81 Ways To Make Next Year Your Career Year

Based on over 12 years of coaching and live presentations we have done with our wholesaler and management clients, here’s a list of 81 ways to ensure that your next year can be your Career Year:

• Commit to writing a good annual business plan
• Banish trinkets and trash – become strategic in your gifting
• Formulate rotations that are well informed by the data
• Stick to the rotations you built
• Learn to say no more effectively
• Get comfortable being uncomfortable
• Create and market your PVP – Peerless Value Proposition®
• Write emails that get opened, read and acted upon
• Make better use of voicemail 
• Up your virtual wholesaling game
• Perfect the ‘come to Jesus’ conversation so you don’t get monetarily taken advantage of
• Understand how to be more likable
• Appreciate what motivates your internal partner to effectively coach them
• Deepen the relationship you have with your internal wholesaler
• Know what your toughest wholesaling competitor won’t tell you
• Find ways to outsource things that you shouldn’t be spending time on
• Stay current on your expenses
• Always be trial closing
• Give more than you receive
• Automate and be diligent with your call report notes
• Have a system to thank the advisors that ‘brought you to the dance’
• Never neglect your COIs
• Implement a Quarterly Success Plan
• Use technology frequently and creatively
• Make the best use of LinkedIn that you possibly can
• Tell more and better stories
• Risk being a bit ‘cheesy’
• Use pre-meeting agendas
• Master the art of power entertaining
• Develop a most wanted list
• Strive to become a first call wholesaler
• Stay organized with Advisor Data Sheets
• Don’t get sucked into one hit wonders 
• Understand how our world of Distribution is changing
• Do your advisor recon before appointments
• Develop a systematized follow-up process
• Stop dwelling on daily sales, and focus on the right activity
• Expand your knowledge through podcasts – here’s ours
• Don’t confuse activity with results
• Form strategic partnerships with other wholesalers in the region
• Aggressively defend your prime selling time
• Know that you have to get your teeth kicked in
• Make forward scheduling a habit
• Improve the quality and productivity of your office days
• Be clear on where your risks are
• Admit when you need assistance
• Do not burn any bridges
• Stop blindly assuming
• Develop better listening skills
• Become a well-informed student of the business
• Define and implement repeatable processes for your practice
• Create a solid client service model
• Seek out improvements in your presentation skills
• Know what is, and isn’t, worth falling on your sword for
• Allow yourself the time for self-evaluation
• Deepen advisor relationships
• Avoid the fat and happy trap
• Expand your team judiciously
• Make more effective cold calls
• Have weekly meetings with your internal partner
• Liberally exercise your creative brain
• Don’t be tempted to hide behind busy
• Recognize that your to-do list will never go away
• Explore ways to make the job fun [again]
• Prepare now for the next recession/correction
• Be home when you are home
• Know that there’s money in being funny
• Get/keep your financial house in order
• Take time off to recharge
• See the world through your advisor’s eyes
• Be a leader among your peers
• Become a franchise player to your firm
• Get better organized with Evernote
• Become an even better version of who you already are
• Understand the can’t lose wholesaler success formula
• Know that old dogs can learn new tricks
• Make the most productive use of your scheduler
• Learn why the fact is you should quit and quit often
• Know that your resolve will be tested
• Take care of your heath and wellbeing
• Know that this is the greatest gig on earth