The Top Five Concerns Advisors Have About Social Media

Advisors have the right and should be concerned about using social media. If you have someone in your corner, someone who knows social media and what life is like as an advisors, you should have confidence that you can execute a social media marketing strategy, gain brand awareness, cement relationships with existing clients and gain new ones that will be happy their advisor communicates with them in the medium they like.

The Importance of Increasing Dividends

Investors may not realize that recent higher dividend trends bode well for investment returns

How Can Advisors Become a Marketing Triple Threat?

For years, advisors have waffled their way into utilizing social media, but most are failing.

Junior Seau: A Lesson for Advisors

The tragic apparent suicide of former NFL superstar Junior Seau serves as a reminder to advisors that many of their clients will need more than just investment advice and guidance after they’ve retired.

What RIAs Should Do When FINRA Asks About Trading Activity

Every year FINRA sends hundreds of inquiries to firms that are not broker-dealers, including RIA firms, about suspicious trading. How you respond is critical.

Meaningful Goals Key to Affluent Relationships

As an advisor, your ability to engage in clients’ goal-setting conversations may well prove the difference between them staying with you or going elsewhere.

Answering the Call of 9/11

The greatest thing President Obama could do on the eve that commemorates the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks is to set a date certain in this calendar year for the withdrawal of U.S. and allied armed forces from Iraq and Afghanistan. Let’s now concentrate on making our economy healthy. And, as that happens, we can again help other economies get healthy as well.

Are We in the Midst of a Generational Retirement Shift?

Like they’ve done with every stage of their lives, the Baby Boomers are changing what it means to be retired. But unlike other stages where leading edge boomers set the path that middle and second-half boomers followed, retirement is likely to be transformed throughout the boomer generation in such a way that second-half boomers and the generations that follow will experience a very different retirement than their leading edge siblings.

This Time is Different

Some ideas are transcendent. Humankind’s inability to learn from past mistakes—often reappearing in cumulatively more costly iterations as memories of yesterday’s blunders fade—is an oft-repeated theme. Scholars confirm what historical anecdotes reveal.

Financial Security or Financial Maturity?

$7.5 Million. According to a recent survey by Fidelity Investments that’s the number it would take to make the average American millionaire feel wealthy. Considering less than 2% of the population has even $1 million in assets, how can we help our clients feel secure when they fall short of their own expectations? The answer may be in helping them first achieve financial maturity.

Is the Doctor In?

As trusted and respected advisors, clients often look to us for guidance. Successfully handling those situations where there is no financial solution requires us to recognize two things: First, our role changes, and second, a different skill set is required to preserve and strengthen the client relationship.

Discovering the Holy Grail of Managed Accounts

For wealth managers, the big question is this: is the unified managed account a realistic goal that will become a reality over time? Or is it a holy grail that will capture imaginations but remain unrealized, draining resources that would better be spent elsewhere?

The Industry's "Crazy Uncle Charlie"

We’ve all got that crazy uncle. Within the financial planning community, its Thomas Leonard.

Building a Better Retirement Income Portfolio

Advisors are struggling to come up with a better retirement income portfolio solution, which we believe we have found. This is not just about dividends. Inflation is a major concern long term that advisors not only need to be aware of when building retirement portfolios but must have an effective portfolio management solution.

Three Key Questions When Evaluating Mutual Funds, and One Metric You Should NOT Solely Rely On

“Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.” Just eight words that have been repeated enough in mutual fund marketing materials for investors to tune out their message; or perhaps they have chosen to ignore the most important of those eight words, the word NOT.

New "TIPS" For Battling Inflation

The past few years have provided a stark illustration of the ability of markets to surprise. It may be that inflation is the next big economic challenge to make an unwelcome return. The limitations of the most popular inflation fighting vehicles are becoming too pronounced, and the risks from inflation are too real, for the status quo to continue to reign in portfolio construction.

Capturing Opportunities in an Uncertain Market Environment

There are a lot of benefits in unconstrained, global, multi-sector investing.

Estate Tax Strategies and the New Tax Code: Embracing Occam’s Razor

A popular axiom – referred to as Occam’s razor - holds that we should tend towards simpler approaches until we must trade simplicity for increased explanatory power. For estate trustees and beneficiaries considering tax strategies in the disposition of 2010 estate assets, this principle is a sound guideline.

Untethering from the Mothership: Yes You Can, But It Won’t Be Easy

Many financial advisors think about leaving the ‘safety’ of the Mothership - you know, the large firm that takes 60% or so of every nickel earned - but then when push comes to shove, can it be done? Resoundingly the answer is “yes”.

Rethinking Inflation: Three Reasons Inflation Is The Phantom Menace

According to DWS Investments, rising inflation is not a question of "if" it's a matter of "when."

Which Version of Retirement Are Your Clients In?

Every few years we begin to see headlines proclaiming the latest “New Retirement.” I have to admit there have been so many versions over the past 20 years that I sometimes get confused as whether they’re talking about the “new retirement,” the “new, new retirement,” or the “newest, new retirement.”

Cracking the Referral Code

Client satisfaction and loyalty are poor indicators of a likelihood to refer. Julie Littlechild, President of Advisor Impact, de-mystifies the process for advisors attending the FPA Business Solutions Conference 2011.

Using the Web to Land More Clients

"When you practice Sales Intelligence, you’ll win twice the business of those who ‘wing it,'" according to ActiFi's Sam Richter. "You’ll ensure relevancy and impress any client, any prospect, every time."

Five Tips for a Successful Branch Exam

When the call comes from compliance that your branch examination is imminent, some advisors decide it’s time to take a vacation while others take the vapors. But branch exams should not be stressful or painful – if you follow these basic steps and integrate them into your practice.

How CRM Can Help Advisors Stand Out

Customer relationship management is more than just an industry buzzword. In fact, for advisors it can be the difference between a profitable business and a really profitable business.

The Bottom Line: It’s More Important Than Ever

Just as the market volatility of the last few years has been challenging for investors, it’s also been challenging for advisors. In addition to the higher level of effort required to keep nervous and frustrated clients on the books, high volatility in client accounts makes it harder to be confident of fee-based revenue and therefore confident of a practice’s overall financial health.

Are You Prepared For the New “Pretirement” Conversation?

Pretirement described was supposed to be for those who were somewhere “between the rat race and the rocking chair," but over the last few years, the concept - if not the name itself - has begun to take hold among a much broader – and younger - group.

Why Should Advisors, Banks Partner with Recordkeepers?

In this environment, it is all about specialization and outsourcing. A good retirement plan recordkeeper can allow financial institutions to focus on key customer differentiators

Love the One You’re With

In investing as in love, jumping from partner to partner will eventually lead to misery, more risk and lower returns.

What Can Advisors Learn from Steve Jobs?

While Jobs’ ideas are applicable to broader business, upon close examination they seem tailor-made for the financial advisor in particular.

Lead Your Team to Success

Ultimately, owners and managers have huge responsibility in making sure their firm moves forward. Often, the choices they make around their staff are the biggest factor in whether they are successful or not.

Ten PR Tips for Advisors

One of TD Ameritrade Institutional’s best breakout sessions was a panel of experts discussing some of the best tactics to get PR exposure.

Dodd-Frank Tax Battle Coming

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure this out: Without a new tax on the securities industry, there won’t be reform of same.

Innovative Strategies for Addressing the Long Term Care Challenge

When planning for retirement, all possible risks must be considered and evaluated. One of the most commonly overlooked is the potential need for long-term healthcare for you and/or your spouse.

Earnings, Multiples, Stock Prices Likely Going Higher in 2011

As we enter the heart of fourth quarter earnings season, coupled with a growing consensus in the marketplace that 2011 may finally be a better year for stocks, many advisors should expect a discussion about equities to take the forefront in client conversations.

Buy, Sell, Hold? No, Not Stocks – Your Practice

There’s a buyer for you out there. Here’s what you need to consider for 2011.

How Estate Tax Reform Shaped 2010

Estate tax reform in 2010 was marked by significant disagreement from both the House and Senate on whether any changes should be temporary or permanent.

How to Crack the Group Plan Market

Helping business owners manage group retirement plans for their employees creates an income stream as well as a gateway to future business.

How to Get Professional Referrals More Consistently

It is pretty accepted that our practices are best grown through referrals, and that beyond our clients it is important to cultivate centers of influence such as CPA’s and estate attorneys.

The Resume That Wrecked My Life

I was driving home from the interview more excited than I had been in years. I could not believe thatI actually landed the position and I beat out hundreds. The job was mine and life was turning around. There I was, fifty four years old and I had been an unemployed manager for eighteen months. Howand why did it happen? I had such a long successful career as a brokerage manager. I always hit orexceeded my…

Consider the Message and the Medium When Engaging Gen Y

Smaller financial advisors can build relationships and improve communication with this market segment by engaging them online and through their mobile devices with practical content that helps them make better financial decisions.

10 Tips for Planning a Charitable Event

The holidays are a great time to show your clients that you appreciate them and their business. If this is done well, it strengthens client relationships, helping with both retention and referrals.

How to Build a Database to Track Your Clients

Tracking client information is important since it becomes the basis of the marketing plan. Unfortunately, many firms don’t monitor the source of their new business and miss out on marketing opportunities.

What’s Next for Upfront Packages?

Perhaps it‘s no surprise, but upfront money keeps hitting unprecedented levels. Can that continue?

Using Managed Futures to Diversify a Portfolio

Stock market performance in the recent past has clearly damaged the “buy-and-hold” strategy, which worked well in previous decades. Any financial advisor could present an Ibbottson chart showing the long-term performance of equities and cite the expected 10% return from investing in equities that had historically had the answer to meeting the plan of the client. …

Five Ways for Advisors to Stay Out of Court

In short, there has never been a more important time to proactively manage our businesses.

10 Year-End Tax Tips

There is an extra wrinkle of complexity this year as the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts are set to expire at the end of the year. Many members of Congress have expressed support for extending these tax cuts to some, if not all, taxpayers either temporarily or permanently. Without Congressional action, tax rates will rise to as high as 39.6% on ordinary income and 20% on capital gains.

What Are the Best Social Media Tools for Advisors?

These days, your reputation can be boosted or destroyed in just 140 characters.

11 Best Practice Ideas from Schwab’s Impact Award Winners

Nick Georgis, a vice president at Charles Schwab, hosted a panel of four award winners from past and present to share their best practices to one of the most well attended sessions of the entire Schwab conference.

Engaged Clients Provide More Referrals

“Referrals are a transfer of trust” said Julie Littlechild, President of Advisor Impact. She added, “They are an expression of everything you do with your clients.”

How to Successfully Segment Your Book

Most advisors segment their clients books, but few do so systematically, according to a Schwab practice management expert.

What Keeps Advisors Up At Night?

Memories of the market's collapse haunt advisors as they reposition their businesses for future growth.

10 Steps to Boost Referrals

Insight from the first day of Charles Schwab's annual conference in Boston sheds light on simple but effecting ways to grow your business.

Preparing for Termination: What You Need to Know

Recruiter Rick Rummage discusses how to avoid getting stuck without client information and proof of production if you get fired.

10 Insights from the Women Advisors Forum

Speakers at Source Media’s Women Advisors Forum in Boston discuss winning practice management techniques.

10 Ways to Help Clients Be More Tax Efficient

Its never too early to begin helping clients prepare for the 2011 tax season. It will become even more so as the Bush tax cuts come to an end on Dec. 31.

10 Ways to Improve Advisors' Websites

Prospects are spending more time online. Isn’t it time you had a Website that meets their needs?