For the past few years, pundits have been predicting that bots, robo-advisors, and other technologies will lead to the demise of living, breathing financial professionals. That hasn’t happened yet, and, in my opinion, it never will. Yes, people can conduct much of their preliminary research online, and a few are willing to purchase basic coverage without ever speaking to a person. But most will want a financial professional to guide them through life’s twists and turns. Even those people who purchase coverage from a robo-advisor will seek the expertise of a financial professional as their needs become more complex. 

Don't miss NAIFA partner ReminderMedia's webinar "How to Turn Clients into Raving Fans"! ReminderMedia President Luke Acree will outline the importance of focusing on relationships, not transactions.

In the webinar, Acree will help you:

• Discover why you need to be known, liked, and trusted before you can do business
• Find out how one psychological trigger will guarantee a desired response
• Learn why focusing on transactions rather than relationships will kill your business

The webinar will take place on March 24th at 1 pm eastern.

Brian Haney, CLTC, CFS, CIS, CFBS, LACP, CAE, NAIFA's Young Advisor Team (YAT) Leader of the Year recently shared five keys to his success as a financial professional with InsuranceNewsNet's AdvisorNews. Haney is the Founder and Vice President of the Haney Company in Silver Spring, MD. He has been a loyal NAIFA member since 2013 and is very engaged and active in our association.

If you take a look around, you will notice all of the noise in the Medicare space. Whether it be the technology platforms for quote and apply, the renewable income stream, or a plethora of prospects, you may think to yourself, where do I start?

Let’s start with the technology platforms. Being able to quote, save, and compare Medicare choices for your clients is imperative. When CMS (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services) removed your ability to save drug plans, this opened up innovation in the independent distribution. Now you have the ability and convenience with Search & Save options that allow you to load your clients' medications and then recall that list and simply update it instead of recreating it every year.

If you are a financial advisor trying to grow your practice, Dean Thurman, Senior Partner of InvestWise Financial and Co-Founder of White Glove, has a few growth hacks for you.

While many advisors were down in revenue during 2020, Dean’s office showed a 5% increase.  So far in 2021, Dean’s office is showing 53% revenue growth.

Dean attributes much of his success to these 7 growth hacks that his office has put into place over the last few years.

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. 

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.

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.

While the stock market tends to dominate news cycles surrounding any current large-scale event, too many average Americans are uneducated when it comes to investing. When many people see reports of record market highs and losses, massive government bailouts, and changing legislation regarding interest rates and taxes, they do not have the educational background or investing experience to translate these headlines into meaningful analyses and applications for their daily lives. Investing education is critical for all Americans, particularly in times of economic turmoil. Consider these benefits of investing education when making financial decisions with your clients.

From the 1980s through the early 2000s, many advisors and brokers dreamed of having more help with critical yet time-consuming tasks like proof of insurance and minor claims processing. We mused, “If only I had help with those tasks, I could spend more time focusing on high-touch customer service and sales.”

Today, digital innovations are streamlining much of the way carriers and their representatives conduct and generate business. These innovations are precisely the help we wished for.

So why do many in our industry resist digital advances like customer self-service and apps?