Articles Written by Jon Henschen

Seven Recruiting Sins

by Jonathan Henschen, CFS and featured in Broker Dealer Journal
March, 2006:

My first year recruiting was baptism by fire. No formalized training or guidance, just get out there and figure it out. As with any learning curve, however, I quickly learned what works and what results only in futility. The purpose of the “Seven Recruiting Sins” is to share principles, practices and behaviors that broker/dealers can use to avoid mistakes and dramatically improve their recruiting results.

There was a time when I’d go along and MC home office visits by prospective advisors with an insurance-based broker/dealer. My first couple of prospects spent about 20 minutes with the B/D’s president. By the fourth visit, the president decided he was too busy to spend time with mere prospects.

Characteristics of Top Producers

by Jonathan Henschen, CFS and featured in ProducersWeb
January, 2006:

Success is a journey, not a destination. Top producers live that credo because it enables them to excel while enjoying what they do, feel motivated, energized and satisfied.
After consulting with a wide variety of advisors, as I do, certain personal characteristics have inevitably emerged. And it’s typically those characteristics that differentiate top producers from the others. Now, the term top producer is relative, since advisors producing $200,000 in Wyoming can be every bit as successful as advisors producing $500,000 in San Francisco or New York City. So we’ll leave the quantitative definition of top producer open to your interpretation; instead, we’ll detail these eight qualitative personal characteristics of highly successful financial services professionals.

Strength in Numbers

by Jonathan Henschen, CFS and featured in Investment Advisor
January, 2006:

In your search to find business approaches that can make your practice stand out, you may have found that real value is more elusive than ever as our industry becomes increasingly commoditized.

There are exceptions to every rule, however, and while our recruiting firm places advisors with over 50 broker/dealers nationwide, some of the real jewels we contract with are a dozen or so producer groups.

What are producer groups, you ask? Simply put, producer groups are likeminded advisors doing business through carefully selected independent broker/ dealers. Though producer groups grew out of several different models, the two most common types are:
Office of Supervisory Jurisdiction ( OSJ) groups,