Articles Written by Jon Henschen

When Your Broker-Dealer Relationship Goes Bad

by Jonathan Henschen, CFS and featured in Broker World Magazine
November, 2005:

As part of a high school science experiment, a teacher dropped a frog into a pot of hot water. It jumped right out. Then the frog was put into a pot of room-temperature water on the stove and the teacher slowly turned up the heat. The frog swam around normally–until it suddenly died.

Advisors are often like that frog, swimming around in ill-suited broker/dealer relationships until they reach a breaking point. This is especially true during acquisitions, where a new B/D takes over and makes lots of small operational changes. Because those changes are gradually phased in, the reps don’t notice them as much, whereas if the B/D had come in making wholesale changes all at once,

Making the Most of Marketing Kits – Keeping them Informative and Simple

by Jonathan Henschen, CFS and featured in Broker Dealer Journal
September, 2005:

Weeding through dozens of broker/dealer marketing kits as I do every year, and listening to Advisors sounding off about them (a daily occurrence), I have concluded that more often than not, there is quite a bit of room for improvement!

Some firms’ marketing kits are two-to-three inch thick doorstops, bogged down with mind-numbing amounts of information—plus a lot of generic claims that say little. For example, broker/dealers routinely advertise that they provide Representatives with “great service”, “flexibility” and “the latest in high-technology”, when, in truth, they don’t always live up to their claims.

No matter what a broker/dealer’s marketing kit says, it doesn’t take long to determine just how flexible a firm really is.

How to Ruin a Good Broker/Dealer

by Jonathan Henschen, CFS and featured in Investment Advisor
June, 2005:

In the spirit of Ben Stein’s How to Ruin Your Financial Life (Hay House, 2004), I penned a guide to assuring the premature demise of an otherwise successful broker/dealer. Tongue-in-cheek tips from the frustrated financial advisors we’ve consulted with in our recruiting activities.

• If you’re the president of a broker/dealer, establish the fact that you’re far too busy to spend time visiting with prospective advisors. If you must, visit with million-dollar producers only (just be sure to be pompous and listen primarily to yourself).
• Let your compliance folks run wild creating reams of paperwork to protect the firm. Clients feel more secure when handed stacks of disclosure forms to sign.