Positioning, creating perceptions in the listener's mind, is an important aspect of marketing yourself. You must be perceived as "the best" at what you do for your particular marketplace. Every business grows and changes, and your pitch needs to grow and change with it.

What is your plan to grow your practice in 2012? Does it include participating in an industry coaching program? If it does not, perhaps you should reconsider.

Pleasure now is worth more to us than pleasure later. The choice to spend rather than save reflects a very human—and, some would say, American—quirk: a preference for immediate gratification over future gain. In other words, we get far more joy from spending now than from imagining a comfortable life tomorrow. What can neuroscience add? Are our spending patterns hard-wired? Can we ever turn a saver into a spender? New science unveils how our brain is hard-wired when it comes to spending—and how you can reboot it.

The number of advisors choosing to specialize in retirement income distribution continues to grow. Before you launch a marketing plan to hold yourself out as an income distribution specialist, take the time to become knowledgeable about this phase and the various strategies for converting accumulated assets into an income stream that will meet clients’ retirement needs. The Retirement Income Industry Association (RIIA) now offers a Retirement Management Analyst? designation. For more information, please visit the site.

We’ve addressed a number of marketing tips here on Advisorpod.com, and we’ve discussed retirement income distribution, but we’ve never discussed how those two topics intersect. The number of advisors choosing to specialize in retirement income distribution continues to grow. So how does an advisor hone his or her marketing messages and tactics to position his or her practice as a credible resource for this critical part of retirement planning?

Providing accurate feedback to your staff gives you the opportunity to develop specific performance goals and to create a plan for achieving them. The feedback process works best when it is formalized and standardized. In the November issue of AdvisorOne, Kirk Hulett, a Senior Vice President of Strategy and Practice Management for Securities America discusses some best practices for implementing a performance feedback process. By establishing this in your practice, it will result in motivated employees who know the right things to do to make your business successful.

Do you have a disaster recovery plan? Kirk Hulett, Sr. VP of Strategy and Practice Management for Securities America was recently mentioned in a Financial Planning blog article discussing steps to a disaster recovery plan for advisory firms. Hulett states all firms and advisors need to plan for anything that may trigger disruption to your business and serving your clients. In this article, 10 steps are shown on how to assist you and your firm in building a disaster recovery plan so you can be prepared should the unthinkable occur.

American Century Investments recently released their Financial Professionals Alternative Investments Study detailing how advisors are using alternative investments in their business. I encourage you to contact your American Century wholesaler for a copy of the study if you are interested in this topic. For more information, click on the link below.

The study found the use of alternative investment strategies to be widespread with 80% of advisors currently using with clients. The most popular strategies were precious metal and natural resource strategies which were being used by 40% of advisors using alternative strategies.

With that said, for me the most interesting data in the study is contained in the appendix when it provides details of how advisors responded to the survey based on average account size and asset under management (AUM) demographics. One might think the more successful the advisor the higher likelihood they are using alternative investment strategies and sophisticated products to implement those strategies. However, advisors with more than $100million in AUM having clients with average account sizes greater than $1million actually use less alternative investment strategies than their peers. In fact, advisors with more than $100million in AUM were statistically the least likely to use alternative investment strategies than any advisor demographic. So much for the notion that working with high net worth investors absolutely requires access to sophisticated alternative investment products.

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You are at a social event. Perhaps a wedding. You and your wife have been making small talk with the six strangers sitting at your table. After everyone exhausts anecdotes about their children, grandchildren, and local sports teams, the man next to you turns and poses the question, “So what do you do for work?”

”Staffing is the number one problem for advisors” says Jennifer Goldman, CFP, president of MyVirtualCOO.com. Advisors often come to her firm for help with their productivity but what they discover is that the real problem is the staff. Kirk Hulett, a senior vice president of strategy and practice management for Securities America and the author of two books on staffing stresses that a roles and responsibilities chart (R&R) can help you communicate reporting relationships, show relationships between jobs and create a vision for a successful future structure.