/ by Craig Rosenthal

Should Fiduciary Responsibility Take a Sick Day?

 

With global concerns about the COVID-19 pandemic and millions of employees now required to work from home, how will fiduciary governance be impacted? As the stock market peaks and troughs, investors are panicking as they watch their retirement dollars ping pong up and down. It is a tense time for all. However, in this chaos and transition, should other priorities take precedent over the retirement plan committee’s fiduciary responsibility?

Plan Sponsor Response to Chaos

According to Malcolm Gladwell in the book “What the Dog Saw,” he explains that when a crisis happens, people generally respond in one of two ways. They either choke up or panic. When a person chokes up, they overthink a situation. Whereas, when a person panics, they think or act too little.

Choking Up: Overthinking

Looking at this situation through the actions of a plan sponsor, let’s say a plan sponsor client responds by overthinking. They request their advisor to … Read More

/ by Craig Rosenthal

Less Talk, More Action: It’s Time to Implement a Financial Wellness Program

 

Increasingly, employers are focusing on employee wellness, customizing benefits to meet the diverse needs of a workforce that spans multiple generations. Offering a holistic benefits program isn’t just good for recruiting and retention, it can help improve employee productivity and provide a boost to employers’ bottom lines.

One of the key pillars of an employer-sponsored wellness program is financial wellness — measuring and improving the state of overall financial health and well-being. Financial wellness programs are designed to foster positive behavior changes to help employees feel more confident about managing their money and achieving their financial goals.

More and more, employers are turning to financial advisors to help them select, implement, manage and support this important benefit. Financial wellness is no longer a “nice-to-have” benefit — it’s a “must-have.” This presents you a unique opportunity to provide additional value to your plan sponsor clients by helping their employees become financially empowered.

Why Financial … Read More

/ by Craig Rosenthal

5 Ways to Reach Plan Sponsor Prospects

5 Ways to Reach Plan Sponsor Prospects

When was the last time you received an unsolicited sales call? Were you thrilled to stop everything you were doing, turn your attention from your workflow and focus on the unknown voice on the other end? Occasionally you might do it to satisfy curiosity, or even annoyance. But most would typically avoid answering in the first place. The point is, if we find cold calling unacceptable in our own lives, why would it be accepted as an appropriate marketing strategy?

The era of cold calling or interruption marketing has slipped into the past. Your plan sponsor prospects want to connect with you using more modern platforms. To give the people what they want, consider these 5 ideas:

Develop a Short List

Search 5500 forms to identify companies you want to work with. You can develop your short list by creating a profile of ideal … Read More

/ by Craig Rosenthal

Benchmarking is So Much More Than Fees

 

We all know someone who likes to take the easy way out. This would describe the narrow view of fee-only benchmarking. It is fast and easy. However, like all things with those characteristics, it adds little value and may do more harm than good.

Whereas, we all know someone who does things the right way. Their methods usually take a little longer and are a little more difficult but, like all things with those characteristics, they add a lot of value. They do not act with haste. They see the bigger picture that ensures that quality, service, value and extra credit items are appropriately accounted for. These characteristics would describe the thorough consumers of Value and Fee benchmarking.

If all of the above is true, why would anyone view fee-only benchmarking as an acceptable solution?

Two answers, our desire for instant gratification and “we don’t know what we don’t know.”

First, I think deep … Read More

/ by Craig Rosenthal

Your Clients are My Prospects

Your Clients are My Prospects

At one point, every client was a prospect. That prospect took the leap of faith to leave their existing retirement plan advisor and hire you. This is why you must always remember that your clients are not guaranteed.

From cold calls and email campaigns to networking functions, your clients are constantly being marketed to. With every attempt, they need to actively choose you. What actions are you taking to ensure they are hanging up the phone, deleting the emails, and rejecting the sales meeting? Essentially, they are bombarded with opportunities to select a new retirement plan advisor; therefore, are you providing sufficient and meaningful interaction for them to confidently stay with you?

 

Silence is a Killer

As your clients are being solicited, prospecting advisors are creating tiny moments of doubt, poking questions that make your clients stop and wonder, are we getting the best service? Are our fees reasonable? … Read More

/ by Craig Rosenthal

Retirement Plan Trends: 3 Ways Advisors Can Keep Clients Informed

 

When you live in an economy with historically low unemployment rates, the competition for top talent can be fierce. From student loan repayment programs to onsite day care to enhanced retirement benefits, employers are becoming more creative when offering incentive plans that persuade quality employees to choose them. It’s an employee’s market. Therefore, employers need to know what employees’ value and retirement plan advisors can help by knowing the important trends and keeping their retirement plan client’s informed.

Here are three ways retirement plan advisors can discuss competitive total rewards practices that recruit, reward, and keep great employees.

Offering an employer match

The average employer match is 4.7% of salary, which is a record high, according to Fidelity.[1] As an advisor, this could be an opportunity to discuss your clients’ current match formula and compare it to the national average and/or industry specific averages. When smart employees are comparing benefits, … Read More

/ by Craig Rosenthal

Advisor Business Management Dashboard – Profitability

[Part 4] Efficiency + Repeatability + Scalability = PROFITABILITY

Recap

Can you imagine doubling, tripling, or even quadrupling your advisory firm’s profitably? In a time of fee compression and shrinking margins, it seems that the only direction compensation is going is down. However, increasing your firm’s efficiency, repeatability, and scalability is the secret recipe to boosting profitability. In this article, we share how retirement plan advisors can accomplish exactly that.

Profitability

When you add up efficiency, repeatability, and scalability, it equates to profitability.

When the time it takes to run a report is significantly reduced because the data is right in-front of you, it makes for a more efficient use of your time, thus increasing internal profitability.

As you look at your client services, service partners, and investment screening processes, the more varied they are, the more they break down repeatability. Yet, if you use a dashboard … Read More

/ by Craig Rosenthal

Advisor Business Management Dashboard – Scalability

 

[Part 3] Efficiency + Repeatability + SCALABILITY = Profitability

Recap

Can you imagine doubling, tripling, or even quadrupling your advisory firm’s profitably? In a time of fee compression and shrinking margins, it seems that the only direction compensation is going is down. However, increasing your firm’s efficiency, repeatability, and scalability is the secret recipe to boosting profitability. In this special four-part article series, we are going to share how retirement plan advisors can achieve greater profitability. 

Scalability

After you have solved for efficiency and repeatability, it’s time to scale. Once your internal processes are running like a fine-oiled machine, it’s now possible to bring on 10, 20, 50 or more plans per year – if you want.

Scalability and profitability are not the same. However, it is a lot easier to increase profitability when you’ve solved for scalability.

Say you are preparing for an annual plan review meeting and … Read More

/ by Craig Rosenthal

Advisor Business Management Dashboard – Repeatability

 

[Part 2] Efficiency + REPEATABILITY + Scalability = Profitability

Recap

Can you imagine doubling, tripling, or even quadrupling your advisory firm’s profitability? In a time of fee compression and shrinking margins, it seems that the only direction compensation is going is down. However, increasing your firm’s efficiency, repeatability, and scalability is the secret recipe to boosting profitability. In this special four-part article series, we are going to share how retirement plan advisors can achieve greater profitability.

Repeatability

Repeatability is the core of an efficient process. Click here for Part 1 – Efficiency of this series. From investments to fee benchmarking, and everything in between, as a retirement plan advisor, your ability to sustain and grow your practice is dependent on being able to perform similar tasks, for multiple clients time after time.

So, when it comes to operating your own business, how repeatable are your internal processes?

Many times when speaking with advisory firms, we … Read More

/ by Craig Rosenthal

Advisor Business Management Dashboard – Efficiency

 

[Part 1] EFFICIENCY + Repeatability + Scalability = Profitability 

Can you imagine doubling, tripling, or even quadrupling your advisory firm’s profitability? In a time of fee compression and shrinking margins, it seems that the only direction compensation is going is down. However, increasing your firm’s efficiency, repeatability, and scalability is the secret recipe to boosting profitability. In this special four-part article series, we are going to share how retirement plan advisors can achieve greater profitability. 

Efficiency

Efficiency is the power to achieve more by doing less; and as a society, we have become much more efficient. For example, take a look at how you used to purchase office supplies. In years past, many of us would shop at our local office supply store. We got into our cars, drove to the store, wandered the aisles to find pens, paper, and ink cartridges; then we would wait in line to make the purchase, go … Read More