Strategic Alliance Meeting #2 with Ron L.

I had the second of four meetings with Ron L. yesterday in his office in Sun City. I brought with me a list of 10 Estate Planning Industry Issues that I wanted to get Ron’s feed back on. I was hoping to elicit his opinion and experiences on each of these issues to look for ways that I may be able to complement his practice.

Number 2 on my list was “Wealthy clients are often disorganized and have difficulty completing the fact finder that lists their assets and titling.” Even though Ron does not use a hard copy “fact finder”, he does spend the time in his initial meeting asking the client questions to fill in this important information. Number 4 on my list was “Unproductive time spent selling prospects who don’t become clients”. Ron mentioned that sometimes he runs into problems with clients where he does not have enough time in the initial meeting to get through all of the assets and the client has some resistance in paying for additional time. He also has a program where he offers a “document review” at $150/hour which is much lower than his $350/hour normal rate. Sometimes he struggles with clients who want him to review their trust at $150 for an hour, when it will take much longer to review and offer guidance.

I asked him if it would be helpful to have a summary of all the assets along with the main issues they want to discuss, before they came in to see him. Ron exclaimed that this summary would be very helpful and that maybe he would even offer a discount to clients that I bring him with this leg work already done.

Issue number 3 on the list is “no recurring revenue”. I asked him if he has any program in place to reach out to past clients. He has often thought about doing something but has never put a formal program in place. He does encourage his clients to check in every 5 years or whenever they have a major life event. In my mind I am envisioning working on a list of his best past clients and starting a review program where they can come in for a “check up” for a set fee, and as part of the check up, I can perform a scenario analysis or gather the relevant asset information before they come in to see him. I will need to give this more thought.

Number 7 was “Challenge recommending advanced planning options without a strategic alliance to provide required financial analysis and products”. I asked him to show me how he presents an Irrevocable Life Insurance Trust to his clients. He uses a note pad to sketch out some of the details along with a copy of an old article that explains how the name “Crummey” trust came into existence. Ron told me that he does not have any software that can sketch out What If? Analysis. I definitely think it would be helpful for Ron and his clients if I can present our proprietary Interactive Financial Plan and show them with nice color graphs how much money they can preserve in their estate with a well crafted Insurance Trust.

Our meeting was cut a little short, because his next appointment showed up a little early. I did not get to ask him how or if he does any due diligence on the insurance policies that get put in place. The next seminar for the Central Arizona Estate Planning Council in March is addressing this very subject, so this may be something else we can discuss.

I will contact Steve Moeller with the following questions:

1. Do I show the Common Client Issues sheet to Ron during the meeting or is that something I am supposed to keep in my mind while I ask him the questions from the Estate Planning Issues sheet?

2. I would like to exampleas and/or language to refer to when crafting the right questions to ask in this 2nd meeting.

Plus I am realizing that this process will take 3 months minimum to implement with each attorney. I need to make a push to start the process with some other attorneys now if I want to have 4 good alliances established by the end of the year.