Financial advisors will have plenty of opportunity to further their education this week as Advisor Products and Advisors4Advisors host three webinars-- Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday at 4 p.m. Eastern Time.

Wednesday's webinar, "First Look: Redtail CRM's New Version," is part of Advisor Products' MarketingSmart Webinar Series, a monthly session about services offered by Advisor Products and its partners. In this webinar, Redtail Technology will unveil the new version of its flagship CRM product used by over 5,000 advisory firms.

Thursday's webinar, "A Low-Cost Portfolio Reporting Solution For Independent Advisors," will feature AssetBook CEO Rob Major. This session, part of the AdvisorsGoingIndependent Webinar Series, will demonstrate the benefits of AssetBook and how it can help new RIAs and smaller established firms easily and economically manage their portfolio reporting.

Friday's webinar, "Advisor Time Management," is part of the Financial Advisor Webinar Series, a well-known weekly, educational webinar series hosted by Advisors4Advisors. In this session, business coach Diane MacPhee will teach attendees how they can optimize their time to be more effective and productive.

While we normally try to avoid product pitches at the Financial Advisor Webinar Series, presenters at today's session on secure hardware for financial advisors were asked to talk about their products because that was the best way to tackle a topic so far afield from wealth management. And since last week's session explained the new liabilities that advisors now face if they don't keep their client's personal information secure, we needed to show advisors where they can find systems to help them improve security. Judging from the attendee comments, the change of approach worked just fine. The three presenters each had a different security solution for advisors, but advisory firms probably need all three to begin to create a secure environment for client data.

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Advisory firms that embed key business processes in their CRM software are more scalable, profitable, and competitive. In today's session of the Financial Advisor Webinar Series, Blane Warrene, a technology and operations consultant to financial advisors explained how advisors should document their workflows and integrate them to their CRM system and other key business tools.

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Going Paperless 2.0
Taking your firm's procedures online can improve efficiency and client service. Yet many firms struggle in going paperless because they do it piecemeal instead of embracing a systematic process. In our next webinar, Jo Day, managing partner of Trumpet Inc., will teach you the right way to integrate your firm’s documents, workflow processes, and software platforms. You'll learn to:

• Retrieve information based on how you naturally think and your role in the firm
• Achieve filing nirvana—speed and consistency
• Transform your client-meeting experience
• Cut quarterly report preparation time from days to hours

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With revenue slashed by the financial crisis, it's more important than ever for advisors to use technology to scale their businesses and operate more efficiently. In today's session of the Financial Advisor Webinar Series, advisors learned how to evaluate and implement practice management systems from one of the industry's leading experts, Dan Skiles, executive vice president of Shareholders Service Group.

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Actively Managing An ETF Portfolio In All Market Cycles
One major benefit of investing in ETFs is that you can participate in a sector's upside without the company-specific risk of individual stocks. While "a rising tide lifts all boats," if you get stuck investing near a market peak, your portfolio will undoubtably suffer.

In our next webinar, you'll learn how you can identify and profit from economic cycles. Robert Stein, who is managing partner of Astor Financial LLC and this week's presenter, specializes in economics-based investing. He uses economic indicators, namely unemployment, GDP, and money flows into and out of the stock market to identify changing economic cycles. In this session, he'll share his research and discuss the potential for double-dip recession. He'll also help you identify appropriate ETFs that would be poised to benefit.

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What's the best place on the Web to learn about ETFs? What sites can you depend on for the latest on tax issues? Which economists' blogs should follow regularly? In today's session of the Financial Crisis Webinar Series, attendees learned the answers to these questions and got a sneak peak of a new practice management website for advisors called advisors4advisors.com.

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Practice Management Tips For Advisors
Times are tough for independent financial advisors. Client retention and assets under management are down, and while you want to differentiate your firm to gain the many clients being lost by other firms, you also need to keep your expenses low. You can excel in this environment while keeping expenses low by better managing your firm and embracing the right technology solutions.

In this session of the Financial Crisis Webinar Series, Dan Skiles, executive vice president of Shareholders Service Group (SSG) will explain how you can use technology to steamline your firm's processes and better serve clients while using less resources. Skiles joined SSG this year after spending eight years at Charles Schwab & Co. where he was vice president of adviser technology. Formed in 2002, Shareholders Service Group serves nearly 500 independent registered investment advisers and advisory firms around the country with brokerage services and back office support.

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In today's session of the Financial Crisis Webinar Series, Peter Kaplan, CEO of Financial Productivity Group, and Bruce Moulton, Principal of Moulton Strategic Partners, explained to advisors the importance of documenting their firms' processes and workflows for better efficiency and client service. Kaplan and Moulton, who have implemented CRM systems at hundreds of independent advisory firms, discussed why a CRM system is the central piece of technology for any firm and explained key differences between web-based and locally-hosted systems.
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Using LinkedIn To Attract New Clients
In his March 27 appearance at the Financial Crisis Webinar Series, John Comer, a marketing coach to advisors who has over 28 years of experience, spoke about how you can use LinkedIn to find new prospects. Now he will explain how you can use LinkedIn to help prospects find you.

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With revenues from asset management fees slashed by the worst bear market in decades, financial advisors are struggling. And with Wall Street discredited by the financial crisis, this is the opportunity of a lifetime for independent advisors to build their client base, according to Jerry Lezynski of SEI Advisor Network, who spoke at this week’s session of the Financial Crisis Webinar Series. To survive—and once again thrive—says Lezynski, advisors must focus now on delegating, marketing, communicating, prospecting, and positioning, and they must take steps right now to improve communications, retain clients, and build new relationships.

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Hand-picking prospects using LinkedIn: Next week’s webinar session will look at how advisors can use LinkedIn to build their client base during the current economic downturn. The popular social networking site provides a great way to find new leads and build your online presence. John Comer, a marketing coach to advisors who has over 28 years of experience, recently conducted groundbreaking research into how advisors can use LinkedIn for marketing. He will present his findings at this session.

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Are you successfully implementing a plan to get through the economic downturn? Do you have any recommendations that could help your peers to retain clients, reduce costs, or land new prospects? If so, please share your ideas by commenting on this blog. 

In preparation for our webinar today at 4 p.m. EST about how you can better run your practice through the globally financial crisis, we conducted a survey in the last three days. Of the 287 advisors registered for today’s webinar, 147 responded to the survey and virtually all of them answered every question. Below see the poll questions exactly as they appeared in the survey, the statistical results, and my commentary.

Many advisors are having a difficult time, with, 43% saying the financial crisis has been bad or very bad for business. However, 16.5% of those polled say the crisis has been good or very good for business. The remaining large group of advisors (41%) say the financial crisis has been neither good nor bad for business.

While 44% of advisors surveyed said they are not cutting any expenses, more than one in five say they will be taking a pay cut. Half that number say they will be cutting staff salaries. (Keep in mind that many of those polled could be sole practitioners.) With 20.3% of advisors saying they are cutting expenses across the board and 44.2% saying they are cutting nothing, most advisors for now seem to be trying to ride out the crisis before slashing expenses.

Of the expenses we asked about, the second largest expense advisors say they will reduce is marketing. Keeping in mind that I own a marketing company serving advisors, most smart business owners would say that cutting marketing expenditures now would be a mistake. For independent advisors, cutting expenses on marketing now, when the Wall Street giants have been discredited, makes little sense. The large firms on Wall Street, which have always had by far the greatest market share in the retail advice market, are likely to see their clients leave en masse because so many clients have suffered devastating portfolio losses. It’s a great marketing opportunity for independent advisors who articulate how they are different from Wall Street brokers.

My strategy for recouping revenues lost due the decline in asset values under management is:

To seize the opportunity created by the financial crisis, 92% say they know they must acquire new clients, offer additional products and services, or do both. The challenge will be differentiating yourself from Wall Street’s legions. Our speakers at today’s webinar have specific ideas about how you can differentiate your business from other advisory firms. Scott Farnsworth's approach uses story telling. “Using stories to sell and to learn your clients’ stories can revolutionize professional selling,” says Farnsworth. “It uses a complete sequence of story exchanges between professional and prospect to sell—to sell more and to sell more often.

I know how I can use financial planning to increase my firm's revenue and grow my business.

One of the most important ways to differentiate your practice and provide real value is to offer more than just investment management advice. Offering financial planning advice deepens client relationships. Yet 25% of advisors polled admit not knowing how they can use planning to increase revenue. Our other speaker today, Dr. Linda Strachan, a senior VP at EISI, the largest planning software company in North America, will provide insights into how advisors can integrate planning into client engagements.