Author: Tom Hopkins

In sales, closing is the winning score, the bottom line, the point of it all. If you can’t close, you’re like a football team that can’t sustain a drive long enough to score. Find out how to use test closing questions and perhaps the most important skill in the art of selling.

We previously highlighted “Five Reasons to Have a Marketing Plan” to help guide your journey in achieving your goals as a financial professional. Now that you see the value in having a marketing road map in place, you may be asking yourself, “How do I write my own marketing plan?” Good news — Emerald is here to help. We have gathered our expertise from the past 25 years of service in the financial industry and broken down the process into seven easy steps.

As a financial advisor, it is essential for the success of your practice to start building subtle ways to self-promote you and your firm. In business, especially at the local level, this "positive opinion via osmosis" strategy is especially important because people like to know who they are dealing with.

Why every business — large or small, sole proprietorship or multi-employee corporation — should have one.

Although broker-dealers and investment advisors may have their own specific guidelines when it comes to advertising (you should refer to your firm's policies and procedures manual for the specifics), here are some things to keep in mind when crafting advertising and marketing material.

Why do some websites or pages appear at the top of a search list? Quite simply, they have been optimized according to the criteria of the search engine providing the list. By employing a marketing technique called search engine optimization (SEO), you may be able to improve the ranking of your website in keyword or keyphrase searches.