Lesson 1 | Guiding the Communication between the client and the other advisors (10:41 minutes)
The client communication with other advisors
Guiding the conversation, the communication between the client and the other advisors is critical in order to get off to a good start with collaboration. Now let's just remind ourselves where we are in this process.
You're hired, you got your check, you got your signed agreements, and now you're ready to have this conversation with the client about what the client needs to do to engage the other advisors. It's, of course, critically important that the client authorize you to do this. The other advisors are not going to work with you if the client doesn't ask them to work with you, so you've got to make that happen, and you're going to do that by coaching the client on what to do.
Now it's really important for you to control this message. Does the client know what to say to the other advisors? Not really. If you just left it up to the client to say whatever he or she thought to say, would that work out well for you? Probably not. You really have to craft these words and provide leadership to the client, so that he or she will know how to say it the way it needs to be said that will lead to a productive good start for collaboration. Don't leave it up to the client, you need to control that message.
Another thing that's happened at this point is, you have had a conversation with the client about the core team, you've agreed together on the two or three key people who really need to be involved in this collaborative process. It's going to be a short list, and you're going to send to the client a sample email, so that the client will know what to send to the other advisors to invite them and ask them to participate. Now this sample email is part of our course material, so you'll be able to refer to that later, and adapt it to your liking.
What I'd like to do now is basically read the email, and I'll fill in the blanks with some sample information as if the advisor here who's initiating this collaboration process with the client is named Chris. Chris is part of a firm named Chris and Associates, and so this is how Chris might adapt this email for her client, her new client. Here's how the email goes.
First it would say, "Dear other advisor," - the other advisor's name. Remember this is the client sending this email that Chris provided as a sample. The email starts, "We recently engaged Chris and Associates to update our financial and wealth transfer goals and to refine our strategies accordingly." I'm going to pause right here, and I'm going to do this for each sentence in the email and describe what's in here and why it's important, so that when you adapt this for your practice, you'll keep these things in mind to be sure to touch these points.
We start off by saying, "We recently engaged Chris and Associates." Why is that important? It lets the other advisors know that Chris is engaged. That's good, they're not immediately going to start thinking, who is she, and why is she around, and how do we get rid of her, or how do we do that instead of her? That kind of thing, so you're engaged.
Second, it's says - the same sentence - "... to update our financial and wealth transfer goals." "Update" is a good word because it's not replace, it's not overhaul. In other words, you don't want to be threatening, make it easy, make little incremental changes. The reality is, in the planning process you may all agree as collaborators to make some big changes, but you're not there yet. Right now, you're reaching out to the other advisors, and you want to reduce the threat level that may be present in their minds, so you want to make it easy.
You're updating the financial and wealth transfer goals. Now based upon your practice you might say something other than, "update our financial and wealth transfer goals." You know what you're going to do, you know what you want to do, so adapt that if you feel it's appropriate. Finally, the sentence ends, "... and to refine our strategies accordingly." Again, the word refine implies little adjustments, not grand, sweeping changes. Again, you want to be nonthreatening.
The next sentence reads, "Chris encouraged me to authorize you to work together, and I think that's a good idea." Why is this sentence important? Well, it says, "Chris encouraged me to authorize you to work together." What does that mean? Well it means that it was Chris's idea to ask you into the process early in the process, rather than wait till the end, and find out after all the fun has been had and all the work's been done, ask for somebody to rubber stamp your work.
Now, Chris understands that you're important, that you have a contribution to make, that you should be included early in the process. This, I think, helps the other advisor to believe that you are aware of their value, sensitive to how they want to be included, and maybe that's a breath of fresh air to them. I think they're going to like that coming from Chris.
Finally, the sentence ends, "I think that's a good idea." Another reinforcement that the client is onboard with this, the client wants this to happen. If the client wants this to happen, then the other advisors are likely to say, "Okay, well, I guess we're going to get started here." They may not know what's going to happen yet, they may have questions, but they're going to do it because the client wants them to do it.The next sentence reads, "With this in mind, Chris will call you soon to find a time for the two of you to meet." What's important about that? Chris will call you soon. Chris represents you. You will call the other advisor soon and find a time for the two of you to meet. You're not going to email the other advisor, you're not going to use a technology to find a group meeting. No, you are going to call and you're going to set up a face-to-face meeting.
These are best practices. If you don't want to do it this way, it's your practice, but we're just sharing with you what's worked really well. The reason this face-to-face with the other advisors is important, particularly at the beginning, is you need to start to build trust and rapport with them as rapidly as possible. You just can't do that with a phone call or an email, you really need to get together face-to-face and start to get to know one another, and talk about how this collaboration process ought to work. You're going to call and find a time for the two of you to meet.
The next sentence says, "Please feel free to share any of my information with Chris." What's important about that? Well, it is important to the other advisor that they're onboard with this, and they're authorizing the other advisor to share this information. Now, the other advisor may have some protocols that would require, perhaps, the client to sign an information release and that kind of thing, so that's fine. The fact that this is coming in an email, even informally form a client, is an indication to the other advisor that the client wants this to work and is going to be willing to sign that information release if that is needed.
The next sentence says, "I understand you will bill me for this meeting." Boy, that's important because so many fee based advisors, if they were to get a call like this from another advisor, "Hey, let's get together, have lunch. I want to tell you about what I'm talking to the client about in terms of collaboration," they're going to wonder, am I going to bill the client for this? Does the client expect me to bill them for that? I'm just going to bill the client anyway for this. Remove all of that confusion.
In this email, by the way, when the client says, "I understand you will bill this for me," first of all, that removes the confusion. I think that almost any advisor would have the discernment to know that this email message was ... Let's say the client got some help from somebody in crafting this email, and that help probably came from you. That means that you are sensitive to how they get paid, and the fact that this is important information for them.
