Marketing and Management Tips For Retirement Plan Providers.

I have been very lucky in my career. It has nothing to do with intelligence or good looks or being pushed by the right people. I've been lucky because I've been able to reinvent myself and some- times turn lemons into lemonade. Ambition and knowing what you want to do with your life goes a long way and that's why I was able to build a national ERISA practice from scratch. I have never taken a management or marketing course in school, except I learned a lot in the school of hard knocks. So this article is about free mar- keting and management tips to retirement plan providers.

Don't give up. 

If you start a retirement plan practice, it can be frustrating. Like I always say about thing in my life, "If it wasn't a struggle, it wasn't any fun". Building a retirement plan practice isn't easy because a stash of clients isn't going to fall into your lap. When it comes to building a practice, the one thing you can never yield to is disillusionment.

I was disillusioned many times in life; I think my three years at law school was 6 months of hope followed by 2 � years of disillusionment. I let some of the bad things that happened to me there really affect me and I did it to the detriment of my grades and friendships in law school.

Getting clients isn't easy and some of the most frustrating people you meet are potential clients who will accept the fact that they are being ripped off by their current providers and still won't give you the time of day.

It's ok to be disillusioned at times, but don't let it paralyze you or sidetrack you in building your practice.

I always say that the only reason I ever had any success is my ambition and will to persevere. I'm not the smartest or the best, I just will never quit. 5 years after starting my own practice, it's still a struggle and like I stated in the first paragraph, it has been a lot of fun.

Tread Carefully with Plan Provider Referrals. 

Watch who you refer.

"When I introduce you, I'm gonna say, "This is a friend of mine." That means you're a connected guy. Now if I said instead, this is a friend of ours that would mean you a made guy. A Capiche?" - Al Pacino in Donnie Brasco.

As a retirement plan provider, you are often asked to give a referral to other retirement plan providers. If you are a financial advisor, you maybe asked for a referral for a third party administrator or an ERISA attorney.

The problem with referrals is when they come back to bite you. A request for a referral by a client is something based on trust, they trust that you know who is good and who is not. When you give a referral to a good provider, you look that much better in the eyes of your client. If you give a bad referral, you look terrible and I have run into providers who have lost business just because of a bad referral.

So it's important that any referral is based on first hand knowledge of a provider's competence. Referring to a provider because they may refer you back in business is a bad idea and using a referral, as some sort of tryout to network with other providers isn't either. Your word is your bond and a bad referral is almost the same as breaking your word because it's a break in trust. Trust is one of the most important things that a client should have in their provider. So be careful with referrals.