NAIFA has announced the completion of its 2021 Business Implementation Plan that is phase one of its 2025 Strategic Plan, and the release of its new Business Implementation Plan for 2022. The 2025 Strategic Plan builds on the NAIFA 20/20 plan penned in 2016 that navigated the organization through a complete restructure of its chapters and overhaul of its bylaws.

Are you leaving money on the table?

If you aren’t nurturing and engaging with your leads and clients, the answer is yes. According to Invesp, “Companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales-ready leads at a 33% lower cost.”

Lead generation is only the first step in a well-rounded, efficient marketing plan. To maximize your lead generating efforts, you need to interact with those leads and connect with your clients. If you don’t keep in touch with them, they’re likely to forget about you, and that leaves the door wide open for your competition to creep in. 

When Bailey Baker was recruited to work at State Farm by a family friend, she had no idea what she was getting into. So, she did her research. Looking for a career she could retire from, she interviewed State Farm agents and others in the industry, to see if insurance was a good fit. What she found was her calling: helping people protect their lives and livelihoods.

Baker and her team offer a wide array of products, from home and auto insurance to life insurance to pet insurance, and her clients are just as varied. "We have a pretty big range: all generations, all areas. Texas is our client, basically,” she says.

Consider just how much trust someone needs to have in their financial advisor to give them continuous access to, and nearly complete control of, their life’s savings, their retirement income, and their future security and dreams. That degree of trust ranks right up there with entrusting your life to a surgeon, your children’s wellbeing to a nanny, and your heart to your spouse.

Trust like that isn’t simply granted to a financial advisor because of a single phone call.

It’s easy to lose focus on interest rates when you’re helping your client search for a reverse mortgage loan.

After all, the interest rate won’t affect the monthly payment because they won’t have to make one (though they will need to pay taxes and insurance and maintain the home).

Reverse loans don’t require monthly payments, as the full balance comes due when the last borrower dies or leaves the home.

But reverse mortgage interest rates are still a big deal and should factor into your clients' borrowing decisions. The interest rate will make a huge difference when the balance comes due and your client or their heirs must decide what to do with the home.

For Michael (Mike) Emmert, serving clients means learning everything there is to know about the products and services he provides.

Emmert has been in the insurance and financial services industry for four and a half years, but he previously had a long career in pharmaceutical sales. He has always strived to learn the intricacies of his industry and develop extensive product knowledge, and he brought that passion and attention to detail to his career in insurance and financial services.

As an advisor, your clients expect you to be up to date and on the cutting edge of items that would impact their financial and health future. Staying current can be a real challenge since our industry is changing faster than ever before. The actions of governmental agencies will either directly or indirectly affect everyone in our country, including you and your clients.

The winner of NAIFA-CA's Norman G. Levine Distinguished Service Award is Jill M. Judd, LUTCF, FSS, RICP. Judd is a Past President of NAIFA-CA and NAIFA-National. She has been a State Farm Agent serving her community in Capitola, California, for the past 20 years.

Your company’s workplace culture and brand are permanently linked. Business leaders often view it as a one-or-the-other undertaking, but that’s a mistake. If you want to build or refresh one, you should couple them both together.

Impossible, you say? Too much of a heavy administrative lift? Keep reading, you’re in for a surprise.

For financial advisors, referrals are—and will probably always be—the primary method of generating new business. It seems like every business blogger out there has the best, top, greatest, or most unique ideas for generating referrals. Personally, my favorite book title proclaiming its best ways to get referrals is this one: Endless Referrals, Third Edition.

I guess the previous editions didn’t result in endless referrals as promised.

To capitalize on the referral market, there are only two aspects of your business that are worth focusing on: delivering an exceptional client experience and continuously developing relationships with clients and spheres of influence.