My partner and I are at a crossroads in our advisory firm. For years we have been in sync about our values and culture, how we should grow and even the people we have hired to join our team. In the last few months, though, he has become aligned with some radical political philosophies.

Here are some tips on the best ways to network, engage people and get results. LinkedIn can be a great tool to research, see what others are doing, learn new information and meet people. But it is becoming abused as a way to find prospects and pitch to them.

Here are some reminders to add to your list of New Year’s resolutions. These are compiled from the thousands of inquiries I get via this column and in my consulting work every week of the year.

At this time of year, I’m often asked for ideas to help cope with family-related issues. As a gift to our readers, I’ll pass on my best ideas for you to share with your clients as needed.

Clients focus on their portfolio performance numbers – not just against goals, but against the benchmark. Could we do a better job of explaining why the benchmark isn’t apples-to-apples?

The focus of the sexual harassment issue is on women being victimized by men. I, however, have been victimized by women in business as well as personally.

Is it prudent for me to reach out to the women in my firm and ask whether I have done anything that made them uncomfortable?

To make a hire, or ensure someone you have is operating at full capacity, here are my “Seven Tips to Hiring Success.”

I lack motivation to work with my staff and mentor or coach. Is this what happens to every advisor who has been doing this for a while?

I want to outline a process I created many years ago that I teach to managers, leaders of firms and staff members so they can learn to solve their own problems.

Are family businesses doomed to fail? It’s killing the great advisory firm we have all inherited.

Can I run my sole-practitioner firm for the next 15 years until I retire? I write because my wife keeps bugging me to “hire someone to help” and I am dragging my feet to do this. She thinks it will free me up, but I believe it will tie me down in ways I don’t desire.

Here are Bev’s five best tips for improving your relational skills with your clients.

These crucial keys will make your presentation concise and powerful.

We made a mistake and put someone in a role that was over their head.

I recognize that as a leader it’s up to me to instill good communication practices across my team. But I have a couple of people who are gossips.

After working with clients for over 20 years, I believe I have insights and information I could share more broadly and am considering writing a book.

Getting hiring right is crucial to both the candidate and your firm’s success – but how can you get it right?

I’ve worked hard to build a very successful advisory firm over the last 20 years. But recently I am distracted and unable to focus on the core issues with my business.

How do I get through to clients who spend too much money?

I work for a very large firm that is undergoing significant cost-cutting measures. This is corporate-speak for lots of my colleagues being laid off. I’m worried and depressed much of the time thinking about the potential of losing my job.

We have been hearing grumblings that some of our longer term people believe they are being overlooked. As far as career pathing there aren’t many other places they can go.

Now that the market is up significantly, our clients are asking why they aren’t seeing these gains in their portfolios. We do take the time to educate and we show them a blended benchmark so they aren’t measuring us against the S & P. What else could we be doing to give them comfort that we are acting on their behalf by not chasing returns?

How do we get our team to embrace our new CRM system and understand the value to our advisory firm?

Things have been very difficult at our advisory firm since one of the partners announced his intention to retire. I’ve read a great deal about succession planning and I can honestly say, we don’t have one.

I work in a large financial organization and my team is trying to make a significant business decision. It’s a collaborative culture, which we tout as being very positive. However, when decisions need to be made, we often get stuck because everyone has to have a voice and be heard.

Over 90 advisors responded to a survey I conducted earlier this year with Advisor Perspectives. Here are the important insights into which activities help find new business for RIAs and IBDs.

One of the women in my office is a tattle-tale and a gossip. It’s become so bad that everyone is afraid if they don’t listen or don’t engage with her, they will become one of her targets. She picks on the most benign things; it could be someone’s dress, how they talk or how slow they approach a task.

We are rolling out a new investment approach. Our advisors have agreed to outsource investing and we are migrating our accounts. It’s been a very, very long decision-making process to determine how best to shift investment management and communicate internally. Now, the hard part comes – communicating this change to our clients.

I work for a large organization that has very poor leadership. We lack direction, communication and motivation from the very top down to the level of my manager.

What’s your thought on hiring a business-development officer?

Some of our team members are lazy. They will say they are busy doing client work or following investments but then they are gone at 3 p.m. on a Friday.

Over the last several years the advisory industry has trended away from valuing financial expertise in order to put the emphasis on the relational or human side of investing. This makes sense but we have moved too far in the opposite direction.

We are having more conversations with clients about their spending habits. This is a major transition in the advisor-client relationship.

I’m a woman among much older male partners and I sense that no matter how much I’ve done, how far I’ve come and how much I’ve proven myself, they do not see me as their peer. They believe I contribute less to the firm.

Our founder has decided to turn us into a sales operation. He has hired a consultant to work with us, has put goals in place for new sales and is turning those of us who are investment experts into nothing more than sales agents.

We are putting a new system into place to ensure some of the commissioned people in our firm are acting in accordance with the pending DOL changes. They have been pure product salespeople and need to become advisors who use a consultative approach. This is a wholesale change in both thought process and systems and I don’t believe our management realizes how much is involved.

Many thanks to those who joined me last week for my webinar, Strategies for Dealing with Difficult Clients. Whenever I get questions on how to handle someone who is difficult, or what to do when a client (or employee) is unreasonable, I focus first on the differences in style.

My boss is a terrible communicator. He rarely holds meetings to speak to us as a team, but when he does he always stumbles over his words or says something totally inappropriate. He will say things that are meant to inspire us or motivate us but they come out garbled and un-motivating.

Recently my new boss was hired. This guy is about 15 years younger than I am and thinks he knows more than he does.

Lately we have been dealing with clients who are aligning themselves with centers-of-influence whom we find very difficult. These people have an opinion about everything we do. But they are not investment experts.

We have recently merged with another firm. I had a leadership role in our former firm and am finding myself sidelined in our new situation.

I don’t see myself retiring. I have two children in their mid 20s. They could take over my firm if need be. I resent my team inferring that I don’t have a succession plan. Is there a polite way to tell them to back off?

I am worried about a coach my boss wants me to use. Do I share my concerns and take my chances? Share very little and hope it isn’t obvious?

We recognize the importance of marketing communication, but our results don’t give me a good feeling about whether clients recognize or appreciate it. Should we dispense with email and figure out another way to communicate?

Do you have any tips for knowing when a prospect is ready to buy versus when someone is going to drag their feet and potentially not commit? We have too many situations where we prepare the paperwork and it remains unsigned but we don’t know why.

Has anyone asked you to comment on the current political scene and best ways to deal with what’s happening when your clients have very strong (and very vocal) opinions?

I work for a family-owned firm – the father runs it with his daughter and two sons. The problem is that the two sons dislike one another.

It’s a great idea to complete a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) analysis to help you define your marketing focus. But, what do you do next to use the data to enhance your efforts?

Our marketing materials don’t say very much. I have worked at five other RIAs and they could all say the exact same things as us. It is possible to create a message to talk about what we do that is actually different?