Aaron Hoos

Many small businesses are fueled by passion. They start because an entrepreneur has an idea (or is sick of working for a boss), they grow because their ideas solve a problem and somehow that solution is communicated to the marketplace.

Unfortunately, many small businesses fail… even ones that are seemingly successful and make profitable sales. The reason is, they’re simply existing day-by-day, sale-by-sale, without any real strategy or long-term vision to give their existence any direction.

If you’re an entrepreneur, answer these 100 small business strategy questions. The answers will help you to highlight areas of opportunity that you can exploit and areas of concern that you can mitigate. Bookmark this page and come back to it regularly to work through these questions every 3 to 6 months.

With your answers, create a list of to-dos that you can act on until you come back to these questions again.

1. What does your business do?
2. What does your business sell?
3. What does your business stand for?
4. What parts of your brand truly reflect your current business?
5. What parts of your brand do not (or no longer) reflect your current business?
6. What are the top 10 benefits your business provides?
7. Who is your perfect customer?
8. How are you adding value?
9. What are your products’ or services’ biggest flaws?
10. How do you define a lead?
11. Where are your leads coming from?
12. What demographic are your leads?
13. How are you creating leads?
14. How are your competitors creating leads?
15. How will lead creation change for your industry in the future?
16. How do you define a prospect?
17. What is your lead-to-prospect ratio?
18. What demographic are your prospects?
19. How is your prospect demographic different from your leads demographic?
20. How are you turning leads into prospects?
21. How are your competitors turning leads into prospects?
22. What objections do your prospects have?
23. What objections do you NOT have an answer for?
24. How do you define a customer?
25. What is your prospect-to-customer ratio (close rate)?
26. What demographic are your customers?
27. How is your customer demographic different from your prospect demographic?
28. How are you converting prospects into customers?
29. How are your competitors converting prospects into customers?
30. What has caused you to lose a sale?
31. How do you define an evangelist?
32. What is your customer-to-evangelist ratio?
33. What is your evangelist demographic?
34. How is your evangelist demographic different from your customer demographic?
35. How is your relationship with your customers?
36. What were your 3 most successful marketing campaigns?
37. What were your 3 least successful marketing campaigns?
38. What marketing and sales activities are you using in each stage of your sales funnel?
39. How do you measure company-wide success?
40. How do you measure personal and/or employee success?
41. How are you improving your relationship with your customers?
42. How can you improve the process for receiving and acting on feedback from customers?
43. How are you encouraging repeat sales?
44. How are you encouraging upsells?
45. Who else can use your products or services that you aren’t currently serving?
46. What is your business model?
47. What other peer-businesses use the same business model?
48. What can you learn from peer-businesses that use the same business model?
49. What other businesses (in other industries) use a similar business model?
50. What can you learn from businesses in other industries that use a similar business model?
51. Who are your top 3 competitors?
52. Who/what are your indirect competitors?
53. What does the most successful businesses in your industry do that you don’t do yet?
54. Why would someone buy from you instead of your competition?
55. When should someone buy from your competition instead of you?
56. What are your competitors doing differently?
57. What are your competitors doing better than you?
58. What are your competitors doing worse than you?
59. How are your relationships with your suppliers/vendors?
60. How can your supplier/vendor relationships be improved?
61. What does your organizational chart look like and what strengths/weaknesses are the result?
62. What are the next 3 roles you need to hire for?
63. What was the last thing you tested in your business?
64. When was the last time you tested a price change and what were the results?
65. What political changes do you see affecting your business/industry?
66. What economic changes do you see affecting your business/industry?
67. What social changes do you see affecting your business/industry?
68. What technological changes do you see affecting your business/industry?
69. What financial best practices have you implemented?
70. How have buying habits changed in your industry?
71. What trends are influencing buying habits?
72. How will buying habits change in the future?
73. How has your industry innovated in the past decade?
74. How has your business innovated in the past year?
75. Where does your business plan to innovate this coming year?
76. How are you investing in your business’ growth (i.e. innovation, new equipment, etc.)?
77. What is your plan to scale up your business?
78. If you had to get rid of 90% of your customers, what 10% would you keep?
79. If you kept 10% of your most profitable customers, what would that demographic look like?
80. How can you increase your ideal customer base?
81. How can you decrease your less-than-ideal customer base?
82. Where are people talking about your business online?
83. What are people saying about your business online?
84. What is your plan if your industry suddenly received a lot of bad press?
85. What is your plan if your business suddenly received a lot of bad press?
86. What is your plan if your marketing went viral and you suddenly had 10x the customers?
87. What contingency plans do you a have in place for natural disasters?
88. What would happen to your business if you were unable to work?
89. What has changed about your business since you started?
90. How has your income trended since you started?
91. How has your profit margin trended since you started?
92. What plans do you have to increase income next year?
93. What plans do you have to increase profits next year?
94. Where do you see your business in 1 year?
95. Where do you see your business in 5 years?
96. Where do you see your business in 10 years?
97. What strengths/assets can you leverage for growth?
98. Where are your blindspots?
99. What are the top 3 problems keeping you from advancing to the next level in business?
100. What about your business, industry, or customers keeps you awake at night?

Businesses need to be liquid. They need cash to pay vendors and staff so they can sell their stuff; they need cash to make strategic investments in growth.

Liquidity is huge. It doesn’t matter what kind of business you run. For example…

• A big business (like a manufacturer) needs to pay for its raw materials and marketing before it sells its first product.
• A small business (like a freelance writer) needs to pay his or her bills so they have a computer, word processing app, and internet connection to run their business.
• A real estate investor needs to be able to pursue new deals and to service debt or pay for repairs on a property.
• A capital markets investor needs to be able to invest in that great stock when the price is right.

In some ways (and especially in the early days of running a business), liquidity is more important than profitability. Yes, profitability is important but it doesn’t help if you’re not liquid.

MEASURE YOUR LIQUIDITY WITH THE CURRENT RATIO

So, how can you tell how liquid your business is? The current ratio is a great ratio to use. The current ratio is useful to help you monitor the liquidity of your business, the liquidity of any potential investment you’re going to invest in, and your own personal liquidity.

I should tell you that there are other measure of liquidity — the working capital ratio and the acid test ratio — but the current ratio is my favorite because it’s the easiest to remember while also being pretty accurate. (The other ratios are either less accurate or too complicated or time consuming to be useful).

The ratio goes like this:

Here’s how to understand the ratio:

The two components in the ratio…

• Current assets include anything the business owns that can be converted into cash or used up in the short term — such as cash, short term investments, and accounts receivables. Assets that cannot be quickly converted to cash (such as land and buildings) are not included.
• Current liabilities include anything that needs to be paid within the coming year — such as loans, accounts payables, and income taxes. Liabilities that are longer term (such as mortgages) are not included.

The ratio is derived by dividing current liabilities into current assets.

In simple language, what you’re trying to find out is: How many times does our assets cover our debts?. This tells you how much soon-to-be-cash will pay for your soon-to-be-debts. If you have enough soon-to-be-cash covering your soon-to-be-debts, you’re liquid.

If you don’t have enough soon-to-be-cash to cover your soon-to-be-debts, you’re illiquid. That means, you don’t have enough money to pay your supplies, you don’t have enough money to pay your staff, and you don’t have enough money to market your products. Businesses shut their doors because of liquidity problems!

So let’s look at some examples:

Let’s say you have a lemonade stand and you borrowed $5.00 from your mom to buy lemonade and disposable cups. And let’s say that you sold all of your lemonade and were either paid cash for it or you sold it on account and you’ll send over Bruno your ugly step-cousin to collect if they don’t pay. And in total, you sold $10.00 worth of lemonade.

Your current assets (cash and receivables) are $10.00 and your current liabilities (payables) are $5.00.

Here’s the equation…

And we’ll plug in our numbers…

So our equation looks like this…

To make this equation useful (and as you probably remember from math class), you need to know reduce it down to the lowest reducable denominator:

Now let’s express this equation as a ratio:

2:1

Congratulations! You’ve just discovered that the current ratio of your lemonade stand is 2:1.

That means your assets are worth TWICE what your liabilities are worth. It means for every dollar that you owe, you have $2.00. Good… you want to have more assets than liabilities.

But it does happen sometimes that your liabilities are worth more than your assets.

Let’s consider another situation — one that is all too common right now. Let’s say that you have a wallet full of credit cards and each one has a limit of $10,000. Over time, you end up maxing out each card. You only have a $250 in the bank account to get you through to next payday.

Plugging these numbers into the equation…

That reduces down to:

Or…

.0062:1

In other words, for every just-over-half-a-cent of current assets, you have a dollar of current liabilities. Yikes! I just threw up a little in my mouth. And if your brother-in-law calls you up and needs bail money fast, you won’t be able to help him.

Current ratio is important so valuable no matter whether you’re a business owner or investor or someone who wants to manage your finances a bit better.

If you are a business owner, this is an easy metric to calculate to monitor your liquidity. Just find out what your current assets are (that’s easy because you probably know what your cash on hand and your accounts receivables are) and divide that by your current liabilities (probably all of your payables and maybe any other short term loans you have).

Let’s look at a few business’ balance sheets to get some numbers and make our calculations. (I’m using some numbers from the balance sheets published in Yahoo Finance).

Apple (APPL) (From their annual balance sheet, published September 23, 2011)

So their current ratio is: 1.61:1

Therefore, Apple has 1.61 dollars of current assets (soon-to-be-cash) to cover every dollar of current liabilities (soon-to-be-debts).

Here’s another one:

Everyone loves to hate Research In Motion (RIMM) (From their annual balance sheet, filed March 2, 2012)

Their current ratio is 2.02:1. Even though they are much smaller and more repulsive than Apple, they can cover each dollar of short-term debt with $2.02 of current assets, which is better than Apple’s ratio of 1.61:1.

Or, let’s take Berkshire Hathaway (BRK-A) (From their annual balance sheet, published December 30, 2011)

So their current ratio is 2.42:1. In other words, for every dollar that they owe in the coming year (debt obligations, income tax, etc.), they can cover it with $2.42 in easy-to-convert-to-cash current assets.

Here’s one more that you might find interesting:

American Electric Power Company (AEP) (From their annual balance sheet published December 31, 2011)

Their current ratio is 0.63:1.

That’s right! For every dollar of current liability (of short term loans) they have only $0.63 of current assets. Now, it might not be the end of the world (and with utilities, people are pretty reliant on them so they’re pretty entrenched even if the owe money).

Want to learn even more? Here’s a useful video that lays it out nicely for you. This one is good if you’re a business…

… and this video is good if you’re an investor…

If you’re a business owner, your current ratio is easy to measure and will help you to see if you have the liquidity to pay your financial obligations.

If you’re an investor, you can use the current ratio of potential investments to make sure that they are liquid enough to stay in business and continue selling stuff.

A FEW MORE THINGS TO NOTE

• There are many ratios to use. Current ratio is just one of them and you shouldn’t use it as the ONLY measure.
• I’ve given numerous examples above from different industries. But it’s important to remember that if you want to compare businesses, you should really compare businesses from the same industry. It’s not useful to compare a company from one industry to a company from another industry because what’s healthy in one industry might not be healthy in another.

Okay, some of you will look at this blog post and nominate it as the boringest blog post of the year. But not me! I love this stuff! Here are 26 Financial Theory (ECON251) classes from Yale, along with a “table of contents” from each video.

FINANCIAL THEORY

ECON251 Financial Theory with John Geanakoplos
Download the course material for this course at Yale’s Open Course site.

Lecture 1: Why Finance?
[Click here and the video will open in a new window]
Video contents:
00:00 – Chapter 1. Course Introduction
10:16 – Chapter 2. Collateral in the Standard Theory
17:54 – Chapter 3. Leverage in Housing Prices
33:47 – Chapter 4. Examples of Finance
46:13 – Chapter 5. Why Study Finance?
50:13 – Chapter 6. Logistics
58:22 – Chapter 7. A Experiment of the Financial Market

Lecture 2: Utilities Endowments and Equilibrium
[Click here and the video will open in a new window]
Video contents:
00:00 – Chapter 1. Introduction
07:04 – Chapter 2. Why Model?
13:30 – Chapter 3. History of Markets
24:41 – Chapter 4. Supply and Demand and General Equilibrium
37:59 – Chapter 5. Marginal Utility
45:20 – Chapter 6. Endowments and Equilibrium

Lecture 3: Computer equilibrium
[Click here and the video will open in a new window]
Video contents:
00:00 – Chapter 1. Introduction
02:48 – Chapter 2. Welfare and Utility in Free Markets
16:52 – Chapter 3. Equilibrium amidst Consumption and Endowments
32:43 – Chapter 4. Anticipation of Prices
52:53 – Chapter 5. Log Utilities and Computer Models of Equilibrium

Lecture 4: Efficiency, Assets and Time
[Click here and the video will open in a new window]
Video contents:
00:00 – Chapter 1. Is the Free Market Good? A Mathematical Perspective
11:20 – Chapter 2. The Pareto Efficiency and Equilibrium
38:42 – Chapter 3. Fundamental Theorem of Economics
46:27 – Chapter 4. Shortcomings of the Fundamental Theorem
52:39 – Chapter 5. History of Mathematical Economics
01:00:21 – Chapter 6. Elements of Financial Models

Lecture 5: Present Value and the Real Rate of Interest
[Click here and the video will open in a new window]
Video contents:
00:00 – Chapter 1. Implications of General Equilibrium
03:08 – Chapter 2. Interest Rates and Stock Prices
22:06 – Chapter 3. Defining Financial Equilibrium
33:41 – Chapter 4. Inflation and Arbitrage
43:35 – Chapter 5. Present Value Prices
57:44 – Chapter 6. Real and Nominal Interest Rates

Lecture 6: Irving Fisher’s Impatience Theory of Interest
[Click here and the video will open in a new window]
Video contents:
00:00 – Chapter 1. From Financial to General Equilbrium
06:44 – Chapter 2. Applying the Principle of No Arbitrage
23:50 – Chapter 3. The Fundamental Theorem of Asset Pricing
39:25 – Chapter 4. Effects of Technology in Fisher Economy
51:31 – Chapter 5. The Impatience Theory of Interest
01:06:48 – Chapter 6. Conclusion

Lecture 7: Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice and Collateral, Present Value and the Vocabulary of Finance
[Click here and the video will open in a new window]
Video contents:
00:00 – Chapter 1. Introduction
01:23 – Chapter 2. Contracts in Merchant of Venice
20:23 – Chapter 3. The Doubling Rule
36:07 – Chapter 4. Coupon Bonds, Annuities, and Perpetuities
54:24 – Chapter 5. Mortgage
59:15 – Chapter 6. Applications of Financial Instruments

Lecture 8: How a Long-Lived Institution Figures an Annual Budget. Yield
[Click here and the video will open in a new window]
Video contents:
00:00 – Chapter 1. Yale’s Budget Set
03:37 – Chapter 2. Analysis of Yale’s Expenditures and Endowment
31:51 – Chapter 3. Yield to Maturity and Internal Rate of Return
51:52 – Chapter 4. Assessing Performance of Coupon Bond

Lecture 9: Yield Curve Arbitrage
[Click here and the video will open in a new window]
Video contents:
00:00 – Chapter 1. Defining Yield
09:07 – Chapter 2. Assessing Market Interest Rate from Treasury Bonds
35:46 – Chapter 3. Zero Coupon Bonds and the Principle of Duality
50:31 – Chapter 4. Forward Interest Rate
01:10:05 – Chapter 5. Calculating Prices in the Future and Conclusio

Lecture 10: Dynamic Present Value
[Click here and the video will open in a new window]
Video contents:
00:00 – Chapter 1. Dynamic Present Values
08:49 – Chapter 2. Marking to Market
39:53 – Chapter 3. Mortgages and Backward Induction
50:42 – Chapter 4. Remaining Balances and Amortization
54:52 – Chapter 5. Weaknesses in the U.S. Social Security System

Lecture 11: Social Security
[Click here and the video will open in a new window]
Video contents:
00:00 – Chapter 1. Introduction
03:53 – Chapter 2. The Development of the U.S. Social Security System
19:16 – Chapter 3. Economic Imbalances in Social Security
38:48 – Chapter 4. Root Causes of Income Transfer in Social Security
01:05:21 – Chapter 5. Privatization of U.S. Social Securit

Lecture 12: Overlapping Generations Models of the Economy
[Click here and the video will open in a new window]
Video contents:
00:00 – Chapter 1. Introduction to the Overlapping Generation Model
12:59 – Chapter 2. Financial and General Equilibrium in Social Security
26:37 – Chapter 3. Present Value Analysis of Social Security
59:24 – Chapter 4. Real Rate of Interest and Social Securit

Lecture 13: Demography and Asset Pricing: Will the Stock Market Decline when the Baby Boomers Retire?
[Click here and the video will open in a new window]
Video contents:
00:00 – Chapter 1. Stationarity and Equilibrium in the Overlapping Generations Model
16:38 – Chapter 2. Evaluating Tobin’s Thoughts on Social Security
35:07 – Chapter 3. Birth Rates and Stock Market Levels
01:02:30 – Chapter 4. Philosophical and Statistical Framework of Uncertainty

Lecture 14: Quantifying Uncertainty and Risk
[Click here and the video will open in a new window]
Video contents:
00:00 – Chapter 1. Expectation, Variance, and Covariance
19:06 – Chapter 2. Diversification and Risk Exposure
33:54 – Chapter 3. Conditional Expectation
53:39 – Chapter 4. Uncertainty in Interest Rates

Lecture 15: Uncertainty and the Rational Expectations Hypothesis
[Click here and the video will open in a new window]
Video contents:
00:00 – Chapter 1. The Rational Expectations Hypothesis
12:18 – Chapter 2. Dependence on Prices in a Certain World
24:42 – Chapter 3. Implications of Uncertain Discount Rates and Hyperbolic Discounting
46:53 – Chapter 4. Uncertainties of Default

Lecture 16: Backward Induction and Optimal Stopping Times
[Click here and the video will open in a new window]
Video contents:
00:00 – Chapter 1. Calculating Default Probabilities
14:58 – Chapter 2. Relationship Between Defaults and Forward Rates
28:09 – Chapter 3. Zermelo, Chess, and Backward Induction
36:48 – Chapter 4. Optimal Stopping Games and Backward Induction
01:06:47 – Chapter 5. The Optimal Marriage Problem

Lecture 17: Callable Bonds and the Mortgage Prepayment Option
[Click here and the video will open in a new window]
Video contents:
00:00 – Chapter 1. Introduction to Callable Bonds and Mortgage Options
12:14 – Chapter 2. Assessing Option Value via Backward Induction
42:44 – Chapter 3. Fixed Rate Amortizing Mortgage
57:51 – Chapter 4. How Banks Set Mortgage Rates for Prepayers

Lecture 18: Modeling Mortgage Prepayments and Valuing Mortgages
[Click here and the video will open in a new window]
Video contents:
00:00 – Chapter 1. Review of Mortgages
03:20 – Chapter 2. Complications of Refinancing Mortgages
19:26 – Chapter 3. Non-contingent Forecasts of Mortgage Value
28:40 – Chapter 4. The Modern Behavior Rationalizing Model of Mortgage Value
54:07 – Chapter 5. Risk in Mortgages and Hedging

Lecture 19: History of the Mortgage Market: A Personal Narrative
[Click here and the video will open in a new window]
Video contents:
00:00 – Chapter 1. Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Mortgage Securities Market
17:01 – Chapter 2. Collateralized Mortgage Obligations
22:44 – Chapter 3. Modeling Prepayment Tendencies at Kidder Peabody
35:40 – Chapter 4. The Rise of Ellington Capital Management and the Role of Hedge Funds
52:52 – Chapter 5. The Leverage Cycle and the Subprime Mortgage Market
01:13:51 – Chapter 6. The Credit Default Swap
01:18:36 – Chapter 7. Conclusion

Lecture 20: Dynamic Hedging
[Click here and the video will open in a new window]
Video contents:
00:00 – Chapter 1. Fundamentals of Hedging
15:38 – Chapter 2. The Principle of Dynamic Hedging
24:26 – Chapter 3. How Does Hedging Generate Profit?
43:48 – Chapter 4. Maintaining Profits from Dynamic Hedging
54:08 – Chapter 5. Dynamic Hedging in the Bond Market
01:10:30 – Chapter 6. Conclusion

Lecture 21: Dynamic Hedging and Average Life
[Click here and the video will open in a new window]
Video contents:
00:00 – Chapter 1. Review of Dynamic Hedging
09:15 – Chapter 2. Dynamic Hedging as Marking-to-Market
19:55 – Chapter 3. Dynamic Hedging and Prepayment Models in the Market
30:50 – Chapter 4. Appropriate Hedges against Interest Rate Movements
01:05:15 – Chapter 5. Measuring the Average Life of a Bon

Lecture 22: Risk Aversion and the Capital Asset Pricing Theorem
[Click here and the video will open in a new window]
Video contents:
00:00 – Chapter 1. Risk Aversion
03:35 – Chapter 2. The Bernoulli Explanation of Risk
12:38 – Chapter 3. Foundations of the Capital Asset Pricing Model
22:15 – Chapter 4. Accounting for Risk in Prices and Asset Holdings in General Equilibrium
54:11 – Chapter 5. Implications of Risk in Hedging
01:09:40 – Chapter 6. Diversification in Equilibrium and Conclusio

Lecture 23: The Mutual Fund Theorem and Covariance Pricing Theorems
[Click here and the video will open in a new window]
Video contents:
00:00 – Chapter 1. The Mutual Fund Theorem
03:47 – Chapter 2. Covariance Pricing Theorem and Diversification
25:19 – Chapter 3. Deriving Elements of the Capital Asset Pricing Model
40:25 – Chapter 4. Mutual Fund Theorem in Math and Its Significance
52:36 – Chapter 5. The Sharpe Ratio and Independent Risks
01:04:19 – Chapter 6. Price Dependence on Covariance, Not Variance

Lecture 24: Risk, Return, and Social Security
[Click here and the video will open in a new window]
Video contents:
00:00 – Chapter 1. Testing the Capital Asset Pricing Model
14:08 – Chapter 2. Evaluation of Fund Management Performance Using CAPM
22:30 – Chapter 3. Reassessing Assets within Social Security
53:04 – Chapter 4. Reconciling Democratic and Republican Views on Social Security
59:32 – Chapter 5. Geanakoplos’s Personal Annuitized Average Wage Securities
01:08:48 – Chapter 6. The Black-Scholes Model

Lecture 25:The Leverage Cycle and the Subprime Mortgage Crisis
[Click here and the video will open in a new window]
Video contents:
00:00 – Chapter 1. Assumptions on Loans in the Subprime Mortgage Market
18:27 – Chapter 2. Market Weaknesses Revealed in the 2007-2009 Financial Crisis
29:00 – Chapter 3. Collateral and Introduction to the Leverage Cycle
38:53 – Chapter 4. Contrasts between the Leverage Cycle and CAPM
43:36 – Chapter 5. Leverage Cycle Theory in Recent Financial History
01:03:55 – Chapter 6. Negative Implications of the Leverage Cycle
01:14:14 – Chapter 7. Conclusion

Lecture 26: Utilities Endowments and Equilibrium
[Click here and the video will open in a new window]
Video contents:
00:00 – Chapter 1. Introduction
02:15 – Chapter 2. Understanding Leverage
13:45 – Chapter 3. Supply and Demand Effects on Interest Rates and Leverage
21:52 – Chapter 4. Impatience and Volatility on Setting Leverage
34:48 – Chapter 5. Bad News, Pessimism, Price Drops, and Leverage Cycle Crashes
48:01 – Chapter 6. Can Leverage Be Monitored?

From time to time I review helpful resources for my readers — basically the stuff that I put on my bookshelf or in my list of bookmarks; the resources I would use to rebuild my business if it ever burned to the ground.

(Note: These are NOT paid endorsements. I don’t receive any financial incentive or affiliate income for doing these).

Just last night I finished reading 101 Success Tips and Strategies for Financial Advisors by Rosemary Smyth.

Rosemary is a well-qualified coach who works with professionals in the finance sector. (We originally connected through Twitter — follow her at @RosemarySmyth.)

101 Success Tips and Strategies for Financial Advisors is an easy-to-read book of ideas and insights written for financial advisors to guide them through specific situations and challenges that they will face throughout their career.

Her book starts at the very beginning of a financial advisor’s career with tips on completing your designation and writing a business plan and getting a mentor. Then, following the typical career path of a financial advisor (from rookie to advisor then senior advisor then manager) she provides an enormous volume of ideas for just about anything a financial advisor would face.

I said the book is easy to read but don’t let that mislead you. Rosemary has jam-packed ideas and advice into this book that you WILL use every single day of your career. It’s 101 chapters of solid content in a 116 page resource.

It’s one of those books you can read cover to cover to get a bunch of good ideas or you can dip into one or two relevant chapters when you encounter a specific situation in your financial advisory practice.

Waaaay back when I was starting out as a financial advisor, I would have bookmarked and highlighted several chapters, especially “Five Ways to Build a Referral Network with Centres of Influence” and “Ten Tips for Better Networking”.

And even though I’m no longer a financial advisor, I’m still closely connected to the finance industry and found other chapters helpful in my business today, such as: “Three Tips for Telling Successful Stories”, “Five Steps to Find Balance at Work” and “Top Five Attributes of High-Performing Advisors”.

Here are some other favorite chapters (which made me think of specific advisors or times in my own career when this information would have been particularly useful):

• Three Steps to Segmenting Your Clients
• Five Criteria for Buying a Book of Business
• Ten Tips When Receiving Feedback
• Top Five Exit Interview Questions
• Four Tips When Supporting Charitable Events
• Tips for Transition Planning
• Ten Items to Consider When Choosing Your Business Partner
• Five Tips for a Better Advisor-Assistant Relationship
• Five Tips to Do Less and Accomplish More

The price is ridiculously low for the value of the content. You can read one chapter, put it into practice, and earn back in less than an hour. I’m not joking.

Get the book. Read it. Read it again. Use it to grow your financial practice…

101 Tips and Strategies for Financial Advisors by Rosemary Smyth

If you are a financial advisor, watch the video below to discover how to make your marketing more effective using sales funnel strategy.

Once you’re doe the video, click here for more information about sales funnel strategy.