I was reading an analysis the other day and they quoted a study saying a third of entrepreneurs plan on investing more in training, specifically sales, in the economic uncertainty. And we all know that in uncertain times and recession, investing in skills and sales are the best investments possible.

LinkedIn can be a powerful platform to help grow and establish your business, as well as get your foot in the door for booking meetings with prospects. However, coming up with an effective and efficient strategy can be hard to establish to make the jump from social media to booking a call.

Discover the secrets to LinkedIn prospecting success in the next Business Performance Center webinar on Wednesday, June 14 at 12 pm eastern. Join the Founder and CEO of NAIFA partner Hummingbird Growth & Automation, Bruno Nicoletti, as he helps you crack the code by unveiling his step-by-step process for booking 15 meetings a month on LinkedIn.

Join NAIFA's Business Performance Center for a webinar on Wednesday, April 26 at 12 pm eastern as partner AccuPoint Solutions will help ensure you maximize your ROI when using data to brand, market, recruit, analyze, or update your CRM.

Gary Weber, Founder and CEO of AccuPoint Solutions, will share his expertise from over 35 years in the industry, where he has been both a user and supplier of data to help you increase productivity, and learn how to leverage data to maximize your results.

Join NAIFA's Business Performance Center for a webinar on Tuesday, January 24 at 1 pm eastern. Hear from NAIFA Coaches Circle leader Joe Templin to learn how you can reliably get your foot in the door and get your name out there.

As an insurance agent, getting in front of people to deliver your message can be one of your most challenging tasks. For agents looking to attract new clients in today’s market, expertise is everything. Seminars establish your expertise and can put you in front of a large group of people in a single setting. This type of marketing is one of the most cost-effective and time-saving ways to grow your business.

When giving a seminar, you need to study the material you plan on delivering, and having a short PowerPoint presentation is a great visual tool for you to convey the information. If someone is not confident in your expertise, they are simply not going to do business with you. This does not mean you need to know every answer, nor will you. It is ok to say, “I’m not sure. I will find that answer for you.” If you provide accurate, helpful information and appear confident, people are far more likely to trust you and more likely to do business with you.

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.

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.

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.

Your prospects are just like you, they keep getting the same pitches to buy this and join that! That has made them numb to requests. Today you must provide immediate value if you want to be heard. That is where offering them on-demand education and premium money aggregation tool gives you the upper edge and goodwill. From there you can build trust and engagement.