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:
- Quarterback a team of advisors or be called in as a team member;
- Find your quiet confidence as a leader and resource to clients and their advisors;
- Identify, explain, and implement complex tax, wealth, legal, and other technical strategies in an understandable client language;
- Price for your intellectual property and the value you create;
- Improve closing techniques while practice with energy, freedom, and passion;
- 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:
- Problem and what’s behind it;
- Possible Solutions often resulting in former goals as less or not important; and
- 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:
- Rapport – a continued feeling of connection
- Relevance – current personal perspective related to the subject
- Expanding engagement
- Encouraging “new and clearer thought about the situation and what’s behind it”
- Understanding and committing to “We Can Help”
- Proactive commitment to process
- 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.