A Lesson from Henry Ford
Henry Ford would have been a great financial planner, so take a lesson from him. Eighty years ago Henry Ford uncovered the efficiency of product standardization and the assembly line. The process was so standardized it gave rise to the joke that a customer could have a car in any color, as long as it was black. Even though this winning formula for efficiency and profitability is decades old, most advisors ignore it, and consequently organize their businesses inefficiently.
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Five things Advisors Need to Know about Seniors
Many advisors approach working with their senior clients with preconceived notions that can ultimately defeat their sales efforts. Learn five key truths about today’s seniors, and you’ll be able to fine-tune your approach to better serve your senior clients and reap the financial rewards.
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Selling the Future Will Cost You Sales Today
Americans do not relate well to the threat or benefit of future occurrences. Here’s my evidence: Do you know people who smoke cigarettes? Can they read the warning on the package and have they heard that smoking leads to lung disease, heart disease and a potentially nasty death? Then why do they still smoke? Because they get pleasure today, right now, and they willingly trade a few seconds of present pleasure for an ugly and early death in the future. What does this have to do with selling financial products? Because when you understand how people behave, you make more sales.
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Planners Make Mistakes with Life Expectancy
When designing a plan for a client, many Insurance and Financial Advisors use the wrong numbers for life expectancy. Advisors and Planners typically consult life expectancy tables published by the IRS, which provides the average life expectancy and that’s the problem. A person reaching the average life expectancy age of 70 will live 17 years longer on average, with half dying before age 87 and half living longer. The reality is that people are living longer and we are responsible for informing our clients of a more accurate probability of outliving their money. Read this article to learn more about life expectancy and how can better plan for your clients retirement.
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Self Reliant Advisors Earn Less
As self-reliant Americans, it’s almost un-American to admit we do better with help from another. But we bear the dismal results of this resistance with under-performance—less income than we should have, less enjoyment from our work, less time with our families. Those that get help enjoy greater results in all areas. Coaching can help you improve your performance. If having a coach is good enough is good enough for Tiger Woods, every Olympic athlete and virtually every successful financial advisor, isn’t having one good enough for you?
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Let The MAGI Help You Sell More Annuities
Paying tax on Social Security income is something no one likes to do and for those seniors relying on their monthly checks, any increase in taxes can create an uncomfortable situation. You can help your senior clients minimize taxes while maximizing income by understanding the MAGI (Modified Adjusted Gross Income). This article shows you how income from annuity payments can require less tax be paid than from other sources such as CDs and even Municipal Bonds.
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Myths About Seniors that Too Many Advisors Believe
How do some myths get started and why do we believe them? If they are myths, then they aren’t true. If we believe them, then we are only hurting our own efforts. There are some myths floating around about Seniors that, if you accept them, will make it next to impossible for you to succeed in that market. This article looks at five of the most common myths and quite easily debunks them for you.
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You Can’t Control Your Results
You have a slow month and you feel bad. Your manager indicates that if you did this or that, you would have done better. These reactions are misplaced because they assume that you can control your results. You cannot. You can only control your activities. Your activities will put you in position to make that next sale or get that next big referral. Your activities will create the opportunities you need to succeed.
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Grow Your Business Without Compliance Problems
Is it really possible to grow your business to the level you want it without creating problems with your compliance department? According to the author, a well known marketing expert, it can be quite simple if you follow some basic rules. If you believe that your business could use a boost this article offers six ways to move ahead rapidly and avoid being slowed by hitting compliance speed bumps.
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Attracting Affluent Senior Clients
Are you ready to meet people who can fund $30,000 annual life premiums, buy $100,000 annuities and open $500,000 fee based accounts? You can successfully target the affluent when you have the right tools and approach. This article will describe the different types of wealthy clients and what you need to know to approach and then successfully work with each group.
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Attract the Right Prospects and Make More Sales
Some financial producers use prospecting methods that produce the wrong prospects. I define a wrong prospect as someone who is not really interested, not qualified or hard to deal with. In essence, someone who wastes your precious time and, if they do become a client, they consume so much of your time that you wish they weren't a client. Wouldn’t it be smarter if you only met with the interested qualified people and spent more of your time in a sales presentation? Read on and learn how to attract them.
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Get Lazy and Get Rich
Most of the brokers I observe work too hard, work too many hours and sweat too much over getting new clients. If you are one of them, don’t you think that it’s time you get lazy and get rich? Want to know how to do it? You do this by establishing your marketing so that people contact you and your job is to react. Want to learn how to do that? Keep reading; you’ll find that it’s not so hard to do.
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Estate Planning Is Not About Death
Insurance professionals are often unsuccessful in having their clients take action on estate planning. For insurance professionals, estate planning is about the narrow issue of selling a life policy to pay estate taxes. For the prospect, estate planning is about the broader issue of protecting their assets. So many prospects are not interested in buying insurance which addresses only a small portion of their estate preservation concerns. This article will help you look beyond the insurance sale to generate bigger and better sales.
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Boomers: Little Promise for Financial Advisors
It’s an old story. The baby boomers are nearing retirement. They’ve accumulated all of those assets. These 78 million boomers will need financial advisors to help them invest all of their money. Wrong. It ain’t happening like they say. Read this article and learn why the boom in assets from baby boomers won’t benefit many financial advisors.
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