Business Performance Center Continues to Expand

The Business Performance Center was launched late 2020 and held its first event in early 2021. The purpose of the Center is to bring experts together who provide thought leadership, products, ideas and programs to individuals who either lead an agency or firm or want to go out and establish their own agency or firm. The Center focuses on how to best recruit, train, grow your agents, advisors and administrative professionals, as well as how to grow your practice through adoption of new marketing and advertising models.

The Center held its Impact Week in March 2021 and welcomed over five hundred people virtually to hear from experts such as Ron Lee from Mutual of Omaha, Andrew Rinn of Ameritas, Eric Stearns from Stearns Financial, Stacey McMahan of Pacific Life, and Kathleen Bilderback of Society of Financial Service Professionals and Affinity Law Group on topics within Advanced Practices. (Following the Center’s popularity, it was decided to break out the advanced practice topics into its own Advanced Practice Center, which we proudly launched in collaboration with Society of Financial Service Professionals in late 2021.)

Sheryl Brown Hickerson and Mernice Oliver led us through a session on how your agency can better serve a multicultural population, followed by Shane Westhoelter of Gateway Financial, Ryan Pinney of Pinney Insurance Companies, Brad Swineheart of WhiteGlove, and Luke Acree of ReminderMedia giving registrants insights into how to better grow practices in a digital world.

During the year, the Center grew, with sponsors including Customers Bank and White Glove. Long-time members of NAIFA will also be happy to learn that Dan Finley of Advisor Solutions will return to working with NAIFA members through his involvement as a Business Performance Center expert. Dan will pen a regular column for the Center and will tap into his 20-plus year career coaching advisors to grow their practices.

2022 plans for the Center include the addition of the Chalice Network as a new partner that will bring NAIFA members more business tools and marketing resources, in addition to access to a succession planning marketplace for buy/sell of practices. Additionally, the Center will be the home of RISE, a new training course for agency and firm managers that was announced at the 2021 National Leadership Conference. Learn more and subscribe to the Center by visiting: bpc.naifa.org.