Staying a Step Ahead

What do you do that keeps you a step ahead of your competition? Four recipients of NTSA’s inaugural Elite Advisor Award revealed their secret sauce and perspectives on maintaining a high level of success at a special workshop at the 403(b) Summit in Washington, D.C.

“If you have better answers than your competition, you will get the business, and referrals too,” said Bruce Allen of Old Dominion Insurance and Investments in Winchester, Va. It’s important to be accurate, and to be among the first to know about changes and new developments, Allen said. “It all comes down to the question, ‘Who do you trust?’ We want to be that trusted advisor,” Allen said.

Jill Snyder, of Brookfield, Wis.-based National Insurance Services, agreed. “Don’t get stale,” she advised. “Keep up to date, especially when it comes to Social Security and Medicare planning.” With 10,000 Baby Boomers turning 65 every day, presenting tremendous opportunity, Snyder averred, “you should be able to be the trusted source of guidance.”

Randy Aranowitz of the Kades-Margolis Corp. in Wayne, Pa., gave attendees a peek at the ways his firm uses technology to stand out. Kades-Margolis advisors use a simple and effective email to follow up on meetings with prospects and clients. The email resembles a thank-you card, and features a video message from the advisor, contact information and a link to the firm’s website where more information on a specific topic discussed in the meeting is posted. “The advisor can send the email from a smartphone,” said Aranowitz, “meaning that immediately after the meeting, the advisor can pull over and hit ‘send.’”

For Richard Dobson of American Financial Management, Ltd. in Cedar Falls, Iowa, it’s all about simplifying your message and putting things in terms that are easy for clients to understand. To illustrate, Dobson showed attendees how he uses an old-fashioned wooden folding yardstick in his client meetings, beginning with the ruler fully extended and collapsing it section by section to represent the retirement planning process — from dealing with the burden of student loan debt through to retirement. The yardstick can also be manipulated to simulate a yield curve or any other investment dynamic that changes over time.