A Practice With No Boundaries

Marcus T. Henderson Sr. said the COVID-19 pandemic made him realize that his practice has no boundaries.

Henderson is speaking on “Leaders Must Lead – Now!” this afternoon during NAIFA’s Performance + Purpose virtual convention. He is president and CEO of Henderson Financial Group in Nashville.

“With the situation in which we currently find ourselves, we don’t have time to mess around,” Henderson said. “You can’t lean back. You must lean into things, things that you may be completely uncomfortable with, whether it's Zoom, Skype, meeting someone over a conference call. There are opportunities in these things, if you will lean into them.”

The pandemic and the resulting move to doing business virtually has led Henderson to see that he can serve clients no matter where they are.

“As long as you are licensed anywhere, you can do business anywhere,” he said. “Under normal circumstances, people are uncomfortable doing business with people who are not in their geographic location. But now, because of the pandemic, they are very comfortable doing that.”

Henderson said that over the past few months, about 70% of his business has come from people he never met previously and who live outside of Tennessee, partly because of the number of Zoom calls he participates in as part of his work as a denominational leader with his church. Those Zoom calls helped him expand the number of people who know him and are familiar with his work, and his practice snowballed from there.

Leaders also must trust their staff members to continue doing their work as the remote workplace becomes the norm, Henderson said. “Just because you can’t see your staff sitting at their desks doesn’t mean they aren’t doing what needs to be done,” he said.

The uncertainty surrounding the pandemic presents an opportunity for leaders to lean in, Henderson said.

“Every morning, you must get up with a positive mental attitude, because you don't really know what's going on in your team members’ lives, because they're dealing with things and you don't know what's going on there. Whereas under normal circumstances, if you see them every day, you know what’s going on.”

Now that advisors can obtain clients from anywhere and clients can find advisors anywhere, it’s more important than ever for advisors to have the best online presence they can, Henderson said. “And the client experience must be extraordinary as well,” he said.

Susan Rupe is managing editor for InsuranceNewsNet. She formerly served as communications director for an insurance agents' association and was an award-winning newspaper reporter and editor. Contact her at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @INNsusan.

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