1) Did you consider what your office says about you and your success?
2) Did you re-model or re-decorate?
3) Is it important that clients feel comfortable?
4) Is a nice, professional office important to building and maintaining professional relationships or will any type office do?
5) And if your office is professional and inviting, would it make sense for you to greet your cleints wearing a track suit?

While branding is not easy to measure, if even possible – it it easy to see that it is absolutely critical. Branding is you, your image, your value, your uniqueness and most importantly, what people remember about you.

A well articulated and nurtured brand will help people quantify who you are, what you do best and the difference working with you made it their life and business. How can you build a business without this level of identification and communication? You can, you’re just making it much more diffuclt fgor yourself and your company.

DO YOU HAVE THE RIGHT MAKEOVER MINDSET?

Making over your business is not for everyone, especially those who are timid or complacent. If you’re okay to continue doing what you’ve always done and getting what you’ve always gotten, you can stop reading right now. This article will not interest you or serve you. But, if you truly want to make a lasting change in your business, this article will be that wake-up-call you’ve been waiting for. It will challenge you and point you in the right direction.

A makeover should mean more than just dusting-off and tweaking what could be.  It should mean “If I could do this all over again the right way, what would I do?”

For most people, starting over can be exciting at best and intimidating at worst. It’s all a question of perspective.  To achieve greater results, by an order of magnitude, means taking risks and being passionate about the rewards.   It also means going through a mental makeover before the physical makeover starts. One thing is very clear, if you want to move forward to bigger and better, getting more of things you want and doing less of the things you don’t want, a positive mental attitude is the only answer that will serve you.

“Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.” -Thomas Jefferson

A Makeover Mindset (MM) is how we describe the frame of mind of someone who knows with clarity and certainty that the thinking that got them to where they are today is not the thinking that is needed to take them to the next level of success and happiness. MM is the “aha” moment when you know for certain that you need to STOP dusting-off and tweaking.  MM is only achieved when the understanding is clear that something very different needs to happen.  Something big.  Something worthy of being called a makeover.  Unfortunately,  “aha” moments are often fleeting inspirations for most of us unless there is focused and sustainable action.

A MM can only be achieved when there is a realization, a revelation if you will, that there is a third “M” – Madness.  Madness is the depletion of energy and expenditure of time and resources on repeating the same thing we’ve always done to just maintain the status quo.  Madness is working harder and longer just to maintain your current success – your plateau.   Most every successful business owner and entrepreneur has gone through long hours and heavy lifting, working hard and diligently to achieve that success. The Madness is continuing to do those same things just to maintain the current level.

It’s worth spending a moment on inspiration.  At some point, most successful business owners have been caught in a moment of inspiration to make a huge change, and yet, nothing came from it? Think about a great book you may have read where you were consumed by the storyline and potential, feeling like change was necessary and paramount.  Then what happened?  Many entrepreneurs sleep on it, consider it and move on to “more pressing matters”, the “day to day”.  The fleeting infatuation with MM ends and the Madness lives on.  To escape it, you need to seize the moment and take directed action.

In my career I’ve had many “aha” moments, many of which I’ve not been able to embrace and sustain. It’s a deflating experience when your next “aha” is that you haven’t been able to sustain the greatest “moments” for change in your business and your life.  I’m speaking from experience.

But I finally understand it, how to escape the Madness forever and never look back. It’s been one heck of a journey. The quest for magic solutions for achieving extraordinary success is a tiring, expensive journey. It’s a road paved with promises and compromises. Although there have been exhilarating moments, I wish I could have done it differently. Although I’ve gained incredible insights from my failures I’d much rather have know how to do it right many years ago.

I WANT TO SHARE THE FORMULA FOR SUCCESS WITH YOU

Success is about vision, focus, awareness, accountability, starting and quitting. Yes, I said quitting. Quitting the right things will free you to pursue only that which drives you towards achieving your vision.

Here’s my challenge to all of you who are either immersed in the Madness or have flirting relationships with the “aha” moment that will catapult you. Here’s the juice!

Define your Vision.  Then, quit anything or everything that doesn’t clearly move you in that direction. Embrace highly focused activities and your greatest leverage points. Seek new thinking. Take action. Begin with the end in mind. Find the right partners to help you focus and hold you accountable. Build momentum every day, every week, every month, and every year until your vision of success becomes your reality.

TAKING ACTION IS A DECISION ONLY YOU CAN MAKE.

Here’s what starting looks like:

1. Take the free SuQu Mindscan Assessment. Understand your thinking strengths, leverage points and areas for improvement. Take the MindScan at www.freedomarketing.com/MS.
2. Find a coach and/or mentor to help you find a sustainable mindset and someone to hold you accountable. We’ve worked with some amazing business coaches and tactical referral coaches who we’d be happy to introduce you to.
3. Create a SuQu Map with your business coach. Begin with the end in mind and work backwards so you know exactly what is needed to move towards success. Focus on sustainable momentum. The coaches we know will guide you through the SuQu process.
4. Make sure you have the right partners to help you build systems and processes, define your message (brand), identify your ideal client, develop your marketing, and generate an endless flow of ideal prospects through introductions.

If you need helping putting this all into perspective call me at (905) 579-7724. I’d be delighted to talk this through with you. But don’t call until you’ve taken the Mindscan.

Here’s to YOUR LIFE – BEYOND THE MADNESS!

My experience in working with hundreds of financial advisors is that many of them feel that articulating a clear vision is not warranted because it does not drive direct results. It’s unfortunate that many advisors may have experienced some form of a vision initiated business plan early in their careers that did not serve them well. A vision’s role is to provide greater focus and helps advisors align only those activities that move them towards their vision. And we all know focused activity drives results! At Freedomarketing, we’ve found the formula to help advisors truly leverage their potential and uniqueness, it’s called SuQu Mapping. In simpler terms it’s a highly relevant and concise business plan. And it all starts with a clear vision. You can learn more at www.tactibrand.com.

BELOW ARE SOME THOUGHTS FROM VARIOUS PROFESSIONALS.

———————————————-
Jim Cecil
Nurture Marketing

How do you say….PARAMOUNT? Perhaps even with multiple, clear visions .

Some questions, for example:
1. What is my vision for my personal career in financial advice services?
2. What is my vision for my identifying my ideal niche market?
3. What is my vision for discovering and dealing with my niche member’s chief pains, passions and preferences with regards to their financial issues?
4. What is my vision for actually ‘helping my clients succeed’, rather than just helping them deal with transactions?
5. What is my vision for nurturing relationships with my current clients, prospective ones and especially, my ‘centers of influence’?
6. What is my vision for automating the ‘stay in touch’ process?
7. What is my vision for seeking and cultivating niche mentors?

As does Dr. Tom Stanley, I believe that the affluent, when given a choice, invariably select a specialist over a general practitioner, virtually every time.
Why would it be different when it comes to their money?

Will you care enough for yourself, your practice, your family, your clients and your career, to spend the time to become and become known as an expert in your niche.

I can’t be more clear on this vision.

Good Nurturing
Jim
www.nurtureinstitute.com

———————————————-

Bill Eck
Certified Wealth Consultant

These thoughts on a shared vision from the Book: Fifth Discipline, enlightens what they are missing:

“A shared vision…is …a force in people’s hearts, a force of impressive power. Few, if any, forces in human affairs are as powerful as a shared vision.”

High performance teams have shared vision and purpose.

Maslow observed that in exceptional teams… “the task was no longer separate from self…but rather he identified with this task so strongly that you couldn’t define his real self without including that task.”

Shared vision comes from personal vision and personal mastery.

Visions that are truly shared take time to emerge. They grow as a by-product of interactions of individual visions.

Shared vision requires ongoing conversation where individuals not only express their dreams, but learn how to listen to each others’ dreams. Out of this listening, new insights into what is possible gradually emerge.

It is not what the vision says, it is what the vision does.

Vision becomes a living force only when people truly believe they can shape their future.

Senge, Peter M. The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of the Learning Organization. New York, NY: Doubleday, 1990, 2006. Chapter 10

Bill Eck

——————————————————–

So true Kirk. The problem is threefold:

• They don’t know what they want.
• They are not willing to do what it takes to get what they want.
• They are afraid of being disappointed if they fail (fear of failure).

Wishing you great success!!! in 2010

Michael Fastchi

A well articulated vision based on ones values an goals is an absolute must to achieve long term success. Most successful business owners obtain the benefit of counsel in developing, articulating and pursuing their vision. It’s a significant step towards achieving focus in their business and their life. It’s also the first major objective of a good coach.

2. Challenge Your Potential

Coaching is a safe place for a person to begin to understand how to accept themselves, challenge themselves and leverage their potential. It’s a place where dreams, desires and hopes rise to the surface. Effective coaching creates an environment for stretching the boundaries with honest and realistic assessment of a person’s potential.

3. Work-Life Balance

Some people live to work however the majority work to live. A good coach will help a person find their natural work-life balance. This will add energy to both life and work and, as a result, attract success. Achieving the proper balance will reduce the effort is takes to get things done.

4. Uncover Your Sweetspot

A good coach can ignite clients to pinpoint their natural sweetspot and facilitate a plan to help them spend most of their time working where they are most passionate, adept and profitable.

5. Sustainable Execution

To achieve long term success it is imperative that visions, values and goals are aligned with sustainable implementation? The best plans are the ones that are masterfully executed. The best executions are the ones that are repeatable and sustainable.

6. Professional Accountability

A key ingredient for a successful coaching relationship is for the person to be accountable for the things that they say they will do. An effective coach will ensure there are no judgements, disappointments or guilt trips laid on the client in the event of non-action while at the same time ensuring the client understands their accountabilities and the results of their actions or inactions. The person must let the coach know what was accomplished from one coaching session to the next.

7. Eliminate the Energy Drains

Most people have items in your work and life that they wish were not there but that they tolerate because the items are not a big enough deal with or make issues with. Examples might be: a cluttered desk, poor time mgmt or people invading their space or time. Coaches use special resources early in the relationship to systematically eliminate things their clients tolerate that corrupt their environment.

8. Prevent Relapse

When people do not get the support they need to build their business, things get postponed and they might not ever get done. Coaching accountability is meant to prevent relapse when environments distract or influence less productive behaviour. A good coach will help clients stay or get back on track. This is one of the key reasons that an ongoing relationship with a coach is important. There will be times when everything is great and it feels like not much help is needed but when an unexpected challenge mounts, a coach could be the difference that keeps things from derailing.

9. Learn How to Mentor

Many clients benefit so much from their coaching sessions that they, in turn, learn how to better help others. For people whom this comes naturally to, this may add some value that differentiates them and helps them have more success with people. The tools and skills coaches use can be used in many areas of life, both personal and business. An effective mentoring relationship creates an awareness of oneself and others around you. You can choose how you want to leverage these tools and techniques.

People REFER for two reasons:

1 – They want to look good to the people they are referring. They want to feel confident you will impress the person they are sending your way.

2 – They want to look good to you. They want you to know they appreciate your service and that in return, you appreciate the referral.

Where Branding comes in:

Have you ever wondered what your clients say about you when referring you to their colleagues, friends and family? Most advisors agree that their clients would likely have many different stories to tell. Imagine one of your clients telling a potential ideal client that you are honest, easy to work with and that you offer comprehensive financial planning. You may be all those things, which are great, but they in no way differentiate you from most other financial advisors.

The question is: have you taken the steps to truly differentiate you and your business so that you maximize referrals, the life-line of your business?

Are you leveraging your brand to gain way more ideal client referrals?
TAKE BRAND NURTURING QUIZ AT FREEDOMARKETING.COM/BRANDING

If you’re not nurturing your brand in a way that engrains your message in your clients’ minds, you will have no say or control over your best sales force; happy clients telling the right story to the right people, all for you. It’s critical to making an impact in the prospects’ minds and it also helps solidify your relationship with your client. They too want to feel like they are getting something from you they can’t find around the corner.

Just think for a few minutes how powerful it would be to script you message for your clients. Imagine how comfortable they would be in sharing your story with the right people, your ideal target audience.

Do your clients…
o Know who you work best with?
o Use keywords that create intrigue and buzz about your service or approach?
o Truly understand how they benefit from working with you?
o Know how to refer people to you?
o Know how you are compensated?
o Know your professional credentials and experience?

You wouldn’t send a sales force out into the streets without having a full and complete understanding of the above. Why would you send your clients out to refer you without the same level of understanding?

There are four key branding criteria to BEING REFERABLE:

Special
How are you different or the same as everyone else? You need to be memorable first and foremost.

A compelling message is the ONLY story that gets told. If you aren’t nurturing that message and ensuring clients know exactly what to say and to whom, you’re leaving lots of quality opportunities on the table. If you rely heavily on new clients from referrals, it’s integral that you invest time, energy and money into nailing this aspect of your business.

Useful
Does your point of differentiation benefit them and how?
A flashy message that has no clear and relevant benefit will not endure further investigation. Make sure the usefulness of your offering is simple and relevant.

Reliable
Are they sure about your professionalism and expertise?
No one wants to work with a financial advisor that works out of a VW Van who also sells encyclopedias. You need to be professional, be rooted and be trustworthy. If you’re marketing doesn’t quickly answer these fundamental concerns, you won’t even need to have a phone number or office. It’s not as simple as having a cookie cutter web site like every other financial advisor. Your site needs to look say you invest in your business, you’re the expert they need and you are a true professional they can trust.

Economical
Does working with you make economical sense? Are you an affordable and profitable decision?
Lastly, you need to be an economical choice. This doesn’t mean cheap; more like appropriate for the type of people who you’ll be referred to. Do your message, marketing and perceived value reflect your fees?

Most advisors look at asking for referrals as an art, something they need to feel inspired and passionate about. They need to take their time to paint the perfect picture of what asking for and getting referrals is all about. Getting consistent great referrals is simple:
o brandish a compelling message
o establish a repeatable process that is easy to understand for you, your team and the client
o implant the idea of referrals in your clients minds
o follow through with asking and getting referrals

Be S.U.R.E. and you’ll get more referrals.

Below are some excerpts that will give you some idea of what the times ahead may be like and the mindset that will be required to prosper.

BE PREPARED FOR THE UNPREDICTABLE

If you haven’t noticed, companies who are surviving, or better yet prospering during these turbulent times are companies who are lighter on their feet. They can change gears, move quickly and adapt. It’s not about being able to predict, it’s about being prepared when the unpredictable happens.

“It is only in times like these that you get a chance to show your strength. In the end, I think we need to have absolute faith in our ability to deal with whatever is thrown at us. And we need to have a complete, realistic paranoia that a lot can be thrown at us. It’s our ability to put those two contradictory ideas together: We need to be prepared for what we can’t predict and, at the same time, have this total, unwavering faith that we will find a way to deal with all of it. And I believe we will. I don’t believe the world will treat us well, but we will figure out how to do very well.” – Jim Collins.

As a financial advisor…

• Did you plan for possibility of a market crash?
• Did you prepare your clients emotionally for this?
• Did you have a plan to communicate quickly and effectively with your clients?
• Did you have your clients real risk tolerance accounted for in their portfolios?
• Were you or are you gearing up to move to fee-based advice rather than sales commissions – the future model for financial advising?

IT’S NOT ALWAYS WHAT WE DO, IT’S WHAT WE GIVE UP

“You need a laserlike focus on doing first things first. And that means having a ferocious understanding of what you are not going to do.” – Jim Collins

Most of us have heard the wisdom, “do not put all of your eggs in one basket”. But let’s be honest, just how many baskets can you manage and just how many eggs can you juggle? If your goal is to be successful, wouldn’t you need to put all of your eggs in one basket. We’re not trying to balance an investment portfolio here. I highly recommend finding a professional consultant or coach to guide you to what works best given your strengths (that which you are most passionate about, good at and is most profitable) and your ideal audience (clients who are fun to work with, have similar values, are profitable and easy to access). Now there is a basket worth putting your eggs in!

JIM COLLIN’S EVOLUTION OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP TELLS A GREAT STORY

Have you ever thought of just how powerful your passion, vision and values are to growing your business and creating a culture around the relationships you have with your clients?

As you read the Jim Collin’s view on the evolution of entrepreneurship it will become clear that your values, passion and vision are all that truly differentiate you from your competitors. It’s why people work with you, they like what you stand for. And often times, it’s because they stand for exactly the same thing.

People do business with you because they relate to what you do, why you do it and what that means to them. Growing your business is about helping your clients understand what your business and you are all about — it is not simply marketing and selling what you do.

Jim Collins defines the evolution of entrepreneurship as follows:

I. Easier access to capital mechanisms including venture funds, angel networks, private equity and search funds

II. The idea that entrepreneurship is a learnable process

III. The entrepreneur itself has turned from a bad word into a good word

IV. A big shift away from seeing the essence of entrepreneurship as the creation of a better mousetrap to viewing it as the development of a better process

V. We’ve gone from the traditional THREE stages of entrepreneurship to the FOUR stages of entrepreneurship.

1. In Stage One entrepreneurship, you have a great idea. That’s fairly primitive, but it’s what people thought about entrepreneurship in 1979.
2. Next, we went into Stage Two, in which you build a successful business.
3. Then, in the 1990s, we got to the next stage: building a great company. That is different, because a great company will have, over time, many successful businesses. I think that may be why Built to Last spoke to entrepreneurs. It was about the company as the ultimate creation.
4. And now, I’m thinking we might be on the cusp of a Stage Four. I’m putting a big question mark next to it, but I think we might be in a stage of going from a great company to a great movement. A movement. Something bigger than the company.

IDEA –> SUCCESSFUL BUSINESS –> GREAT COMPANY –> MOVEMENT

THE NEXT MOVE IS YOURS

Challenge yourself to build your company based on your passion, your values and your vision. Put that out there for your clients and see just how powerful you and your business become. Start building a movement in your community, marketplace and industry.

Click HERE to read “Jim Collins: How to Thrive in 2009″

• Write down your goals and look at them everyday.
• Share your goals with a peer or mentor to keep you accountable to your plan.
• Limit or eliminate distractions from your environment.
• Maximize your strengths and manage your weaknesses.
• Find a certified coach to facilitate gaining momentum and achieving balance in building your dream business.

2. They try lots of strategies but follow through with few.

• Success is half strategy and half execution. But without the execution, strategy is useless.
• Identify and align your strategy so it supports the achievement of your specific goals.
• A great strategy is one that is sustainable, compelling and simple. Complexity thwarts progress.
• Seek an outside perspective from a proven business coach on what strategies you should be focusing on

3. They focus on short term successes but most often at the expense of long term success.

• See the value in what the short term will bring in the long term.
• Adopt a “what’s next” attitude. e.g.. Don’t just take the application, get (earn) referrals. Don’t just sell the product, write the plan.
• Stay committed to a strategy for consistency and continuity, don’t jump from idea to idea.
• Align your expectations and purpose of action to fit the strategy. e.g. Don’t decide on advertising then run two ads and stop because you didn’t get a new clients right away.

4. They have ideas and a vision of where they want to be but they haven’t articulated it in a written business plan.

• A vision is only as good as it’s clarity. “If you are clear about what you want, it will appear in your life, but only to the extent that you are clear.”
• Dream as if you had no limits to what you can do. By the way, there are no limits to what you can do. Dream big.

5. They have goals but they haven’t written them as SMART goals.

• SMART goals are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, time-bound.
• Write down your goals so they are clear, so you can share them and so you know when you’ve successfully achieved them.

6. They show up every day wanting to do the right things but they get distracted easily from their vision.

• Set up your environments to limit distractions.
• Get clear on what specific goals will help you carry out your vision and stay committed to your goals.
• A qualified coach will know the nine environments you’ll need to identify and work on.

7. They focus on perfection when progress is what truly builds momentum for success.

• Perfection is not achievable so why would you aim for that? Get it done well and get it out, that’s what builds momentum in your business.
• When you see the synergy of all you have to do in your plan, your interest will shift from getting it perfect to getting it done.

8. They have a brand (everyone does) but they don’t take the time to clearly articulate it.

• If you do not take the time to clearly articulate your brand, your clients and prospects will have varied stories to tell about what you do for them. Branding is like teaching your clients what to say about you that properly positions you in your minds of your target audiences
• Branding is typically quite simple and powerful. Keep it simple.
• The smaller the niche, the more likely you’ll be remembered.

9. They have aggressive tendencies to invest in tools and resources but they have no way to sustain it in its entirety.

• Did you ever hear the term slow and steady wins the race. It’s good to be aggressive but not at the expense of overwhelming and staggering your progress.
• With a thoughtful plan in place you are more likely to invest in tools that can and will be implemented, you tendencies will be maximized by having a plan and a focus.

10. They continue to try and do things they aren’t good at when they should be delegating/outsourcing these tasks to focus on what they do best.

• We are taught and conditioned to work on our weaknesses but a paradigm shift is required to engrain us to work to our strengths, not waste time on our weaknesses.
• Talk a certified coach about understanding your sweet spot – where your purpose, passion and profit are maximized.

1) VISION: What’s your big game?

It’s not uncommon that between diapers and getting our business cards we give up on our big game, what we really want out of life and our business. The only thing that holds us back is our thoughts about ourselves and the life we live. To that point we must stop and take the time to redirect our thoughts of what our vision is for our future. Asking ourselves the question of what is my big game can help you redirect your future. Suspend what you think is reality and really go for it. What do you want your business and life to look like in the next 3-5 years?  What would get you leaping out of bed everyday? In order to achieve what you want you must be clear on where you are headed. This is your vision – your big game!

• Find a quiet place with no distractions and dream big.
• What does success look like to me?
• What is it that I love to do that lies in the heart of my dream business?
• What feelings do I want to experience as a result of my dream business?
• What am I going to build in 3 – 5 year horizon?

2) PURPOSE: What’s your unique strength and the big fat benefit to your client?

Most advisors out there that you are competing with are doing a good job for their clients. However, you bring something special to the table. It’s that something special that is your mission. It’s what you do better than any other advisor and it’s what your client’s tell you they get from working with you.

What are 3 elements of your advisory practice that you do brilliantly? What are the top 3 benefits your clients derive as a result of working with you? Your mission must combine these two elements to have perpetual impact. this is your sense of purpose…this is your mission.

3) KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS: What do you want to keep score of?

KPI – living in the information age means we are flooded with what to do’s, how to do its etc. Thus, we must stay focused on the key elements that will drive our business. It is too easy to get distracted. It is imperative to identify the 4, 5 or 6 measurable goals we want to achieve this next year. These are your Key Performance Indicators.

Make sure each of your KPIs is SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time bound).

4) STRATEGIES: How are you going to win the game?

Every team that knows what the game is and what it takes to win needs to have clarity around how they are going to get the job done. They have a game plan explaining what needs to be executed and how.

This is your game plan – your overall strategy.

5) PROJECTS: What should be your 5 – 10 top initiatives?

Finally, the playbook (player assignments). If a brilliant plan is not executed, it is nothing. It will been an exercise in futility. To take it across the goal line the plays must be executed effectively with passion. Once you have your 5 – 10 top initiatives, you should break it down to actionable pieces with clearly defined accountabilities and timelines. A great plan needs to be outlined with specific tasks and assignments so that the entire team knows what needs to be done, by whom and by when.

Spending wisely, and cutting unnecessary expenses is always a wise strategy. Now may be a very good time to review your overall business expenditures and make some cuts. The trick is, which ones? Expenses that do not give a good return on investment should be the first to be scrutinized. Take a look at your operational efficiencies, such as reducing employee turnover. Review you systems and processes to see how your team can function more productively. Consider things like seminar venue expenses and scale back a bit. But, don’t cut back on the marketing.

Marketing is All About Momentum

A short moratorium on advertising may not hurt sales too much and it will cut costs and improve profitability for the short-term. However, is it worth saving a few dollars now if it puts your sustainability and growth at risk? The answer is no. The trouble is that stopping advertising may be a ticking time bomb. Marketing is all about momentum. A doctoral thesis on milk advertising in the United States revealed the delayed nature of the time bomb. Nothing happened to sales in the short term after ceasing advertising. Nothing, that is, for 12 months. But after 12 months there was a sharp decline. The milk industry started advertising again. However, it took 18 months to get back to previous sales figures. What kind of profits do you think the industry lost in that 18 months?
The same holds true for financial advisors. Here’s a story about a senior financial advisor (Sue) who stopped advertising in her local paper, hoping to maintain profitability in an economic downturn. There was no immediate difference in revenue. A year later, Sue ran into an ideal customer she had been prospecting for years. The prospect greeted her and congratulated her on her retirement, assuming she had closed her business when she no longer saw the ad in the newspaper. This prospect continued by noting her current advisor had left the business after 30 years and that she had been looking for a new one. Thinking Sue wasn’t in business any longer, this prospect had already moved to someone else.

And so, years of faithful business building and visibility went right down the drain. This story reinforces a key principle of marketing: protect what you have already built. This is particularly important in economic downturns. Clients and prospects will remember that when times are tough, you’re still around. They’ll be more loyal, and they’ll be more apt to trust you if they know they can rely on you in good times and bad.

Keep On Keepin’ On In Economic Downturns

Being in the right place at the right time can yield opportunities. To keep your client base healthy and your business successful, you need to be in the right place all the time, so that when your buyers are ready, you’re right there, ready to take care of their needs—that’s how you build a business.

If you think marketing and advertising is a faucet you can turn on and off, think again. One of the challenges of marketing is getting recognized in the sea of sameness and having your message stand out from the crowd. Imagine that the crowd disappears for awhile and you’re one of the few players out there. Now, breaking through the clutter and getting attention isn’t so tough. Keeping your business visible in a time when most prefer to hide says something that matters.

Your challenge is to navigate the course during this period of adversity and turn it into a time of opportunity. Go ahead. Execute your marketing and make the call. If you don’t, someone else will.

If you think you’re not getting a good return on your marketing investment, you need to ask yourself why. Are you making frivolous expenditures? Are you targeting the right customers with the right message? Are you sporadic with your marketing, or steady? Are you working to your plan? Most importantly, do you have plan? Think long term, and focus on how you want to grow your company. If you’re not happy with the answers to the questions above, call us. We can help you devise and follow a plan to build and sustain your success.

Second answer: our culture.
Third answer: we allow them to be independent and run their own practices.

If this is sounding familiar we have a solution that can truly help you rise above the sea of sameness. If you are interested in attracting and retaining more ideal advisors – read on.

As a group, Broker dealers generally struggle with the issue of trying to build their brands in a sea of sameness. They need to position themselves in a very competitive market with:

• Similar companies
• Employing similar people
• With similar educational backgrounds
• Working similar jobs
• Coming up with similar ideas
• Producing similar things
• Offering similar services
• With similar prices
• And similar quality

Broker Dealers need to position the things that are truly unique about their offerings in a way that is compelling and valuable to their advisors.

One such strategy is to develop and bring to life tangible evidence that you do indeed support and live by the idea of Partnership.

Here is how you accomplish that:

Brand it! Package your brand in an appealing way so that it breathes credibility. Create an iconic identity for your program or brand that makes your program easily identifiable to your audience.

Describe it! Demonstrate through professionally designed examples that you make it easy for your advisors to communicate with their clients.

Communicate it! Put all this together in a concise and powerful information sheet for mailing or downloading and then post this on your web site for easy access.

The investment is minimal ($2,500 – $5,000) and the return is exponential.

However you decide to be different, make sure that it has clear value to your audience and that it is credible, visible and accessible.