"Our vision at Lincoln Financial Advisors is to be the country's premier fee-based financial planning firm by being the preferred partner of fee-based financial planning professionals who offer comprehensive financial services to affluent clients."

Lincoln Financial Advisors has a distinguished tradition dating back over 50 years. We are a full-service planning organization with offices throughout the United States. Unique to our industry, we believe that our planners are our most important partners in the delivery of quality solutions to the financial needs of our clients.

Our financial planners form a national network of highly trained experts in their field. As a client of Lincoln Financial Advisors, you will have the opportunity to leverage the strengths of this group, both nationally and locally, to supplement your knowledge and skills and help you plan for the financial security goals you hold for you and your families' future.

Sagemark Consulting, a division of Lincoln Financial Advisors Corp., is the partner of choice for professionals who wish to offer access to comprehensive financial planning to their clients. We respect your relationship with your clients, and view you as our client. We see our role as enhancing your relationship with your clients.

When you join forces with Sagemark Consulting and Lincoln Financial Advisors, you will be able to extend to your clients financial planning and personal service unparalleled in the industry – and you won’t need to become an expert in this complex and ever-changing field to do so. Here’s what sets up apart…and what makes us different.

The Lincoln Financial Advisors and Sagemark Consulting compensation program is designed to reward results. It's a simple equation: high performance equals high pay. How high? That depends on you. On your skills. And on your ability to establish and build long-term relationships with your clients. The opportunity for unlimited income is here for the taking. But building a successful practice takes more than talk. It takes all the drive you possess, and no bureaucratic entanglements to slow you down. At Lincoln Financial Advisors, you will quickly discover that the talk matches the reality. The practice you're building will be your practice. The company's mission is to enable you to build your practice successfully. And as your client base expands, your income will keep pace. That's what is so exciting for so many of our planners.

Errors and Omissions Coverage
In today's society, few professionals can afford to be uninsured against professional liability claims, which is why our E&O plan is an important step toward peace of mind and protection of your practice. Even if you exercise great care in your practice, it's possible for a client to become dissatisfied with your services. Therefore, Errors and Omissions Coverage is essential.

Benefits
A significant advantage of your affiliation with Lincoln Financial Advisors or Sagemark Consulting is our benefit program. We provide our associates with a benefit package that is among the finest in the industry. These benefits add an important dimension of security to your overall compensation, and include:

• Errors and Omissions coverage.


• Company contributions for family medical and dental coverage. Customized Security Credits to further offset the cost of the benefits you choose.


• Company contributions to the Money Purchase Pension/Top Earners Plan.


• A 401(k) plan, based on a $1 company match on the first 6% you contribute.


• Company contribution to your FICA.

Honors and Recognition
In addition to compensation and benefits, you can earn the distinction and recognition that your professional excellence deserves. Our company honors programs are designed to recognize achievements at every stage of your career. Our Calendar Honors program focuses exclusively on production results tracked on a calendar-year basis. These honors are awarded at the conclusion of each year, and distinguish top performers from among all of our associates. Depending upon the level you achieve, you are rewarded with an exciting trip to a major U.S. city, a major U.S. resort or a first class international location.

Our company philosophy is to do whatever is required to get our clients to take the actions necessary to put their financial affairs in the best possible order. We believe in service - first, last and always. We believe that long-term client relationships are more important than short-term gains, and will never sacrifice the former for the latter. We place a premium on relationship building, not product selling. That's why we encourage our planners to develop one-on-one relationships with their clients. We believe that our role is to promote trust between our partners and their clients by not getting in the way, but instead by providing support and an environment in which to succeed and to build long-term, revenue-generating relationships.

Our affiliation with Lincoln Financial Group - the marketing name for Lincoln National Corp., a family of companies that offers a broad range of financial services - provides depth, stability and significant resources to our planners and their clients. We are able to provide our planners with the highest level of technical support and back them with a team of outstanding professionals. This gives our planners the ability to go into the marketplace and do what they do best - serve their clients.

Lincoln Financial Advisors Corp./Sagemark Consulting is a full-service planning organization of approximately 2,000 planners in almost 50 offices throughout the United States. Unique to our industry, we believe that our planners are our most important partners in the delivery of quality solutions to the financial needs of our clients.

Our financial planners form a national network of highly trained experts in their field. As part of Lincoln Financial Advisors/Sagemark Consulting, you will have the opportunity to leverage the strengths of this group, both nationally and locally, to supplement your knowledge and skills and help you build your practice - and your future.

Lincoln Financial Advisors and Sagemark Consulting are recognized leaders in providing financial and estate planning services to highly affluent individuals who already have some planning and advisors in place. Our planners specialize in providing integrated, personalized solutions to help affluent business owners, professionals, executives and retirees develop and implement complex estate, business succession, retirement and investment plans.

And we have developed strategic partnerships with many regional and national accounting firms, financial institutions and stock brokerage firms to help our planners penetrate their target market. These relationships not only benefit our partner firms and their clients, but also provide our planners with significant opportunity to expand their own businesses.

Although many of our clients have trusted, long-term advisors - an attorney, CPA and others - our work supplements and coordinates the services these advisors provide. What sets our planners apart is that they look at all areas of their clients' financial plans and pull them together in a cross-disciplinary manner to most effectively help the clients meet their financial security and asset preservation needs and objectives.

Lincoln Financial Advisors and Sagemark Consulting provide financial planning advisory services to an affluent clientele comprised primarily of owners of closely held businesses, senior corporate executives and professionals. Planning is focused on specific areas and based upon each client's individual financial situation and personal objectives. The degree of detail and sophistication of the financial planning services provided varies according to the individual client's circumstances. Each client is provided with a written summary of the work undertaken. The specific areas covered include one or more of the following:

• Estate Planning: Advice regarding property ownership, distribution strategies, estate tax reduction, and tax payment techniques. It involves a discussion of gifting, trusts, wills, etc., and the disposition of business interests. Tax consequences and their implications are identified and evaluated.


• Business Succession Planning: Alternatives and strategies dealing with the continuity or disposition of the business upon the business owner's retirement, death, disability, or decision to sell. Tax consequences and their implications are identified and evaluated.


• Investment Planning: Constructing and managing investment portfolios to achieve optimal performance relative to accumulation and income objectives. Existing investments are evaluated for risk, return and tax characteristics. An investment policy statement formalizes client objectives and constraints, proposes asset allocation strategies and establishes criteria for the selection and retention of professional money managers.


• Retirement Planning: Alternatives and techniques for accumulating wealth for retirement income or advice relative to appropriate allocation and distribution of assets following retirement. Tax consequences and their implications are identified and evaluated.

One thing that differentiates us is that our planners are fee-based, but not fee-only planners. We believe that our plans are not worth the paper they are written on if they are not properly implemented. By building their practice with fees as well as product solutions, our planners can provide expert advice for a reasonable fee and implement their clients' plans with the objectivity and attention they deserve.

Having access to the most up-to-date technology is essential for achieving sales and planning success in today's fast-moving world. Client expectations for rapid responses to their questions have been heightened by the promise of easy access to information via computer networks and the Internet. Lincoln Financial Advisors Corp. and Sagemark Consulting benefit in this regard by having the backing of an international company that has invested millions in building a sophisticated technological infrastructure - an infrastructure that enables our planners to deliver the things that are most important to their clients: information and advice in a timely manner.

Financial Planning Software
To ensure that our planners have the most up-to-the-minute technology available, we have developed Advisor Workbench, a proprietary software system that allows each of our planners the ability to manage client and prospect information, and to generate illustrations, graphics and customized, detailed reports for each client.

Unquestionably, the most important and popular feature of Advisor Workbench is the Financial Condition Model, a state-of-the-art, proprietary software tool that allows our planners to create an individualized financial condition model for their clients. The information our planners develop from this model is essential in helping clients project the long-term adequacy of their current financial resources and plans. In addition, it allows clients to evaluate a given planning strategy - one they've already implemented or one they are considering - and compare it to other available strategies. And it helps our planners demonstrate the impact of possible future changes in our clients' personal or family situation, asset values, taxes or inflation so they can take steps to minimize any adverse effects.

Broker/Dealer
Our broker/dealer technology - which has been lauded as top-notch by outside consultants - is not just for our planners; there is a wealth of information clients can access directly to check on their investments. Planners can access clients' brokerage account information, trade mutual funds on-line (with on-line stock trading available soon), get up-to-the-minute quotes and market information, and access back office administrative information on client accounts. Clients can check their portfolios on-line, use a secured Internet site to get market data, quotes and personal brokerage account information, and access their accounts by phone.

VideoLinc
Our most recent technological addition is VideoLinc, our videoconferencing program. With 12-15 hours per month of regularly scheduled programming, our planners have convenient access to educational programs. The most exciting feature of VideoLinc, though, is the ability for our planners to conduct point-to-point meetings between clients, advisors and our National Design attorneys, for instance, or for having a 'face-to-face' best practices meeting with another regional planning office. The applications for VideoLinc are endless, and bound only by your imagination.

LFAPlanner.com
Another proprietary tool is LFAPlanner.com, our secured Internet site. Because it was developed with the help of our planners, LFAPlanner.com organizes data the way our planners think and conduct their businesses. Each of the key business areas within Lincoln is represented on LFAPlanner.com, so you have the critical information you need to efficiently conduct business. For instance, you have instantaneous access to our online Registered Representative handbook, operations announcements, current news and product listings, and demos of broker/dealer technology. In addition, you can view the latest training and marketing information, download the most current versions of our illustrations and sales support software or find an old article on the online archive.

At Lincoln Financial Advisors and Sagemark Consulting, you are your own boss. You control your own destiny. However, while you build a business of your own, it is never on your own. We support our planners with a regional and national network of professionals in a broad range of areas, including insurance, investment, advanced planning and case design.

National Design
National Design, our Advanced Planning operation, consists of six attorneys who provide our associates with the advanced tax and legal guidance they often need to deal effectively with affluent clients and their advisors. They offer:

• Case support: Technical or case design assistance on thousands of cases a year.


• Legislative Monitoring: A daily review of tax publications enables this area to update our planners on important legislative matters.


• Training: Presentations at internal sales and best practices meeting, as well as industry meetings. Additionally, training is provided to Advisor Workbench users on technical taxation and case design issues.


• Publications: Working with Marketing Communications, National Design creates client and producer newsletters, marketing brochures and seminars for planner use. Our weekly in-house publication, Designed For You, provides a summary of the latest legal, tax and insurance information.

Compliance
Because Lincoln is committed to helping our associates comply with all regulatory requirements and guidelines, there are two levels of Compliance support. On a local level, a dedicated staff member in each office works with planners to ensure that all client work follows company, industry and government regulations. On a national level, our seasoned home office staff supplies on-going training, compliance resources, review services and monitoring of state, federal and regulatory initiatives. Although our company standards and guidelines maintain the highest ethical caliber, our Compliance staff makes it simple and easy by working with you each step of the way.

Training & Development/Continuing Education
At Lincoln Financial Advisors and Sagemark Consulting, we believe that learning is a lifelong process. Therefore, we offer our planners 12-15 hours of training each month through VideoLinc, our state-of-the art videoconferencing program. We also supplement this in-house training with a full range of national meetings, a variety of forums and local educational programs to keep our planning professionals at the forefront of industry information and trends.

To assist in meeting certification requirements, many of our meetings and programs are approved for both state and professional credential continuing education credits. Additionally, we support you in becoming an instructor in your state so you can offer approved seminars to advisors and brokers for CE credits, including continuing education for CPAs and attorneys. We have already filed numerous presentations in most states for your convenience.

Third Party Marketing Alliances
Because of our national scope, superb reputation and ability to offer 'hold harmless' agreements, we have established numerous national and local strategic alliances with which we provide financial planning to the clients of other financial services firms, such as investment brokerage firms, banks, CPA firms, property and casualty companies and other financial institutions. In fact, we derive a substantial amount of our revenue as the financial planning firm of choice for other financial professionals.

Marketing Communications Support
Even with the best in training and support, a financial planning practice cannot flourish without effective marketing. At Lincoln Financial Advisors and Sagemark Consulting, we provide a myriad of pre-approved marketing materials such as proprietary newsletters, prospecting letters, advertisements, pre-approved articles you can place in local and trade media under your own name, seminars, brochures, reports and product kits. Additionally, several internal communications tools keep you up-to-date on news that helps you succeed. A great deal of information is distributed via our Internet site, Virtual Resources, for convenient and immediate access during the day, at night, on weekends or when at home or traveling. So you're never far away from critical information.

We live in an era in which self-expression is a universally respected value. That includes professionals who are ambitious, self-reliant entrepreneurs. They don't want to be locked away in a cubicle, a cog in some giant corporate machine. They want to be themselves. And they're seeking out organizations that give them the opportunity to do - or be - just that.

That is the kind of professional Lincoln Financial Advisors and Sagemark Consulting are looking for. 'Big picture' people with excellent people skills. Professionals who can create relationships, and who have a sense of resiliency. People capable of doing great things because they expect to do great things, and who can cut through the morass of everything else and know that what they're here to do is help their clients accumulate and preserve wealth, for themselves and for future generations.