Lesson 4 | Introducing the Team Profile & The Planning Table (52:36 minutes)

The Planning Table

In this session, I want to talk to you about a concept that we call the Team Profile. We'll also talk about in this one of the key components of that which we call the Planning Table discussion or the Planning Table tool. This concept is something that has come out of our book, The Right Side of the Table, that we wrote back in 2007. I wrote it with my late brother Scott Fithian. The reference point for this material, and what I'm going to talk to you about here today, a great reference point will be chapter two of The Right Side of the Table, which you will find in the course curriculum. You'll be able to download it, and review that.

I want to talk about first just the concept of where do we kind of begin with the information. In the last section, we talked about the Planning Horizon, right? When we're below the Planning Horizon part of what we're discovering down there is what are the current structures from a legal tax perspective, what are the different strategies and things that they've got in place. But we also want to discover who are their key and important advisor relationships. We talked about that. In the Discovery Phase, you really have got to uncover that. You've already gotten a little bit of the lay of the land of, "Do you have a lawyer that you've done your estate planning work with," or things of that nature. "Do you have an accountant that you're working with, or do you have an insurance person, do you have an investment person?" Things of that nature. At this point in time, you should have already begun to capture. But if you didn't, it's okay. If you only got part of it, that's okay. As you introduce the whole concept of the Planning Table, this is your opportunity to kind of discover who those key and important advisor relationships are that exist today in their lives.

If you were to think about looking at the metaphor of the conference room table, or the board room table, could even be just a dining room table in your prospects home. If you were to look at that table, what we've talked about in The Right Side of the Table book, and in chapter two, is that the size of the table, and where you sit around the table, have different roles and responsibilities as it relates to your relationship with the client. The whole theme of kind of The Right Side of the Table, or the metaphor rather of The Right Side of the Table, is the fact that we ultimately want to be moving to the right side of the table, which is where the clients are sitting.

If you look at one side of the table as to where your clients are sitting, okay? You've got seats across that table, directly across that table. We talk about in the book, the whole concept of that these people are typically in a sales role, or a sales seat with those client relationships. These are typically people that are very transactional in nature, they don't have a really long shelf life, these might be somebody in maybe the property casualty field, or it might be a banking relationship. They're very transactional types of relationships. It could be an insurance broker, or something of that nature. We find that sometimes clients actually put investment folks over there across the table, in a very sales-oriented type of relationship. Across the table is really what the sales style, and the sales relationship sits.

At the ends of the table, is what we call the Advice seats. The Advice seats are often filled by what we call at Legacy, the core team. The core team in our world, in our perspective, is made up of somebody from the legal, somebody from the tax, somebody from the investment, somebody from the insurance. This is the team that a family that's planning and working successfully, has to have these relationships and skillsets in place over the life of that relationship, to be able to be successful in the work that they're doing. That's kind of our belief standpoint. The goal with this, is clearly in collaboration, right? When you think about multidisciplinary professional collaboration in the estate planning process, those key figures sitting at the ends of the table in the advice seat, are absolutely critical to that. Those really, really constitute the majority of the collaborators that you're dealing with in this instance, when you're talking about the estate planning process.

On the other side of the table, you have the clients. What I want to help you to understand in this segment, is that there's actually another advisor seat on the client's side of the table. While across the table is the sales style, and the ends of the table is the advice style. On the client's side of the table, is what we talk about, is being the discernment style. For years, we've talked about this as the most trusted advisor, so the person that's sitting on the client's side of the table is the most trusted.

I think that's become challenging over time, because if you're putting yourself out as the most trusted, well, other people feel a lot less. They feel like you're sucking up all the trust, and maybe there's no trust for us, or you're looking at us at a lower level.

Today we talk more about this in the instance of, a team leader. Or, I love sports, so many of you I'm sure love sports too. I like to talk about it from a captain standpoint. The captain of a sporting team. The thing I love about it is, the captain of a sporting team is oftentimes voted into that seat by their coaches, right? In this case, the coaches would be the client, right? Then they're teammates. And the teammates are their fellow collaborators. I love this whole concept of being the captain, and being appointed of the captain of the team.

What's interesting is, in most of the work that we do at Legacy, our advisors, our clients that are sitting in an advice seat in almost all instances, some of them are sitting in an advice seat and playing a role because they've got a competency in the legal, the tax, the insurance, the investment, or a combination of some of those. When the seat is vacant on the client side of the table, right? In that quarterback, team leader, captain role, they're moving into that seat either by design, either because the client has asked them, or because that seat is vacant and somebody needs to fulfill that seat.

The reason somebody needs to fulfill that seat is that, somebody needs to be the guiding voice to that client. One of the powers in collaboration and taking on that role, is that if you can be that central voice to the client, and also be that central voice back out to the other collaborators, it really puts you in a powerful role, and it eases the complexity and potential frustration with your clients. In traditional approaches, there is such a siloed orientation where each of the advisors are trying to get their face time, to promote their ideas, their strategies, with those clients.

When the different advisors are coming at it from all sides, it becomes overwhelming over time. And really can become frustrating to the client. That is the power of collaboration, because most clients don't have an effective collaborative team, right? Today we're talking about prospects, and bringing a model for where we can help you have all of your advisors working towards your best interest, your vision, values, and goals that we've uncovered through the discovery process, and you can be that centralized voice between the client and the other advisors, and go in both ways.

What this doesn't mean, is that you're the only one who talks to the client. I think that's a big misconception in this approach. Every one of those advisors, and the advisee at the end of the table plays a key role in the outcomes that family is trying to achieve, or that individual, or that business is trying to achieve. Just because somebody's sitting on the client's side of the table, does not mean that these other advisors won't have interaction and face time, and be in trusted relationships with that client. We're not saying that at all. But what we're saying is, somebody needs to conduct the discovery, right? That discovery done by a team is interrogation. Done by an individual the right way, authentically, is a high trust relationship, and is when effective discovery is done. And that information is shared with the team, so the team can actually then put their best thinking caps on, to figure out how do we actually help them accomplish this in the best, smartest, most cost effective way, right?

That's the concept of the table. As you're having the conversation with a prospective client, one of the things that David Holaday talked about earlier in one of the prior sessions, a great question to be asking in this meeting with a prospect is, "When was the last time all of your advisors got together on your behalf, without you in the room? When was the last time they were all together?" Probably never, right? This is an interesting opportunity to kind of talk about the relationships you have with the various advisors you have, and if I was to ask you today, and as you bring this blank tool out on the table, and you can talk to this prospect about the various seats. "Where would you put, in what seats would you put the relationships that you have with your advisors today? Who would you put across the table from you in more of a sales relationship, in a sales style?" Right?

"Who do you have at the ends of your table in the advice seats?" I want to know as an advisor that is trying to turn this prospect into a client, I want to know. "Is there anybody today, that you feel is sitting on your side of the table, serving your best interest, and helping to quarterback and move the efforts forward that are most important to you with all of your other advisor relationships?" I'm going to tell you, in most cases, you're going to hear, "No. There's nobody fulfilling that seat."

The thing I want to tell you, in some instances, somebody will be sitting in that seat, and it is not your job to displace that relationship. That's combative, that creates all kinds of challenges, and it's one of the reasons why collaboration oftentimes fails, because advisors are going after advisors, undermining, attacking, whatever it might be.

If there's somebody sitting in that seat, and I were you and looking at bringing collaboration, and all the skills that you're going to get through this course to this relationship, I would let it be over time. I would observe, and I would watch that relationship, and the competencies to make sure that, that advisor should be sitting in that seat, and does have an authentic relationship. If in fact they do, then what you can do is you can bring the skills, the tools, and the process that you've developed through this program, to that team leader, to that quarterback, to the captain that's been selected by the client. And you can bring it to that person, and lend it to them, and help them with it. What does that do for your relationship with that key advisor to this individual or family? It moves you closer to them.

In essence, you become a very important relationship to that lead advisor, to that key advisor. In essence, I used to say for years, you become the most trusted advisor to the most trusted advisor. It's a powerful place to be. If that advisor is sitting in that seat, and that's not the seat that they should be in, and they don't have the competency, and they don't have the skills, and they're not doing the right things, that will vet itself out over time. It will rise itself to the occasion, it will show itself. There will then be an opportunity for you to take that right role, and to move into that seat over time.

The Team Profile

One more concept that I want to talk about in the Team Profile that you will see as a component of the planning table conversation is a couple of measurements as we now move forward and we engage in the relationship with this client, and we're moving forward to start to understand the role, and the value that these other advisors are bringing to the table, is the Team Profile, which is really an understanding of the value, and the relationship that these other advisors have with this client. So, we look at a couple of different things in here. One way is we want to understand what's the real relational value that they're bringing to the table. We're measuring that on a couple of key areas. Is it relationship focused? Do they have a great relationship? Was this a fraternity brother, a childhood friend, or something of that nature? Are they bringing a level of solutions to the table? Do they bring great solutions? Is that why they're on the team, because they're super smart, technically competent and they bring that to the table? Is it the fact that they're bringing a level of discovery to the table? Do they help you think about that, above the horizon concepts that we have talked to you about, that we bring to our client relationships? Are they helping you get clear on what matters most? Where are they on that?

The last part that we're trying to measure is are they bringing a level of management, oversight and structure to what you're trying to achieve, and the process, and how that gets done. We're measuring those on a scale of minus three to plus three. A negative three to a plus three. We're doing that because you want to really be able to show where somebody is weak versus where somebody is strong. The only way you can really do that successfully is going to a negative. We do a negative three to a positive three, and we can basically calculate out who is the most valued on the team, and what are those areas that they are the highest valued. That's one really powerful thing to understand about the other advisors.

The other thing is that we're measuring them around is the trust that they have with this client in the relationship. There's a formula for this, too. The formula for trust works this way. You've got a formula that on the nominator is credibility, plus reliability, plus intimacy, and then it is all divided by what they call self-interest, or self-orientation. Credibility, reliability, intimacy, and then all divided by self-interest, or self-orientation. I'll talk about those real quickly.

When you look at credibility, reliability and intimacy, those are all measured on a scale of one to ten. So if I'm a 10, I'm a rock star and I'm highly credible, high sense of reliability and high sense of intimacy. However, if I'm a 10 below the line, in the denominator, in the self-interest or self-orientation, if I'm a 10, I'm not a rock star at all. I'm very self-oriented, I'm very much all about me and serving my needs and what I get out of this, my income versus my client's outcome. That's more important, and that comes out. Unfortunately, our industry has people like that.

So, if we're looking at this formula, we want to understand from a scale of one to ten, how credible is this person in your eyes? How reliable have they been over the time that you've been in a relationship with them? What's the level of intimacy that you have in that relationship, meaning sharing things with them that you haven't shared with anybody else, that are really important to you and your family, and whatnot. Then down below, we're going to get a grade from them around self-orientation. Are they, on a scale of one to ten, how focused are they on their needs versus your needs? For you, and from your standpoint, you want to be a one in self-interest, or as low as you possibly can, because if you're a 10, it kills your score around the amount of trust that you have with a client. This is a really, really powerful tool.

One last thing. This is powerful as you start to move into the face-to-face advisor meetings. Once you've been engaged by the client, you now know the lay of the land. You know where and why this client values their other advisors that you're going to meet with. You know the level of trust and the specific areas and why it is what it is, because you've had that conversation with the client. As you're going into these meetings, it's powerful to be able to share with them where they're valued, and also gently and carefully about where they're weak, and where they can build and where they ought to focus their efforts and energy. That can be a valuable exchange for you to bring to them and say, "Listen, they love the work that you did on this and this. They love how you do this for them all the time, or each and every year, but you know, there were a couple of things that came out in that conversation where I think you could really even continue to elevate your relationship and trust, and roll on that team, if that makes sense to you."

This is obviously something you want to do over time. You don't want to do out of the gate. The point I'm trying to make here is that this tool and this conversation, with this prospect, now that we're engaging, really can become a very powerful conversation, and it will put you into a place of high knowledge and degree as you start to go meet with your future fellow collaborators.

I really hope you've enjoyed this section, and I look forward to your use of the Planning Table and the Team Profile.

Listen to this lesson

The Planning Table:

The Team Profile: