Do you want to become a million-dollar financial advisor, boost client satisfaction, and dramatically expand your business? This book provides all the answers and strategies you need to do just that. Complete with proven techniques, expert insights, and practical tips to maximize your profitability, The Financial Advisor’s Success Manual will show you how to break the cycle of moderate growth by teaching you how to: Develop a differentiation strategy Define and implement your six core client-facing processes Balance the cost of services with the value delivered Enhance client loyalty Perfect your personal marketing and sales approach You didn’t start your financial services firm with a goal of modest gains. So don’t settle for that! By implementing the methodologies and strategies in this manual, you can grow your business beyond your wildest expectations--all while serving your clients better.

The Marketing Guide for Financial Advisors uncovers the truth about how independent advisors really get new clients in a digital world. Learn what no one wants you to know about marketing, how to avoid wasting money on your marketing, and the secret to unlocking your marketing potential, including: Why digital marketing is so challenging in financial services How to create a website that converts Email marketing strategies for financial advisors Using social media to get in front of your ideal prospects Search engine optimization to get more traffic to your website Content strategy to start the conversation Embracing a specialty to command higher fees Using webinars to warm up prospects In this exclusive guide, you'll learn proven strategies from top advisors to grow your firm and uncover a step-by-step process to build your marketing engine. About the Author Claire Akin, MBA grew up in the financial services industry working with her father, an independent financial advisor of over 35 years. She holds a bachelor's degree in economics and a master's of business administration. Claire founded Indigo Marketing Agency to help independent financial advisors reach more of their ideal clients. It's her mission to help financial advisors grow their firms through digital marketing.

This book is going to challenge you and everything you think you know about succession planning. For independent advisors, succession planning is quickly becoming the cornerstone to a strategic growth strategy designed to perpetuate their business and their income streams beyond their own lifetime, while providing a multi-generational service platform that attracts and rewards younger advisors. This makes succession planning one of the most, if not the most, important practice management tools in this industry today. As an independent financial advisor, now is the time to address the question of what will happen to your practice and your clients after you “exit the building.” In most cases, the answers are right in front of you. Thankfully, Succession Planning for Financial Advisors: Building an Enduring Business has arrived to transform today’s practices into businesses designed to endure and prosper and serve generations of clients. Learn how to create a “Lifestyle Succession Plan” that can provide a lifetime of income and benefits to the founder even as he/she gradually retires on the job Unlock the power of equity management – the best planning and building tool an independent advisor owns Learn how to attract and retain the best of the next generation to help you build a great business and to support your succession plans and care for your clients and their families Determine precisely when to start a formal succession plan and related continuity plan so that your business can work for you when you need it most Understand why succession planning and selling your business are completely different strategies, but how they can complement each other when used correctly 95% of independent financial service professionals are one owner practices. To the positive, these practices are among the most valuable professional service models in America. But almost all advisors are assembling their practices using the wrong tools – tools borrowed from historically successful, but vastly different models including wirehouses, broker-dealers, and even OSJ’s and branch managers. Revenue sharing, commission splitting and other eat-what-you-kill compensation methods dominate the independent sector and virtually ensure that today’s independent practices, if left unchanged, will not survive the end of their founder’s career. It is time to change course and this book provides the map and the details to help you do just that. For independent practice owners and staff members, advisors who want to transition to independence, as well as accountants, attorneys, coaches and others involved in the financial services space, there are invaluable lessons to be learned from Succession Planning for Financial Advisors. Written by the leading succession planning expert in the financial services industry, former securities regulator, M&A specialist, and founder of the nationally recognized consulting and equity management firm, FP Transitions, David Grau Sr., JD, has created an unmatched resource that will have an enduring and resounding impact on an entire industry.

Your Road Map to Teamwork Success in any Entrepreneurial Company Making the shift from a large organization to a smaller entrepreneurial company seems like a dream come true for many. But the transition from a rigid environment to a more fluid one that focuses on relationships and the value each employee brings means a change in mindset. While working with Strategic Coach(R) Program team members, Shannon Waller saw these challenges first hand. Using her experience in creating successful entrepreneurial companies, she created a collection of teamwork strategies. By adopting these 12 Entrepreneurial Attitudes, team members can become increasingly valuable to their organization and transform their "job" into a source of endlessly expanding personal growth and meaningful rewards. This guidebook will help you: - Recognize your Unique Ability(R) and learn how to integrate it in life and work. - Develop and maintain an Entrepreneurial Attitude. - Maximize personal contributions and professional rewards. - Lose your fear of sharing insights and ideas with the company. - Begin to live in the Results Economy, not the Time-and-Effort Economy. - Build and maintain the trust of Entrepreneur. - Experience functioning as the Entrepreneur's valued partner. - Exchange personal perfectionism for company-wide collaboration. - Become a highly effective communicator by learning how to share information the way others need to receive it and receive it the way others share it. - Achieve new levels of patience, compassion, and perseverance. Experience a new level of Team Success, starting today!

"Jeff Rattiner has found another way to help producers. This book is a must-have for financial advisors, especially those that aspire to be Million Dollar Producers." -Thomas B. Gau, CPA, CFP President and CEO of Million Dollar Producer "Jeff Rattiner has done it again! His book displays all the essential tools and techniques necessary for advanced planners to succeed in this business. Rattiner's easy-to-read style provides the best in marketing and practice management ideas. This book will help you if you have hit a dead end in your practice. Rattiner tells it like it is by providing a no-nonsense approach to truly taking your practice to the next level. A must-read for the serious financial advisor." -Jim Cannon, President, SunAmerica Securities, Sentra Securities Corporation, and Spelman & Co., Inc. Financial planners provide a variety of services to an array of clients but lack a uniform system for creating a profitable business. Rattiner's Financial Planner's Bible: The Advisor's Advisor collects best practices from the nation's leading financial planners, presenting a prototype turnkey model for achieving financial success for both the client and the practice. Financial planning expert Jeffrey Rattiner emphasizes an ethical, practical approach to financial advising, placing paramount importance on "doing what's best for the client." Drawing on extensive interviews and his own experience, Rattiner delivers can't-miss tips on marketing a financial planning practice, developing an infrastructure, crafting strategic alliances, assessing a business's profitability, and creating the model twenty-first-century practice. This authoritative guide also covers: * Forming a planning advisory board * Establishing a realistic chain of command * Delegating responsibility * Making technology work for you * Charging clients appropriately Running a financial planning business need not be an exercise in trial and error. Rattiner's Financial Planner's Bible delivers a compelling model for advising success.

Become The Advisor of the Future Many financial advisors out there are facing a wall. ­They're generating $1-3 million in revenue; they're managing all the households they can; they have little time to spend with their own families. ­ They feel like they're playing chief marketing officer, chief investment officer, CEO, CFO, chief compliance officer, and the chief technology officer all at once. ­There just aren't enough hours in the day. This book is an insider's look into how to get past that wall. With a combined forty-five years of experience standing in your shoes, authors Tim Kneen and Max Smith share in this book all the failures they experienced and the resulting successes they had getting themselves over that wall that lead to a firm with over $10 million in revenue and $1 billion in sales. After navigating each phase of the industry themselves--from wire house, to RIA, to buying other RIAs, to monetizing half of their firm--they understand what it takes to succeed and are here to share it with you.

Expert advice for financial advisors looking to make the most of social media platforms Social media is everywhere. 3.5 billion pieces of content are shared on Facebook each week, 22 million professionals are networking on LinkedIn, and 140 million tweets are posted every day. The opportunities these platforms present for financial advisors are huge, but most advisors have no idea how to use them to build bigger, stronger client bases. The Social Media Handbook for Financial Advisors: How to Use Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn to Build and Grow Your Business shows how to make the most of these new tools, offering invaluable advice about how to connect with potential clients in the twenty first century. For most advisors, converting prospects into clients is their top priority, and social media presents incredible opportunities for sealing the deal. Sales don't happen because clients are impressed by complicated charts, they happen because they're impressed by your social media presence, and by properly understanding how to make these new platforms work for you, you'll be positioned to see your business boom. Designed to teach financial advisors how to use social media to better market their services to attract new clients and referrals Presents expert communication advice from top financial advisor coach Matthew Halloran Categorizes communicators in a unique new way Teaches financial advisors how to use social media in new, highly effective ways that they've never even considered An essential resource for wealth managers and financial advisors looking to amplify their marketing message and raise their visibility in a crowded marketplace, The Social Media Handbook for Financial Advisors is the only book you need to make yourself heard.

Selling is as old as civilization itself. Put in the simplest of terms, selling is the exchange of goods and services for something of value. To financial advisors, however, the sale is often seen in a negative light, and many cringe at the word "sell." Interestingly, the same advisors who shy away from the concept of selling are often those who find themselves selling every single day! Sometimes they're even participating in the selling process multiple times throughout the day--and they may not realize it. Asking for client referrals, developing strategic alliances, seeking and talking with new prospects are all obvious parts of the selling process, but selling happens every time you remind a client why it's a good choice to do business with you, too. The fact is that most CFAs(R), CFPs(R), CPAs, and other professionals did not obtain these titles because deep down they really wanted to be in sales. Most times, their interests tend more toward data, analysis, and more solitary orientations. Selling is probably the last thing those who entered these fields were thinking of doing. They may not have considered the "people" aspect of their chosen profession; the aspect that involves sales. For this reason, and some others, turning into a salesperson seems like a negative, degrading thing. Many advisors will conjure up the picture of the slimy used-car sales guy. It's time to recognize selling as the valuable activity that it is. It is a way to: Let people know who you are and what you do well. Get your message out to those who need it. Promote your planning process, wealth management services, or investment expertise. Use your relationship skills to close new business. Take your business to the next level. If you want to grow your business, the bottom line is that you--or someone on your team--need to sell, and to sell well. This book will offer guidance on how you can sell in a comfortable and effective manner.

The bestselling author of Pioneering Portfolio Management, the definitive template for institutional fund management, returns with a book that shows individual investors how to manage their financial assets. In Unconventional Success, investment legend David F. Swensen offers incontrovertible evidence that the for-profit mutual fund industry consistently fails the average investor. From excessive management fees to the frequent "churning" of portfolios, the relentless pursuit of profits by mutual fund management companies harms individual clients. Perhaps most destructive of all are the hidden schemes that limit investor choice and reduce returns, including "pay-to-play" product-placement fees, stale-price trading scams, soft-dollar kickbacks, and 12b-1 distribution charges. Even if investors manage to emerge unscathed from an encounter with the profit-seeking mutual fund industry, individuals face the likelihood of self-inflicted pain. The common practice of selling losers and buying winners (and doing both too often) damages portfolio returns and increases tax liabilities, delivering a one-two punch to investor aspirations. In short: Nearly insurmountable hurdles confront ordinary investors. Swensen's solution? A contrarian investment alternative that promotes well-diversified, equity-oriented, "market-mimicking" portfolios that reward investors who exhibit the courage to stay the course. Swensen suggests implementing his nonconformist proposal with investor-friendly, not-for-profit investment companies such as Vanguard and TIAA-CREF. By avoiding actively managed funds and employing client-oriented mutual fund managers, investors create the preconditions for investment success. Bottom line? Unconventional Success provides the guidance and financial know-how for improving the personal investor's financial future.