Serving Retirees According to Your Expertise

For advisors who are looking to market to potential clients for money management, then their focus should be on presenting themselves to the public as investment specialists.

For advisors like myself, who focus on safe money and income strategies, then our focus should be on that.

I have found that many advisors who are good at managing money are not as knowledgeable about insurance-based products such as annuities. It would be in their client's best interest to refer them to experts in the safe money space, and it would often be in the clients' best interest if investment managers would refer the clients to safe money advisors.

Although it can be tempting to be an expert in every possible product and risk profile, most advisors do not have the bandwidth to provide this for every possible client.

Each person is different, and it would be self-serving to try offering all products and services when the advisor has little or no knowledge about many of those products and services. Trying to do too much can also dilute advertising efforts and cause an advisor's business to stagnate.

Focus on what you're good at — what you're qualified to teach about and sell.

Don't dilute your efforts. That will result in needless challenges to your business growth and also make it difficult for retirees and investors to get the services they need so they can make important decisions.

John Stevenson is a retirement and wealth strategist based in Las Vegas.