gave a speech to delegates about how to become a top financial adviser.

Mr Sullivan is the founder and president of coaching programme Strategic Coach which helps entrepreneurs to reach their full potential in business and personal life.

He started the presentation by questioning “If we were meeting here three years from today, looking back over those three years, what has to have happened during that period for you to feel happy about your progress?”

This question set the theme for the whole presentation and questioned what advisers wanted from themselves and their companies.

He said that Financial Planning had been the hardest hit by the changes over the past 40 years and that numbers were down by 90 per cent.

He also joked that everything bad that could happen to a Financial Planner, happened in the UK first followed by Australia and America.

The benefit of Financial Planning was that advisers could ask about everything.

“It’s the only profession which gets to ask everybody about everything. Not even lawyers, doctors or accountants can do that.

“You need to know about their professional life, about their business, their personal life, everything about them.”

But he warned that very few Financial Planners were taking advantage of that skill.

Utilising it was one of the best things advisers could do as, he said, clients “have a profound sense that they are not being listened to.”

Mr Sullivan is one of four keynote speakers at this year’s conference.

He was preceded this morning by John Brennan from Vanguard and will be followed later by Nick Murray and Mike Harris.

• Want to receive a free weekly summary of the best news stories from our website? Just go to home page and submit your name and email address. If you are already logged in you will need to log out to see the e-newsletter sign up. You can then log in again.