(DES MOINES) – Gov. Branstad will continue building Iowa’s long-term relationship with China President Xi Jinping by meeting with him Monday, strengthening ties to one of the state’s most important economic trading partners.

Branstad first met with Xi in the governor’s formal office in 1985, when Xi was a local party leader traveling on an exchange program through the Iowa Sister States program.

“I am excited to catch up with our old friend, Xi Jinping,” said Branstad. “The value of this relationship cannot be overstated. As a result, Iowa is the preferred provider to feed China’s growing population and our agriculture exports to China continue to grow. This type of international trade currently supports 430,000 jobs right here in Iowa.”

Legislation works on the local level to train workers to compete in 21^st Century global economy

Washington, D.C. – Congressman Dave Loebsack announced today that his legislation, the SECTORS Act, is included as part of the Make it in America agenda.  This plan, introduced by House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, is aimed at revitalizing our manufacturing sector and helping it create high-skill, high-wage jobs here at home.  Loebsack’s SECTORS Act links together businesses, labor organizations, local stakeholders, and education and training providers.  This bill works on the local level to ensure employees are properly trained so they can effectively compete in the 21st Century global economy.

“I spent the most recent district work period speaking with local leaders in education, workforce development, labor and businesses to gain their insight about how to best get our economy moving again.  Far too many Iowans are still struggling to find employment, but I am hearing from many business leaders that they are unable to find workers with the skill sets they need to hire.  There is a gap between the kind of skills workers have and the kind of skills that businesses need.  The SECTORS Act addresses this skills gap through partnerships that link together business, labor and education and training providers to promote the long-term competiveness of industries and advance employment opportunities for workers.

“This bill is the kind of common sense measure that we need to jump start our manufacturing industry and start making things in America again.  I am pleased that the SECTORS Act is a part of the Make it in America agenda.”

Click here for more information about SECTORS.

Click here for more information on the Make it in America agenda.

In the following I examine the details of what has been working in global stocks, providing quick insights into market segments that have succeeded and failed.

On the sector front, health care and consumer staple stocks fared best, earning 15% and 14% respectively. By contrast, materials earned only 1%, and infotech gained only 6%.

But the interesting details lie in the cross-sections of styles with sectors, as shown in the following heat map. A heat map shows shades of green for "good," which in this case is good performance relative to the total market. By contrast, shades of red are bad, indicating underperformance. Yellow is neutral. In the table below, we see that the best performing market segment was comprised of mid-cap core companies in the consumer staples sector, earning 24.1%. And the worst performing segment was small cap core in the utilities sector, losing 11.4%. Many quantitative managers employ momentum in their models, buying the "green" and selling the "red." Fundamental managers use heat maps as clues to segments of the market that are worth exploring, for both momentum and reversal potential.

On the style front, core surprised, as it did in the U.S., but core led rather than lagged. Like the U.S., further insights into market behavior are provided by heat maps, as shown in the following. As you can see, Japan was "green" in almost all styles and sectors, and emerging markets and the materials sector were both mostly red -- underperming.

How to Use This Information

The new DoL rules can be a threat or an opportunity. Advisors can ignore them, or embrace them. If you don't capitalize on these openings, someone else will. TDFs have grown from nothing to $1 Trillion in seven short years, and are forecast to grow another $3 Trillion, to $4 Trillion, by 2020.

To learn how you can profit from the DoL guidance, see OPPORTUNITIES and Fiduciary Guide.

U.S. businesses spend billions of dollars generating sales leads only to lose more than 70 percent of them simply because they don’t make contact quickly enough, according to one study.

But that’s not the only way they’re losing out on opportunities, says Brandon Stuerke, president of Advisors Edge Marketing (www.advisorsedgemarketing.com), a specialist in marketing strategy and automation for financial advisors and other professionals.

“A study of more than 600 companies by Dr. James Oldroyd of MIT found that the odds of a lead entering the sales process were 21 times greater if the business made contact within 5 minutes of generating the lead versus contact in 30 minutes,” Stuerke says. “Another study, this one by the Harvard Business Review, found that the average response time by businesses to a generated lead is 42 hours – and that’s just for responses that occurred within 30 days.”

Generating sales leads is big business, with more than $23 billion spent on internet leads alone, he notes.

“If you’re a financial advisor or another professional, you may also be spending money on direct mail, invitations to seminars, TV commercials and/or print ads,” Stuerke says. “How many leads are you generating, and at what cost per lead, only to lose them?”

Stuerke, who began developing innovative marketing strategies while working as a financial advisor, says he has found four ways professionals commonly lose sales leads.

“And they can all be fixed!” he says.

• Advertising calls to action that are all-or-nothing. Most sales people offer only a face-to-face meeting or a telephone appointment as their call to action in their advertising. But that’s asking a lot of prospects who are simply exploring options and aren’t yet ready for that level of commitment. Those are leads that, three to six months from now, may become sales – but they’re lost early in the process. Instead, offer a less committed option such as “download this free report” in exchange for their information for follow up.

• No lead capture on your website. This is a huge problem! Many sites have no strategy for capturing information about visitors to the site, such as an email address. As a result, businesses spend thousands of dollars driving traffic to their website, but capturing none of the prospects’ information. As a result, those prospects come to the site and leave and the business never knows they were there. A free report, or series of reports or videos with useful information based on your expertise are good lead capture tools. Buyers today turn to the web for information while doing research, so that's what you should give them. Offering free resources in exchange for a small bit of information is a great way to do that.

• Indifference in interactions. No matter what your profession, it’s likely you’ve got a lot of competition. For consumers, shopping includes researching, and they’re comparing services, expertise and experience before deciding who best deserves their patronage. If your interactions with prospects fail to “wow” them, they will quickly move on. But most professionals don’t have a storyboarded plan for giving prospects that experience, which is what is needed for consistent results. An automated system that delivers carefully planned interactions is a great way to achieve this.

• Using social media without a plan. Many professionals have discovered that delivering consumer-friendly, useful content through social media is an effective means of attracting followers and cultivating prospects. However, one of the biggest problems with how businesses use social media is that they post a lot of high level, one-way communication with no call to action.  Having a call to action in your posts leading prospects back to a website designed to capture leads is critical for producing tangible results through social media.

A lot of these issues stem from a common problem: businesses focusing only on the hottest leads – the people who are ready to buy today, Stuerke says.

“Instead of allowing those ‘cooler’ leads to fall by the wayside, businesses should capture and cultivate them,” he says. “Eventually, they’ll find that instead of constantly chasing leads, they’re harvesting new clients.”

About Brandon Stuerke

Brandon Stuerke is a business coach and cutting-edge marketing strategist, specializing in innovative new tools that save professionals time while building their practices. He is the founder and president of Advisors Edge Marketing, Inc., which produces Automated Advisor, a new program that strategically streamlines prospect cultivation. He’s also the creator and president of the Strategic Alliance Program, Winning With CPAs, which teaches financial advisors how to build their practices by partnering with CPAs.