By Bryce Sanders

Many agents work remotely in the sense they are meeting with clients, cultivating prospects, and generally on the road, not sitting behind desks. Activities are often tracked.

COVID-19 has changed the rules. Suddenly meeting people isn’t good, it’s bad. You risk getting infected or infecting your client. Before things got very bad, very quickly, I heard a story about an advisor meeting their client in the office. The client asked, “Have any of the other clients you’ve met with recently been out of the country?”

Agents and advisors may need to work from home for a while. You’ve seen plenty of articles about the need to call every client in unprecedented times. You know what to talk about, so let’s look at what else you can do while you’re at home:

1. Continuing education requirements. You attend office meetings that indicate the presentation carries CE credits. You subscribe to professional magazines, read articles, and take quizzes to earn credits. Why? Because you live a busy life so you don’t have time to sit still for several hours and study. Now you do. Find some courses online; ones made available by the firm or trusted marketing partners. Does your professional association offer content? Get this project checked off the list.
   
2. Get a new designation. Remember, your competitors likely have several letters after their name. Prospects don’t just want a licensed professional, they want a highly accredited one. These things take time. We learn through experience, but we also forget a lot. Get a study guide. Register to take the examination.
   
3. Skills development. Having a particular challenge with something in your practice? It makes sense to find someone who has faced your problem and solved it. You could start with people in your office, but what about people you’ve met at conferences? You’ve got their card, so you could email, and set up a call. However, Advocis, Million Dollar Round Table, and other professional associations have webinars, blogs, and archived articles addressing most subjects. Do some digging. Find best practices.
   
4. Social media. The average LinkedIn user spends 17 minutes a month on its site. Many advisors and agents might have a profile because their firm said they should, set up within their set of guidelines. Consider building your network by sending out invitations, and posting content relevant to your network. Your firm likely has an archive of approved articles. The object is to get a dialogue going.

While the coronavirus pandemic might mean you are stuck at home, you can still make good use of your time.

Bryce Sanders is president of Perceptive Business Solutions Inc. He provides HNW client acquisition training for the financial services industry. His book, Captivating the Wealthy Investor, can be found on Amazon.com