Lesson 4 | Why Collaborate – Benefits to Clients (2:02 minutes)
Benefits to Clients
Of course, we have to be persuaded that collaboration is not only good for ourselves and our practices, collaboration needs to be good for our clients as well.
I think there are a number of reasons why collaboration is really good for clients. First is better advice. It's really one of the same reasons it's a good idea for us as advisors to collaborate. We give better advice, clients get better advice, so that's good.
I think in the long run collaboration is less expensive for clients than not collaborating. Not everybody comes to this conclusion right off the bat. Sometimes it's easy to think, "Oh my goodness. We got all these high paid advisors in the room. That's going to be $1,000 an hour meeting and that's really expensive. I don't want to pay all that money." Sometimes clients feel like they need to keep advisors separate and manage those expenses. I think that's very shortsighted.
When clients get together there's better communication. Better communication leads to fewer mistakes, fewer do-overs, get it right the first time. I think in the long run collaboration is less expensive, plus think about the benefits to the client that would emerge from collaboration that wouldn't emerge if there had been no collaboration. It's very difficult to quantify that. When we think of expense we typically think of fees, but it's easy to overlook the financial benefits to the client that the client would not have received had it not been for the collaborative process.Finally, a great benefit for clients is having the confidence to take action. Have you ever had a client fail to act, failed to make a decision, client's confused, maybe getting conflicting advice? Is it good for clients when they don't act? No, I don't think so. I think it's good for clients when we give them enough clarity that they can go ahead and make a decision. When you get all the advisors together and collaborate and everyone on the team expresses their belief that these are good ideas, that client has confidence to take action, and that's really good for clients.