Bradley D. Atkins with Liberty Partners

Did You Reach Your Goals in the First Quarter?

2017-03-27T10:14:00.000-07:00

If you subscribe to the 12-week quarter rule, the first quarter is done. Are you on pace for your goals?

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We're finishing up quarter one and it's an import time in the 12-week quarter rule.

If you subscribe to the 12-week quarter rule where we work 12 weeks out of the quarter and take the 13th week to plan, rejuvenate, or catch up, the first quarter is done.

How did you do?

It's pretty straightforward to address. We'll take your annual goal (let's say $350,000 as an example) and we're going to back out what you have in recurring revenue ($110,000 in this example for simplicity's sake). That's $5,000 a week and $240,000 for the year, bringing us to a grand total of needing $87,500 this quarter to be on track for the year.

Are you on pace? There are a couple things we can use to either get back on track if you're off, or to stay on or ahead of pace.

The first step to getting back on pace is to find out where you can generate new business from.

The first to look at is what you need to do to generate additional business. We've got a cookbook strategy we've been taught over the years and we've got some simple, straightforward math to run on it. The second strategy to look at is what you need to do to keep that income on the books and growing.

If you'd like to have conversations like this with us on an ongoing basis on how to reach the next level, don't hesitate to give us a call or send us an email. Let's touch base soon to talk about how we can make your 2017 better than you ever imaged it could be.

3 Tips for Using Social Media to Grow Your Business

2017-03-09T09:36:00.001-08:00

In addition to a website, you need to create social media accounts for your business. I’ll go over three tips to help you fully utilize Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

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Statistically speaking, everyone that you do business with will search for you online before meeting with you. Even people you are already working with enjoy receiving updates or following your online presence.

That is why it is so important to have a professional presence on social media in addition to your professional website. I recommend that you create a professional Facebook page, LinkedIn profile, and Twitter account.

Now, there are three things you need to do when you build your social media presence:

1. Make sure that you have video content. We know from experience that video gets 10 times the reaction that static content does.

2. Include some kind of thought leadership from you and other people in your organization, such as your Chief Investment Officer. That will be useful to your clientele.

3. Stay consistent with your messaging and branding through each platform. If you look at my Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, you will see a common theme throughout.

If you are a little tech savvy, then you may be able to figure video out on your own. Get a desk lamp, a camera, and a microphone, and get going. The problem is that most of us simply won’t sit down and create those videos, so you can also farm it out.

You need to stay consistent with your messaging and branding.

I use a company called Vyral Marketing. Vyral Marketing helps me put the content together and produces all of our videos.

If you have any other questions about using social media to grow your business, just give me a call or send me an email. I would be happy to help you!

2 Revenue Streams You Should Consider Adding to Your Practice

2017-02-27T09:35:00.002-08:00

As our industry evolves, it’s important that you consider adding these two revenue streams to your practice.

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With the Department of Labor regulation well on its way, I think it’s time to look at your practice in a couple of ways as it relates to finding new revenue streams. Today I have two streams I want to talk about that I think you should highly consider.

The first is financial planning fees. You have a role as a fiduciary inside any retirement account or IRA to provide a fiduciary standard of care. In order to do that, you need to have a comprehensive knowledge of your clients’ unique situations.

If you charge a fee for a financial plan, two things generally happen. The first is that you know your clients are taking your advice seriously. The second is you get all of your client’s information rather than just enough to open an account.

The second potential revenue stream is insurance.

One of my biggest fears as a firm owner is that we will have a generation of children who will inherit their parents’ financial planning situation when they pass away. Because of that, in the investment-based world, we will see fiduciary advice given along the lines of, “You need to buy some more life insurance,” but we won’t see any life insurance actually sold.

You should highly consider adding one or both of these two revenue streams.

I think not being in the insurance space is a vulnerability for all our practices. If you don’t want to sell it yourself, at least refer it out to a professional who you can generate a split business arrangement with. 

If you consider a revenue model centered on one or both of these two factors and integrate them into your practice, you’ll have a better opportunity to continue your business without much of a hiccup in terms of revenue streams.

If you have any questions about this topic or other ways to grow your business in the 21st century, please don’t hesitate to give me a call. I’d love to help you. Until then, happy selling!

How Can You Prepare for a Successful Year?

2017-01-25T09:01:00.001-08:00

Whether you’re on your way to accomplishing your yearly goals or not, we can help get you organized. Check out this simple exercise.

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Are you 1/12th of the way to your 2017 goals? If you are, that’s great. If you’ve taken a little vacation like some of us have, that’s okay too. You have time to catch up. I’m here today to show you an exercise that will help you better plan out your goals for this year. It has to do with looking at your successes and finding ways to replicate them. Here’s how the exercise works. You just need a pen, paper, and five columns.

Let’s make the rest of your year a resounding success.

First, spend some time reflecting on the past year and write down your top five successes and the impact they had on your business. Was it a success in terms of revenue? Efficiency? Did you break through a barrier? Did you find an “A” client? Write them down in the first column.

In the next column, write down why those successes happened. Was it because you were persistent? Did you ask for a tough referral? Did you decide to implement a new strategy or system?

For the third column, write down what you need to do to make those successes occur more often. Do you need to systemize something? Develop a new habit? Add someone to your staff? Invest in technology?

In the fourth column, write down what you need to do right now to make this result happen on a regular basis.

Once you have something written in every spot in every column, you will be well on your way to having a successful 2017. We are a little over 8% through with the year, so let’s make the 91% plus rest of it a resounding success. If you have any questions for us, don’t hesitate to give us a call or send us an email. We look forward to hearing from you.

What Makes 2017 the Perfect Storm?

2017-01-05T10:56:00.002-08:00

There are a lot of changes coming this year. The perfect storm is coming.

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I think that 2017 is going to be the perfect storm. What do I mean by this? Well, we have a new president that has been elected, as well as Department of Labor regulations coming over the course of 2017. It’s a perfect time to make sure you get in touch with every one of your clients. Get on the phone with each of them and tell them that this is the year you’re going to have a real conversation. Some years, all that’s necessary is making sure they are on track. This year, we have a lot of things going on and you need to get together with your clients to spend some time focusing on the overall game plan. Think about it. This year, you’re going to need to prepare your clients on an ongoing basis inside of retirement accounts, you’re going to need to have a comprehensive financial plan or some type of tool that you have justified by narrowing product recommendations down, and documentation that the product you recommend they implement and be the most appropriate product for them.

Times of change are times of opportunity.

It’s likely that changes are going to be necessary. Times of change are times of huge opportunity. That’s why I’m calling it the perfect storm. I hope you will do yourself a favor and document your activities so you can go back and do some planning for 2018 and beyond as it relates to your practice on an ongoing basis. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out and give me a call or send me an email. I would love to hear from you.

What Does This Department of Labor Regulation Mean for You?

2016-11-08T09:16:00.002-08:00

How will the new Department of Labor regulation impact you? Here is how I’d suggest you prepare your practice moving forward.

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What should you expect from the new regulation from the Department of Labor? This is a fun and exciting time, to put things mildly, so I hope that your firm has helped you prepare as much as we have at Liberty Partners. Here is what I recommend you do to prepare for this regulation.

First, sit back and ask yourself whether this new regulation is going to impact you. If you don’t think that it will, I’d suggest that you spend a little more time reading up on it because I think that it’s going to affect all of us. This is even true on the RIA side, though maybe to a smaller extent.

On the RIA side, I think that you may have the majority of your fiduciary role taken care of, but it probably isn’t as well-documented as it should be going forward. Remember, with the ERISA fiduciary rule, you no longer can simply disclose conflicts; you’re going to have to eliminate them.

Clearly, the impact on these regulations is that they will become fee-based rather than commission-based, so if you still have a large book of business or a block of business on a broker-dealer platform, this has an obvious impact on your business. This will need to be addressed significantly between now and April 10th and obviously before the end of 2017.

It’s important to take a second look at this regulation and make sure that we all, as business owners, are prepared for it. So what should you do?

The first thing that I would suggest you do is analyze your current accounts and the holdings in those accounts, then have a conversation with your clients about the regulations and how they’re going to have an impact on your relationship with them.

I would also be sure to have a very well-thought-out procedure for each type of account and type of client as well as some recommendations on how to adapt to the new regulations. I don’t think it’s too early to get started on this. Clearly, if you’re in a traded commission-based account, it’s going to make sense to start looking at a fee-based account for those types of clients.

If the account is in a commission-based account at a broker-dealer and not traded very often, then you’ll probably want to wait and see what your broker-dealer’s policy is going to be as it relates to a best interest contract exemption.

There are four options for your existing clientele, so I would work with your broker-dealer to determine what those options are.

Once you have a game plan, take the time to learn about this regulation.

Secondly, if you don’t have a Series 65 or some type of exemption due to a law degree or certified financial planner or financial analyst designation, then I would suggest ordering the study materials for your 65 or 66. If you think that you’re too old to do that, then I would start working with a firm that has a robust practice succession program so that you don’t have to uproot your career before retirement.

Something else that I suggest you do is start building a system to make sure that all of your client interactions, the analyses you do for your clients, your product recommendations, the benchmarking you do, and your ongoing analysis are all documented in a very robust digital documentation system.

So what’s next after we prepare for this new regulation? Once you have your game plan, take the time to learn about this regulation. You need to protect yourself and your practice from overall and too-far-reaching policies that are implemented at your broker-dealer and your RIA. Make sure that you understand the regulations and how it’s going to impact you so that you can push back internally on any regulations or compliance or branding policy that you feel might be a little self-serving.

I’d also recommend learning more about comprehensive financial planning. Some level of a comprehensive financial plan is going to need to be done in order to comply with the regulation, so you might as well take advantage of it to identify some of the revenue opportunities, like on the protection planning side of the business.

Finally, make sure that at the end of the day, you never fail to take advantage of a major forced transition in the industry. If, during the transition, you have an opportunity to modernize the product portfolio, technology, or interactions that you offer in your practice, now might be the time to leverage the opportunity.

All in all, I don’t think that this Department of Labor regulation is something to fear; it just now needs to be modified and well-documented. If you have any other questions about this regulation or transitioning as you move forward, give me a call or send me an email. I’d be happy to help you!

The Best Technologies to Grow Your Business

2016-10-31T09:35:00.000-07:00

Technology is constantly evolving, even in the financial services industry. Here are a few pieces of technology you should have in your practice.

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I spent a few years working with tech startups and helping them market their products to the financial service industry. What was new and exciting to me was all the technologies that these companies took advantage of. Today I wanted to go over a few pieces of new technology that I would have in my practice if I was building it from scratch.

The first thing I would invest in is a good client relationship management software, or a CRM. It amazes me how many reps across the industry still work from paper files or notecards. It’s clearly time in 2016 for you to have a CRM. It’s less important that it works with your existing broker than it is that the CRM works for you. Look for features like meeting trackers, calendar integration, and email integration. The newer CRMs will even track your phone calls and prompt you to take notes when a client calls. You want the CRM to follow your specific steps along the way when it comes to getting new clients. A good CRM will allow you to customize the process.

The next thing I would get is financial planning software. You need to have a comprehensive planning approach in order to deal with the Department of Labor. You might even want to invest in two different systems. You can use one for your good economic potential clients that goes into greater detail, and you can use the other as more of a lightweight option that you can move quickly on. The key is to make sure you integrate one of those two with your CRM so they can talk back and forth. We also want your software to integrate with the third piece of the puzzle.

All of these pieces work together.

The third piece I am talking about is an online form application that you can complete a lot of your paperwork on. You can populate insurance company forms, compliance forms, etc., so your CRM can send data to your online forms application.

Finally, I would take the steps to implement a document storage solution. It is much easier to be able to send these forms and store them on the cloud in a compliant fashion so you don’t have file cabinets upon file cabinets in your office.

If you invest in these different technologies, you will truly have a modern practice in 2016 no matter what industry you are in. If you have any questions for us or would like to have a conversation about how to modernize your practice, give us a call or send us an email. We would love to hear from you.

How to Identify Your Best Clients

2016-10-05T08:20:00.002-07:00

Many people feel like they have a low number of dream clients in their database, but this is not unusual. Here’s how to find those ‘A’ clients in your client base.

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In our businesses, most of us spend a lot of time searching for those “dream clients.” Unfortunately, as we drill deeper into our client base, we might find that we only have a few of them.

This is not at all uncommon and nothing to be ashamed of. In fact, I’ve worked with plenty of reps at our firm who have spent decades in the financial services business only to discover that we only have seven ‘A’ clients in our client base. How do we find these clients and what do we do with them? First, ask yourself a few questions:

1. How much revenue have your clients given you this year? Consider new business that’s been done either on a transactional basis or on a recurring basis for this year.

2. How much recurring business comes off of those clients every year? We’re talking about turnkey, first of the year, quarterly, or however the insurance trails might pay.

3. Do they value the relationship that they have with you? When you call, do they answer? Do they call back and leave a message? Do they respect your time the way that you respect theirs or in the same way that they would respect an attorney's or accountant’s time?

Your biggest clients aren’t necessarily your ‘A’ clients.

4. Do they act on your advice? Even the biggest clients may neglect your advice. I remember I once had a client who did absolutely nothing that I recommended to them aside from one insurance sale, which made them one of my larger clients for that year. The reality is that I never managed any of their money, they never acted on any of my other advice, they didn’t value my time or the relationship, and they really were not an ‘A’ client despite their large sale.

5. Have they introduced you to another prospect or ‘A’ client? The question now becomes: how easy is it to get this information for you? How easy does your broker or RIA make it to obtain that information, and then what do you do with it once you’ve got it? Next week, I’ll go over what you can do with these ‘A’ clients once you’ve identified them so that you can replicate them and build systems out of generating more ‘A’ clients on a consistent basis.

If you have any other questions about Liberty Partners or about segmenting your database, feel free to give me a call or send me an email. I’d be happy to help you!

Use Your “A” Clients to Your Advantage

2016-09-08T09:48:00.002-07:00

Once you’ve found your “A” clients, it’s time to group them. Let me show you how to do that in my latest post.

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Identifying your “A” clients is one of the most important things you can do for your business. But what should your plan of action be after you’ve identified them? We are here today to help with that.

You should be able to identify at least five to 10 clients who are at that “A” level. Once you’ve identified those “A” clients, you need to identify them further. Specifically, you need to identify three things within that group.

The first is your largest client, your biggest “A.” The second thing you need to identify is the average amount that “A” group brings you. Finally, figure out who the smallest “A” client is.

The next exercise is to look at commonalities. There are four of them: Occupation, affiliation, social ties, and purpose or passion.

We have a five-step marketing plan that we preach.

The next step, once these clients are identified, is to set goals around them. Figure out what you want your goals to be, what you want your average to be, and what you're going to do going forward from a marketing perspective to make sure your plan succeeds.

We have a five-step marketing plan that we preach. It includes very specific targeted marketing towards those “A” clients to duplicate them and grow that “A” client base.

If you have any questions for me at all, don’t hesitate to give me a call or send me an email. I want to make your practice more productive, and I will continue to work on your behalf to do so. I look forward to hearing from you.

What You Should Ask Yourself Before Changing Platforms

2016-08-29T12:06:00.002-07:00

For any representative who is considering changing from another independent platform to our independent platform, I have five questions that I recommend they ask themselves before making a decision:

“What size is the firm that you're currently with?”

For those of us who’ve gone independent, we’ve done so in large part to attain a measure of autonomy and individualization for our practices. Many folks whom I’ve talked to over the years who’ve made the switch have found that their firms have gone from hundreds of reps to thousands. As firms grow in scale, they inevitably need to create systematized processes to supervise their enlarged databases. As a result, they can feel less and less “independent.”

What is your payout versus your actual pay?

There are only so many ways you can split a dollar, and in today’s increasingly regulated environment, transparency in your compensation program will become paramount as you build your long-term financial game plan for your business.

How does your current independence compare with how independent you wanted to be?

On a regular basis, I have folks come to us and say, “I wanted to be independent, but I didn’t want to be this independent,”, or “I thought I was going independent, and it turned out I just joined another branded platform concealed as an independent firm.”

What level of collaboration are you getting at your current firm?

We know from research from both the wirehouse side of the industry to the insurance-based, broker-dealer side that large cases are worked on in teams. We see wirehouses now requiring new recruits to join existing teams. The insurance industry has lagged behind on that, but what we know from anecdotal data is that large cases tend to generate eight times the revenue when they’re worked in teams, rather than individually. How many people do you know at your independent firm who would collaborate with you on a practice?

Are you ready to do this again?

While there are a lot of revenue opportunities to be had if you join a firm that can help you innovate in the face of the new incoming changes to the Department of Labor regulations, there is also a lot of hard work waiting for you all over again, like prospecting and revenue generating.

If you’re considering switching from one independent broker-dealer to another and you found any value in this conversation today, feel free to download our brochure, send me an email, or give me a call so we can have a conversation about how some of these questions impact you. I look forward to hearing from you!