Most estate planning professionals would love to make more money, while reducing their work time and stress. Unfortunately, many believe that in order to achieve these lofty goals, you have to do a complete “makeover” of your practice – – and that degree of change is scary!
However, this is more myth than truth. In fact, there’s a universal business principle sometimes called “the law of incremental change”, which I call “the law of tweaking” (shame on you if you thought I was referring to something else!). This law proves that just slightly changing (or tweaking) a few critical items here and there can have a huge impact on your income and the quality of your life.
Let me show you how this law works.
Believe it or not, for most all estate planning professionals, your income is determined by the following formula:
Number of New Prospects Generated by Your Marketing
(including client referrals)
X
Percentage of People Who Make Appointments
X
Percentage of People Who Show Up to the Appointment
X
Your Closing Percentage
(Percentage of People Who Engage You)
X
Average Transaction Fee (Revenue)
X
Number of Transactions
(Purchases Per Client, e.g. an engagement to do both a Living Trust
and an Irrevocable Gift Trust equals 2 purchases)
= MONTHLY GROSS INCOME
X 12 Months = ANNUAL GROSS INCOME
Let’s assume, just for illustration purposes, that your current numbers look like this (click image to enlarge):
Now, let’s just pretend we increase your close rate – – the number of prospects who sign an engagement letter and give you a retainer check – – just slightly, from 50 to 60 percent (click image to enlarge).
That one small change results in 20% increase in your annual revenue! Now, let’s look at the combined effect of a couple of more “tweaks”.
Let’s say you increase your average transaction fee by just 10% and your average number of purchasers per transaction by just 10% (click image to enlarge).
Those 3 small changes combined now mean your annual revenue increases from the original $45,000 to $65,340 – – or almost a 50% INCREASE IN YOUR ANNUAL REVENUE!
(By the way, if you merely made a 15% increase across the board, in all 6 original factors, that would result in OVER TWICE your annual income!)
But How Do You Tweak?
This is the stuff that you don’t learn in law school or continuing education courses. It’s also not something that can be easily taught in an article. However, it is the stuff that we at The Ultimate Estate Planner can help with.
We have a number of programs—both live and self-learning—to assist you. Remember, if you merely tweak each of these three items a little, your income can make a quantum leap, while your work time and stress go down!
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Attorney Philip J. Kavesh is the principal of one of the largest estate planning firms in California – – Kavesh, Minor and Otis – – with over 40+ years in business. He is also the President of The Ultimate Estate Planner, Inc., which provides a variety of training, marketing and practice-building products and services for estate planning professionals. If you would like more information or have a question for him, he can be reached at phil@ultimateestateplanner.com or by phone at 1-866-754-6477.
Image courtesy of iosphere / FreeDigitalPhotos.net