I’ve been writing about improving the design of your marketing materials for over six months. I’ve covered everything from designing your logo to creating a website. I would like to take a moment and briefly review the topics I’ve covered and the importance of why financial advisors should work with a graphics designer.

Are you a financial services supplier or an architect? Your clients may be viewing you as one or the other. When it comes to building homes (or financial plans) the raw material supplier and the architect both play a significant role in the construction of a home. Neither is necessarily bad or good, better or worse. They have very different roles to play, and they have very different perspectives.

When conducting prospecting events, location selection is a vital piece of the marketing puzzle and can have a great influence on its success as well as failure. With that said, we know that the entire outcome of the event is not solely based on the location as other factors such as presentation, topic, demographics etc. are vital as well. But the location selection should not be taken lightly or discounted.

The purpose for PowerPoints has been lost on many financial professionals because of those presenters’ own shortcomings at presenting. For many that do presentations wrong, the idea of putting together a long deck of beautiful slides that are extremely wordy automatically makes them think the presentation will be well received. The amount of time preparing for what is really important— practicing the words you use and how you use them—has gone by the wayside.

Every home needs a solid foundation. The same holds true for financial plans. When it comes to constructing a new home, one of the first crews on sight is the excavation team. They dig and lay the foundation. The foundation determines the long-term stability of the home to be built on top of it.

A question some clients raise is that they’ve been told that indexed universal life policies won’t perform over the long term, in other words the policy performance isn’t as rosy as illustrated. Before AG 49, many producers over-illustrated the power of IUL, and today those new guidelines help temper some of the more outrageous claims. However, many carriers are finding unique ways to enhance policy performance by reducing the costs to buy the indexing options.

Almost any business would benefit from their clients singing their praises in a public place. Imagine if you could create walking billboards for your company, spreading your message when you are not around to do it yourself. They could infiltrate social groups that you may have been cut out from entering.

One way to make a bad first impression is by misusing fonts and typefaces. This is especially true when it comes to the financial and insurance world. If you come off as unprofessional, the client will not trust you. Trust is key for financial advisors.

There's a store in my neighborhood with a big sign above the front entrance that reads "Home Improvement." Many guests enter. Very few buy anything. Almost no one returns after his or her first visit. No one refers anyone else to visit either. You may be thinking yourself, “that store will not be in business very long.”

Selling indexed universal life over the phone is relatively easy if you have access to products that overcome the big objections to buying life insurance. The first objection to IUL that you’ll typically hear is that it is expensive. Here's why IUL isn't as expensive as your prospects think...