Tuesday, April 10, 2012 Attract, Engage & Work with Families with Taxable Estates and Their Advisors
For decades many of us, as wealth strategies planners, have wondered not only how but if we should attract, engage and work with affluent families and those with complex taxable estates. Their advisors are more protective. The solutions are more complicated and create larger liability. Though the fees may be greater, are they enough to cover the time and effort – especially if we only do it occasionally?
The Laureate Center for Wealth Advisors has the training and education needed to attract, engage, and implement work in the taxable estate arena. You owe it to yourself and your clients to learn more about The Laureate Program, especially if you desire to:
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Quarterback a team of advisors or be called in as a team member;
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Find your quiet confidence as a leader and resource to clients and their advisors;
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Identify, explain, and implement complex tax, wealth, legal, and other technical strategies in an understandable client language;
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Price for your intellectual property and the value you create;
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Improve closing techniques while practice with energy, freedom, and passion;
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Have an effective, process-oriented, and profitable business, not a job
This program should seriously be considered by wealth strategies practitioners and advisors interested in the Families with Taxable Estates market and having the quiet confidence to quote six digit fees.
Below is a summary of The Three Pillars of the Laureate Curriculum: Counseling, Practice Management, and Case Studies. These pillars seem to separate the successful cases from the wildly successful and have helped to truly address the clients’ concerns, increase advisor compensation, and provide an established process through review, design, and implementation.
Counseling – Interpersonal Labs
The training and counseling labs provided through the Laureate Program helps each member decide and recognize which type of client you would like to work with. We believe that expanding from a “client engagement” to “client partnering” deepens the relationship and leads to more productive plans and results.
Client Partnering achieves the client’s specific goals through the process of Review, Design, and Implementation through authority on and clarity of:
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Problem and what’s behind it;
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Possible Solutions often resulting in former goals as less or not important; and
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Implementation and commitment to solution, timeline, and responsibilities for new goals.
In Client Partnering we facilitate a safe environment to explore the client’s and advisor’s true drivers. The common characteristics of facilitating a safe environment are:
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Rapport – a continued feeling of connection
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Relevance – current personal perspective related to the subject
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Expanding engagement
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Encouraging “new and clearer thought about the situation and what’s behind it”
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Understanding and committing to “We Can Help”
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Proactive commitment to process
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Expectations – setting, continuously reaffirming, achieving, and “whole plus one”
Practice Management - Processes & Protocols
Processes that worked before may not support a practice serving wealthy clients. Practitioners need to review and fine tune their processes and systems to support themselves and their team’s implementation, considering changes in technology. It is even more critical to continue to include the other collaborative advisors in communications, being sensitive and respectful to each professional and his or her role.
In short, continue to enhance your protocols on how you and your team interact with clients and advisors. Remember to work on, not in, your practice.
Case Studies – Review, Design, and Implementation
It is important to stay abreast of changes caused by new laws, economic conditions, financial products, and the impact of the media. Even though counseling and practice management are stronger players in attracting and engaging families with taxable estates, financial, tax and legal competency is required to design and implement successful client strategies. Through the technical and strategic training provided by The Laureate Program, we not only teach the “ins” and “outs” of stand-alone strategies but the more integrated strategies that should, or should not, be used together in the more hands on world of wealth strategies planning.
The art of working with affluent families is in the combining and layering of strategies that we have learned in order to accomplish our client’s deeper goals – identified through counseling. Laureate Program Members, through the Three Pillars of study and its members’ various professional experiences, continue to learn and practice to not only the variations of combining and layering complex strategies through case studies, but also ways to present these strategies to clients in an understandable fashion.
Enjoy Practicing Law – Join The Laureate Program today!
The Laureate Program facilitates discussions and provides process on how to counsel at a deeper level, manage our practices with more process, and to practice case studies that challenge ourselves, make more money, and appreciate what we do. Collaboration is king! Join The Laureate Program to learn more about how working with affluent families can be profitable and pleasurable with the right team of advisors at the table.
The Laureate Center for Wealth Advisors provides cutting edge training from industry leaders in advanced wealth, business, estate, and income tax planning. This year’s three 3-day session starts May 10-12, 2012. Visit www.laureatecenter.com or call (858) 200-1919 for more information.
This post has been brought to you by The Ultimate Estate Planner, Inc., providing practical, tested and proven technical and marketing products to help estate planning professionals throughout the country build their practices. Connect with us on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.
Monday, January 23, 2012 Full Report of The 46th Annual Philip E. Heckerling Institute on Estate Planning
At The Ultimate Estate Planner, Inc., we are committed to providing our fellow estate planners access to the information, products, education and various resources that are available to help individuals be better practitioners and provide better service of both estate and financial planning, to their clients.
Therefore, we are extremely pleased and privileged to provide to you through the graciousness of the American Bar Association's Real Property, Trust & Estate Law (RPTE) Section the full and complete report from the 46th Annual Heckerling Institute of Estate Planning Conference, one of the nation's leading conferences for estate planners, including attorneys, trust officers, accountants, insurance advisors, and wealth management professionals.
The 2012 conference was just held on January 9-13 in Orlando, Florida and had over 2,600 people in attendance.
Click here to download the Complete Report (Reports 1-16A)
You may also download individual reports and/or reports from prior years by visiting the ABA RPTE Section's website.
The University of Miami School of Law has also announced that the 47th Annual Heckerling Institute will be held next year from January 9-13, 2013 in Orlando, Florida.
This post has been brought to you by The Ultimate Estate Planner, Inc., providing practical, tested and proven technical and marketing products to help estate planning professionals throughout the country build their practices. Connect with us on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.
Friday, January 13, 2012 Lawyers & Social Media - What You Need to Know
By Philip J. Kavesh, J.D., LL.M. (Taxation), CFP®, ChFC, California State Bar Certified Specialist in Estate Planning, Trust & Probate Law
I just finished the last educational program needed to meet my continuing legal education requirements for my California State Bar license. I took an on-demand course that I thought was not only timely and relevant, given that I have recently done quite a bit of work with my law firm (and with The Ultimate Estate Planner, Inc.), with respect to this topic, but also a topic that many attorneys should be looking into as well.
The course I took was entitled "Online Networking Media and Lawyer Ethics: How Many Tweets Are Too Many?", offered by the California Continuing Education of the Bar ("CEB"). It was presented by attorneys Jonathan T. Rubens and Colette E. Vogele. I initially had a few hesitations about this program, because I thought that it was going to be all about posting tweets on Twitter, which we don't do that much of. But, the speakers put together an excellent program that included a lot of great information about the ethical responsibilities of attorneys pertaining to all kinds of online social media, including maintaining blogs for your law firm or other companies, Avvo, LinkedIn, Yelp! and Facebook.
I learned quite a bit about some different things that I need to consider and look into further with all of these various online networks so that I am meeting my ethical responsibilities as an attorney. What I got from this program is to be extra judicious and deliberate in your thought processes pertaining to anything you post online or electronically. As attorneys, we are held to a higher standard of responsibility for what we say and do and with the internet, the second you publish, post or tweet, you are creating permanent records to be judged upon.
If you are an attorney in California and are any online networking sites, I highly recommend this program. If you're not in California or an attorney, definitely try to find a comparable program on this topic!
That being said, I leave you with the following disclaimer. I am an attorney. I am not your attorney. You are not my client. But, please feel free to find me online and check out all of the interesting things I have to post. :)
Happy Friday everyone!
This post has been brought to you by The Ultimate Estate Planner, Inc., providing practical, tested and proven technical and marketing products to help estate planning professionals throughout the country build their practices. Connect with us on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.
Photo Credit: alexlovellsblog.blogspot.com.jpg
Saturday, January 07, 2012 New Website Launched!
We are pleased to announce the launch of our newly designed website. We think that the navigation and ease of finding things are among the many improvements to the site.
There are still many areas of the website that we will be building up and improving over the course of the next few months. Here's just a preview of what you can expect to find in the near future:
In the meantime, please take a moment to browse through our website. If you find any problems or issues with the website, please feel free to e-mail us so that we can address any issues right away. Also, please be advised that any previous links to teleconferences or pages to download handout materials from our previous website are no longer available. If you need to access a certain page and cannot locate it, please contact us and we will be more than happy to help you.
A special thanks to the help of folks over at Amicus Creative and the hard work of The Ultimate Estate Planner, Inc. staff for getting this website launched in such a short period of time!
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