For the past several months we have been surveying advisors about their marketing programs. When we ask them which marketing tools they use, it amazes us that only about 21% use a client newsletter.At a recent conference for financial advisors, we heard from several elite advisors on the subject: One said, “I had an existing client transfer an additional $700,000 IRA account to me after reading an article in my newsletter this spring about the charitable IRA strategy allowed by the Pension Protection Act.”Another said, “We have a top prospect who received our monthly newsletter for almost 18 months before they moved their accounts to us.”We heard from another advisor, “I started with about 100 newsletters a month and now I’m up to over 250. It’s my primary means of marketing. I am averaging over 3 new accounts a month and each new account is over $300,000.”So why don’t you do a newsletter?They don’t work. It’s too hard. I can’t write. I never got around to it. We’ve heard them all. Let’s look at just a couple of reasons why you should make newsletters a core part of your marketing and how you can easily add a newsletter to your marketing without multiplying your staff.1. Clients are dissatisfied.31% of financial advisors believe that their clients are extremely or very dissatisfied with them. 40% of wealthy respondents reported some level of dissatisfaction because their advisor was not proactively maintaining contact and 11% stated that their advisors were difficult to reach.(Phoenix Wealth Management Survey, August 2002, Net worth of $1M+ excluding debt and primary residence; Financial advisors who manage at least $50 million of assets and have 10+ years experience)For advisors intent on improving their showing in this realm, excellent client service appears to begin with a high level of client contact. As a snapshot of the industry standard today, and perhaps an indication of where there is the most room for improvement, nearly half of high net worth investors claimed to be either somewhat or fully dissatisfied with the level of contact they have with their financial advisors. Only 55% of investors stated that they are somewhat or completely satisfied with the amount of contact they have with their primary financial advisors.Satisfied clients hear from their primary financial advisors on average more than 28 times per year, or better than twice per month. This contact can either be in person, over the telephone, or in personal correspondence through the mail or electronically. On the flip side, dissatisfied clients hear from their primary advisors less than 17 times per year.The most telling statistic about the vital importance of client contact is that advisors’ income runs directly parallel with the amount of time they spend speaking or meeting with their clients. Advisors who spend two-thirds of their time with clients have an average income of $160,000 annually. Those who spend between one and two-thirds of their time with clients average $50,000 and those who spend less than one-third of their time with clients average only $30,000.(Tiburon Strategic June 3, 2005)2. Position yourself to KO the competition.Largely due to these rates of dissatisfaction, nearly half of investors have given recent consideration to changing their primary financial advisors. Specifically, 43% of investors responded that they had recently considered a change, whereas 57% stated they had not been considering a change in the near future.(Tiburon June 3, 2005)The landscape is covered with competition. How do you stand out and attract the kind of ideal clients that will make your business thrive? Give the customer what they are looking for. It ain’t rocket science. Clients today are looking for answers. They are smothered with retirement, IRA, estate planning, long-term care planning, college funding and tax issues. This morning your best prospect woke up and wanted an answer to his problems and not a financial product. Give them what they want. You need to be a problem solver. You need to position yourself as the leading expert in your target market. Step One is to tell the audience how you can help them solve their challenges. Isn’t that the point of a good newsletter? It is relevant to the target market in terms of content and it educates them about their financial concerns while demonstrating your expertise in solving those problems. Voila – you are their problem solver.Newsletters made easy.If you are like most financial advisors you have two to three hundred clients in your book. You also know that if you want to make an impression you need to have a consistent process for delivering the newsletter. Finally, you need to make sure the newsletter is getting read, the probability of which you can increase through branding so your clients know the newsletter is from a trusted source. And finally, you need to make a personal connection, so you’d better make sure it’s personally addressed. Oh, did I mention you’ll need to have 3 or 4 articles a month for your newsletter.Before you hit the panic button, there is a solution – BuildYourMarket.com [http://www.buildyourmarket.com] can handle all of this for you. Every month, they create a professionally designed and written 4 color newsletter with content that speaks to boomers and seniors. Each newsletter has a personal message from you addressed to the client or prospect.In case you’re thinking, I’d like to write something about what’s going on in our business, the answer is yes, you can customize as little or as much of the content as you desire.Now what’s your excuse?
What We Have Here Is A Failure To Communicate
The results of this past election proved once again that the Democrats had a golden opportunity to capitalize on the failings of the Trump Presidency but, fell short of a nation wide mandate. A mandate to seize the gauntlet of the progressive movement that Senator Sanders through down a little over four years ago. The opportunities were there from the very beginning even before this pandemic struck. In their failing to educate the public of the consequences of continued Congressional gridlock, conservatism, and what National Economic Reform’s Ten Articles of Confederation would do led to the results that are playing out today.. More Congressional gridlock, more conservatism and more suffering of millions of Americans are the direct consequences of the Democrats failure to communicate and educate the public. Educate the public that a progressive agenda is necessary to pull the United States out of this Pandemic, and restore this nations health and vitality.
It was the DNC’s intent in this election to only focus on the Trump Administration. They failed to grasp the urgency of the times. They also failed to communicate with the public about the dire conditions millions have been and still are facing even before the Pandemic. The billions of dollars funneled into campaign coffers should have been used to educate the voting public that creating a unified coalition would bring sweeping reforms that are so desperately needed. The reality of what transpired in a year and a half of political campaigning those billions of dollars only created more animosity and division polarizing one extreme over another.
One can remember back in 1992 Ross Perot used his own funds to go on national TV to educate the public on the dire ramifications of not addressing our national debt. That same approach should have been used during this election cycle. By using the medium of television to communicate and educate the public is the most effective way in communicating and educating the public. Had the Biden campaign and the DNC used their resources in this way the results we ae seeing today would have not created the potential for more gridlock in our government. The opportunity was there to educate the public of safety protocols during the siege of this pandemic and how National Economic Reform’s Ten Articles of Confederation provides the necessary progressive reforms that will propel the United States out of the abyss of debt and restore our economy. Restoring our economy so that every American will have the means and the availability of financial and economic security.
The failure of the Democratic party since 2016 has been recruiting a Presidential Candidate who many felt was questionable and more conservative signals that the results of today has not met with the desired results the Democratic party wanted. Then again? By not fully communicating and not educating the public on the merits of a unified progressive platform has left the United States transfixed in our greatest divides since the Civil War. This writers support of Senator Bernie Sanders is well documented. Since 2015 he has laid the groundwork for progressive reforms. He also has the foundations on which these reforms can deliver the goods as they say. But, what did the DNC do, they purposely went out of their way to engineer a candidate who was more in tune with the status-quo of the DNC. They failed to communicate to the public in educating all of us on the ways our lives would be better served with a progressive agenda that was the benchmark of Senators Sanders Presidential campaign and his Our Revolution movement. And this is way there is still really no progress in creating a less toxic environment in Washington and around the country.
How to Calculate Nutrition Data Using Excel or Open Office Calc
EU directive 1169/2011 comes into full effect on the 13th of December 2016. The first phase of this directive came into effect in 2014 on December 13th but the second requires nutrition data which begs the question of how to calculate nutrition data.The first phase of this regulation required that all ingredients on labels needed to include allergen information within the ingredient list. Prior to this regulation, it was legally acceptable to include allergen information in a separate area of your label.The new regulations simply require allergens to be highlighted within the single ingredient list for the product but ingredients also need to be stated in quantitative order.Quantitative order simply means the largest constituent ingredient must be indicated first, then the second largest and so on. The percentages of these ingredients should also be included.There are several ways highlighting ingredients can be achieved; Users can use bold text underline text colour text or italic textThere are 14 allergens that must be indicated on labelling if they are present within the ingredients of the product. These include wheat or oats or any other cereal containing gluten and also include milk, eggs, fish, crustaceans, molluscs to name a few.Another aspect of the legislation was to harmonise the legibility of text on food labels.Historically, the text could be incredibly difficult to read as manufacturers crammed as much information into as small a section of the label as possible so as to maximise the marketing potential of the rest of the label.The new regulations require that all text must be legible with a specific height of the letter “x” in the font no smaller than 1.2 millimetres. In layman’s terms, that means that the standard Arial or Times New Roman font needs to be 6.5 points and size.The second phase of the regulations coming into force this December requires that nutrition data is supplied with all pre-packaged food so that consumers can make choices regarding the nutrition within the food they buy.The law stipulates that this information must be conveyed to the customer per 100 grams.It is also possible to convey the information additionally per serving so, for example, a sandwich would constitute a serving so a food producer could provide the information based on the entire sandwich. The food producer can also indicate nutrition values in a portion, for example, a biscuit or a small piece of chocolate. But the food producer must also provide the information in a per 100g format in all instances.How to Calculate Nutrition Data
In order to calculate the nutrition values of prepackaged food for sale to the public food production businesses need to know the nutrition values for the constituent ingredients within their product. Perhaps the best way to demonstrate how to calculate nutrition data is to give an example; a ham and mustard sandwich.A ham and mustard sandwich might consist of four ingredients; we will have the bread, ham, mustard, and margarine or butter to make a sandwich. Each of these ingredients will be incorporated along the lines of a recipe; that is to say, there will be a specific weight of each product to make up a standard product.Food manufacturers need to start with the basic data for the nutrition for each of the ingredients – as mentioned, the legislation requires that nutrition data is provided per 100 grams. As all manufacturers are required to do this most food producing companies should be able to obtain that information directly from the packaging of the products that they buy in or by speaking with their supplier.In our example, the food producer could tabulate the data from the constituent ingredients into a table. The information that must be conveyed includes energy in both kilojoules and kilocalories; they must also convey total fat, saturated fat, carbohydrates, sugar, protein, and salt – all in grams.Food producers can also indicate monounsaturated fat, polyunsaturated fats, polyols and starch (which are carbohydrates) and fibre if they wish to do so.The order of the nutrients is specific and must be adhered to comply with the regulations.Once the table of data is prepared per 100 grams for all of the ingredients, the food producer needs to understand the weight of each product used in the recipe to make the sandwich. In this example, the food producer would need to know the weight of two slices of bread (let’s say 60 grams), the ham they use (e.g. 30 grams), 10 grams of mustard 5 grams of margarine.Once this has been done a simple calculation is applied to each of the constituent ingredients to determine how many calories, how much fat, saturated fat etc. is present in the recipe. The calculation will be to divide the per 100g nutrition data by 100 then multiply that by the weight of that constituent in the ingredient.E.g. If 100g of ham is 350 calories, divided by 100 is 3.5 calories per gram. 3.5 calories per gram x 30 grams used in the recipe is 105 calories.Once this is complete, the food manufacturer will have an accurate indication of the total nutrition data for the ham and mustard sandwich by simply adding the values for each constituent ingredient together as a total for the recipe.And that is how to calculate nutrition data using Microsoft Excel or Open Office Calc.Right now, food manufacturers across the UK are facing a huge challenge in achieving the objectives set out in the regulations and they need to address them very quickly if they have not already.