Last week on Speaking of Settlements, Scott Drake spoke with Katherine Vessenes from Vestment Advisors. A frequent speaker to financial planning and investment advisors, we asked Katherine to spend some time looking at the Settlement Planning profession, the current market and some of the tips she provides a stagnant profession such as structured settlement
brokers and agents ideas to re-energize their approach and practice.
In addition to running her own business, Katherine is an attorney, popular industry consultant and has authored three books: Protecting Your Practice, The Compliance and Liability Handbook, and the just released: Building Your Multimillion-Dollar Practice, which she co-authored with her husband and business partner, Peter Vessenes. According to Dearborn Press, Katherine Vessenes is “America’s Leading Authority on Building the Multimillion-Dollar Practice.”
As we expand our weekly shows to a twice weekly show starting in March, you'll be finding more practice building tips, marketing ideas and concepts to build and promote your settlement planning practice. I don't think there is much dispute that the structured settlement business is in a serious slump of it's own making, due to an outdated sales model and insular business practices, so some fresh ideas from those outside our profession are going to start being a steady mix of on our weekly shows.
“Katherine Vessenes is America’s best known authority on the legal, ethical and compliance issues facing financial advisors.” Bloomberg
Entertaining and always full of practical suggestions to help advisors make their businesses more profitable, more compliant and safer, Katherine Vessenes knows how to keep an audience energized, involved and motivated to take action. Reviews consistently rate her among the top presenters at financial events.
Katherine takes topics that can often be complicated and boring—like compliance, ethics and the legal issues of the financial services industry practice—and makes them easy to understand, yet lively and entertaining for the audience. Says Katherine. “I don’t feel like I have succeeded, unless each person gets a piece of information they can use to make their business safer, more profitable and their life easier. “
Although a national expert on ethics, compliance and the legal issues facing financial advisors, Katherine has the heart of a marketer. The Creator of the No-Sell Sale™, Katherine uses her personal experiences as a top financial advisor and consultant to help her audiences achieve an ethical, easy, almost effortless sale. Her success with this system helped her become a well-known industry leader on making your practice more profitable, attracting more clients, and staying out of trouble at the same time.
After getting her securities, RIA and insurance licenses in 1984, Katherine left personal financial planning in 1989 to become Vice President and Officer of the IDS Mutual Fund Group (now Ameriprise) where she was legal counsel to Gerald Ford, and other Fortune 20 CEOs. Later she created two ethics programs for American Express advisors, in conjunction with the ICFP. She has also served on the CFP Board of Ethics and Professional Responsibility and for two years consulted with a large broker/dealer on standardizing her “No-Sell Sale” system across their sales force.
