Lesson 3 | Why Collaborate – Benefits to Advisors (5:24 minutes)

Benefits to Advisors

Let's talk for a few minutes about why you would even want to consider collaborating. Obviously, before we do anything we want to know what's in it for us? You know, what's the benefit to us, so let's talk about that. First of all, and foremost I think, you're gonna be giving better advice to your clients. You can be serving your client well, you know, when you work together as a team you can each fill each other's gaps on the team. You bring that synergistic relationship to the planning process, so you're gonna give better advice. The client's gonna be more satisfied, I think, when all their advisors are working together, and it's just gonna be a better overall experience for the client. I think you're gonna see that some good referral business can come out of an initiative on your part to bring a collaborative model to your clients, and to your new clients.

You know, when other advisors are invited to work together with you in this process, they appreciate that; they like that experience overall. And they are gonna want to bring you in if they feel that you can help them in their business with their other clients. That reminds me of a conversation I had with a lawyer that we invited to participate in a collaborative process. And we had gone through a good part of the planning and at one point he said, "You know, I just really want to thank you for including me in this. You know, so often I get a call that all the planning's been done, and now the only thing that people want me to do is draft documents. It's really been enjoyable for me to be included in the design process. That's a lot of fun for me, so thank you for that."

Well, you know, that's the kind of lawyer, or any advisor for that matter, who might think, "Yeah, I want to do more of that. I want to work with these guys because it's fun and it's productive for me, and it's productive for the client." I think you're gonna find, using a collaborative process you're gonna have a higher implementation rate. The client is gonna have more confidence because the team is unified in their recommendations. Imagine how much confidence the client would have, when in a client presentation meeting all the advisors are there at the table, and all the advisors are agreeing on the recommendations being made. So, the client's much more likely to implement when there is that client unity.

Now, I'd like you to imagine this situation with me. You're in your office, you get an email from a good client, and the client sends an attachment with the email and says, "John, Mary, would you please look at this attachment. This is a proposal made to me by another advisor, and I'd just like to find out what you think about it." So what's your reaction when you get an email like that? Well I don't know about you, but my reaction is: I'm glad to get an email like that. When you get an email, that means the client has confidence in you, the client values your feedback, the client really wants to know what you think about it.

And you may be thinking, as I often think, "You know, this is an opportunity for me. Maybe there's an opportunity for me to do a better job for the client, come up with a better idea." If I don't know the person who sent this email, I may be suspect of them. I may wonder if they've got the right motives. I may wonder if they're giving the best idea. So it's an opportunity for me to come back to the client and say, "Well, it's an interesting idea, but you might want to consider this, as well." Or maybe, if it's a really bad idea, I might be able to say to the client, "That's an interesting idea. I didn't even know you were concerned about that particular issue. I may know some people who can help you." So there are just a lot of things that could be of benefit to you because you've received the opportunity to look at somebody else's work product.

Okay, now, so that's the scenario. Let's reverse the table for a minute. Let's say you made a presentation to the client, and you explained it to the client and the client said, "Well, thank you very much. This is really interesting information. Let me think about it." Which is code for, "Let me send it to one of my other advisors and see what they think about it." So, that's not the position that you want to be in. Now you could be second guessed. Now the other advisors may be thinking this is an opportunity for them at your expense. That's not a situation that you want to be in. So, if you're collaborating, then you are gonna be having, being in, relationships with other people, and that kind of communication is not likely to happen. And therefore, a big benefit to collaboration for you is what I call engagement security. You're likely to go forward with your engagement, and you're not likely to get shot down by some other advisor that you may not even know, because the client — perhaps with the best of intentions — just went out to get a second opinion. So that's a big benefit.

Another benefit of collaboration is avoid mistakes. You know, it's really nice to know if you have team members who are supportive, colleagues who can look over your shoulder, maybe notice things that you missed. Even something as simple as typos. It's nice to have people who say, "You know, you might want to fix that. I think, on page 6." And then finally, a good reason to collaborate is because it's the right thing to do. And a question I think you need to ask yourself is: is there an ethical imperative for you to engage other advisors so that the client is best served, particularly in areas of expertise that you don't have personally.

So those are all really great reasons to collaborate.