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President's Blog
Enhanced Marketing Support
At SagePoint, we have been rolling out new services and new technology - one innovation after another all year. Each of these new products are designed to either help our advisors grow their business or make doing business with SagePoint even easier. Now I can add premier marketing support to that list.
SagePoint recently engaged Forefield, our industry’s leading provider of marketing solutions, to provide our advisors with quality, professionally created, pre-approved marketing materials. SagePoint advisors now have access over 3,000 professionally created marketing resources, including ads, brochures, seminars, newsletters, client presentations, website content and more. Advisors can access these new marketing materials on our new Advisor Portal and customize each piece with their own photos, logos and even choice of colors. Forefield features a large assortment of newsletters, updated each week that can be printed by the advisors for mailing or automatically emailed to client lists provided by the advisors. All of these new marketing materials are already filed with and reviewed by FINRA and best of all - we’ve made this available to each of our representatives at no cost!
We are happy to be able to provide this as part of our ongoing effort to bring our advisors tools that can help them grow their business. Give our Recruiting Department a call at 866-462-4432 to check out the new Forefield marketing library and our other new business building tools.
Our advisor technology is turning heads in the industry
Prospective new advisors to our firm often ask me about our technology platforms. I then have the opportunity to trumpet both the quality and comprehensiveness of our various technology suites. While it is one thing for me to talk about how great our technology platforms are, it is a far greater testament to our technological advantages to have the story told by a third party.
On June 7th, InvestmentNews featured a story about our technology platforms, focusing in particular on our VISION2020 Advisor Portal. In addition to a great summary of this new platform, they also highlighted a number of the advanced features we’ve added to this resource, such as paperless office technologies, consolidated reporting, and integrated business tracking.
But perhaps most importantly, the article also features real advisors who use our technology on a daily basis commenting on the real impact our new platform has had on their businesses. Both our analytical and anecdotal feedback from advisors has been overwhelmingly positive.
If you’d like to learn more about our technology, I invite you to read the article for yourself. Also, our recruiters can provide you with access to a comprehensive tour of the VISION2020 Advisor Portal referred to in the article. Click here to set up a time to review our current technology platforms.
Our 2010 National Education Conference
I love to talk to advisors, understand their practice and learn what I can do, and what SagePoint Financial can do, to make them even more successful.
Well, last week I had more meaningful in-person conversations with advisors than anyone else in our industry thanks to our 2010 National Education Conference (NEC). Now I know a lot of firms host education conferences, but I doubt that many firms hold meetings like ours…meetings with almost 1,000 attendees. Meetings with nearly 120 educational breakout sessions for advisors on topics ranging from office automation, to income tax, to commercial real estate to productivity and innovation solutions to managing portfolio volatility to social media and much, much more. Meetings with educational sessions specifically for assistants, since we all know they are critically important to our office.
We attracted well known, respected speakers like Steve Forbes, Chairman and CEO of Forbes, Inc., Editor in Chief of Forbes magazine and one time presidential contender. With a deep interest in financial markets and a unique understanding of the financial advisory profession, Steve shed light on the state of our financial markets, the global economy and touched on the future of our industry.
My colleagues and I were able to spend time with advisors, building relationships, better understanding each advisor’s practice, vision and needs. I have a much deeper understanding of what our home office can do to even better serve our advisors and we’re already working on a number of enhancements from feedback we received at the conference.
At SagePoint Financial, our goal is to provide advisors with the back office support, innovative technology, unique education and meetings, tools and resources they need to better serve their clients and grow their practice. And our 2010 NEC was a unique opportunity for us to do all of this, and more, for our SagePoint Financial advisors.
2010 Meetings Update
I’m excited to announce that our 2010 Leaders Summit meeting will be held this year in Playa del Carmen, Mexico. The Leaders Summit is an invitation-only meeting for SagePoint Financial’s top advisors to network and exchange ideas with other top producers in the firm. The advisors that qualified to attend this year’s meeting will be receiving more detailed information soon, but I wanted to reward the advisors that are following my blog by making the first announcement here.
I would also like to encourage all SagePoint Financial advisors to register for the 2010 National Education Conference, May 11 – 15 in Orlando, Florida. I know this will be a spectacular meeting. We have more than 70 breakout sessions and 28 training sessions to secure your continuing education credits, learn more about the future of our industry and get you up to speed on all of the new technology we are rolling out this year. Our keynote speakers include the CEO of Forbes Media, Steve Forbes, and the esteemed economist from the National Center for Policy Analysis, Dr. Barry Asmus. This will be our first NEC since I joined the firm so I am looking forward to a great turnout and to spending time with all of our advisors.
If you’re not a SagePoint Financial Advisor but are interested in being a guest at our conference, send us an email. I’ll be hosting a lunch meeting for any prospective advisors attending our conference to meet other SagePoint Financial advisors and learn more about our firm, and I’d be delighted to see you there.
Our 2010 Women’s Conference in New Orleans
I am not a “blogger”. And this is my first “real,” regular blog entry. Not just on this blog, but on any blog and frankly, the prospect of regularly creating content that is worthy of your time seems a bit daunting. Nevertheless, I believe in abundant communication with our advisors and I’m hopeful this blog will be another tool for me to communicate with current advisors and prospective advisors as well. I intend to focus on news and events at SagePoint Financial but may occasionally veer into industry issues that I believe independent advisors should be considering.
I spent a large part of last week at one of most value-added educational opportunities available to independent female advisors today – our annual Women’s Conference. We partner with our two sister broker/dealers to provide meetings designed to help our female financial advisors bring their practice to the next level. You may be asking, “Why a Women’s conference?” Indeed, even a few of my female advisors attending our conference this week admitted they were initially uncomfortable with the notion of a conference exclusively for women. After all, we would never consider offering a Men’s conference. However, the opportunity to network and share experiences and ideas with other successful women makes this meeting one of the most valuable and enjoyable meetings they attend every year. Inspiration, camaraderie and education are just a few of the benefits my advisors receive from this event.
Our Women’s Conference is also unique because the majority of the content is determined and delivered by the attendees. From the keynote speakers and general sessions to the roundtable discussions focused on technology, business succession, transitioning to fee-based and other topics, our female advisors told us what they wanted to learn about and we listened. Many of the sessions and roundtables were led by our own SagePoint Financial advisors. Several women told me that the ideas they learn from their own colleagues often seem more useful and valuable than tips offered by professional speakers.
Every advisor I spoke with was genuinely enthused and energized by this conference and planned to encourage other female advisors to attend next year. Each of them was leaving with a new idea, a new contact or relationship that would help them become even more successful. And helping our advisors become more successful is what we are all about at SagePoint Financial.
Welcome to our new website
This new site is the public half of a much larger project of completely rethinking, redesigning and rebuilding our web presence. In the past, our website was a “one site fits alls” website for customers, prospects and our advisors. Now we have designed our public website with our prospective advisors in mind.
You will find fresh new content and new ideas such as streaming video, live chat and social network pages. In a few weeks, we will introduce a brand new website just for our affiliated advisors, also filled with fresh new content and innovative ideas. Many of the ideas within our new websites came from our own advisors. They told us what they needed, what they wanted to see and where they expected to find it. That’s how we do things here – we listen.
I hope you will take some time and look around. You’ll have an opportunity to meet some of our actual advisors and hear what they have to say. I think you will like what you see. Thanks again for visiting SagePointFinancial.com.
