Enjoy the current installment of “weekend reading for financial planners” – this week’s edition kicks off with the recent announcement that President Trump has issued an Executive Order for the IRS and Department of Labor to review (and ease) the rules around Multiple Employer [retirement] Plans (MEPs) as a way to expand small business access to employer retirement plans, ideally bringing down costs through greater economies of scale, and at the least giving 401(k)-centric advisors a new way to work with small business owners (by creating and offering their own Open MEP solution?!).
From there, we have several articles about advisor marketing this week, from a look at how it’s not enough to just have a good value proposition for clients if you can’t also explain the process you’ll use to achieve it and provide some “proof” (e.g., sample deliverables) to show your results, to how to engage in a formal “marketing makeover” for your firm (which starts with crafting your own one-page marketing “messaging brief” before you hire anyone to help you implement it, why it’s so important to keep asking “why” (literally, over and over again) to prospects to truly understand their needs, and the reason that advisory firms doing in-person seminar marketing are now turning to Facebook digital advertising as a more cost-effective path to get prospects to attend their seminars in the first place.
We also have a few practice management articles, including: how to think through different types of financial advisor business models based on what’s actually being provided to clients (e.g., investment-only, investments with some planning as needed, planning with some investments as needed, or financial consulting only); why it’s crucial for advisory firm owners to separate out their compensation for the work in the business from their profit distributions for the income from the business; what it takes to successfully take a 6-week sabbatical away from your own advisory firm; and the issues to consider when your multi-advisor partnership actually has to “vote a partner off the island” and remove a partner from the business (without collapsing the business itself in the process!).
We wrap up with three interesting articles, all around the theme of better understanding our own motivations and focus: the first explores fascinating research that finds one of the best ways to help people improve their situation is not for them to receive good advice but actually for them to give to others, which actually cements their own confidence in their knowledge and helps them formulate a specific plan of action (the one they’re recommending to others as well!); the second looks at how in the end, there really are no “natural born salespeople”, just people who have a natural desire to help others and learn the very learnable sales skills and conversations it takes to succeed; and a fascinating look at how the popular wisdom to “find and pursue your passion” is awful advice, because, in reality, passions are more likely to evolve from something we actively do, not be something that already exists that we decide to pursue and do more of (which means it’s better to just start doing something you’re interested in and let the passion develop, rather than trying to intuit your passion in the first place).
Enjoy the “light” reading!
source https://www.kitces.com/blog/weekend-reading-for-financial-planners-sep-8-9-2/
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