Tara (00:51):
Welcome to episode 52 of the Art of Estate Planning podcast. It's Tara here. A little bit quirkier than normal, but I promise you I'm okay.
(01:02):
And today's episode is all about how to have better estate planning meetings that maximise connection and profitability. Now, earlier today I actually delivered this topic as a 90 minute presentation for our TT Precedent's Club members, and it was such a good time and such an incredible topic that I wanted to share some of the highlights for our podcast listeners. Now, if you want the full training and the resources that come with the presentation, then you can access those by joining the TT Precedents club. But I wanted to give you a little bit of a look under the bonnet as to the kinds of things we talk about in our special interest topics in the TT precedents club. So I want to mention in terms of what I'm talking about today, it's really just intended as inspiration. Of course, there are no rules. So when it comes to estate planning meetings, you can be as creative as you'd like.
(02:17):
I encourage you to steal best practise from other industries and to confront some of the things you're doing out of tradition. So you might've heard Carrie say this on the podcast before. Tradition is peer pressure from dead people. And a lot of the time when we actually explore the rationale for why we do something, there actually isn't a good reason. It's just because someone in power decided that was the way that it would be done back in the day, or they didn't have access to the current technology that we have now, or they just made a decision on the fly without bringing a lot of creativity to it. There's no real reason why we are beholden to that decision. And I think how you run your meetings is a perfect example of that, especially because you might have only been in meetings with one or two particular mentors or senior lawyers who showed you how to do it, and there's a lot that we can learn from other people.
(03:25):
So why should we look at how to improve our meetings? Well, good meetings result in engaged clients who give us appropriate and complete instructions, which means we make less errors. Our matters are more profitable. But not only that, we leave our clients surprised and delighted, which causes word of mouth referrals and entrenches us, us as our clients trusted advisor. It also helps manage risk on our matters, which ultimately means a better time for us, a better time for our clients. So one thing, I'm not going to dive into this, but in terms of your meeting, there is a lot of groundwork that I recommend be done because your meeting strategy really ties into your overall pricing and branding strategy. They're intimately connected in terms of how many meetings are you having, you having three meetings, when are you communicating the pricing and how are you doing that ties into do you have a price list?
(04:37):
Are you displaying it on your website? Have you got one? But it's not on the website. Are you using a unique price for each client? Are you charging for your first meeting? Is your first meeting redeemable on the estate planning documents? Are you doing a free first meeting? Are you using behavioural economics and offering multiple prices? Are you collecting funds in trust? Are you working with an accountant or financial advisor as well? So all of that is really going to impact on how you end up developing your strategy and what you can automate and systemize when it comes to estate planning. So I really encourage you to do the behind the scenes work to get your agenda templates and your scripts set up in your practise management system for each particular meeting. Have your sales call scripted out for you and your staff. Keep track of all of your conversion rates and data.
(05:44):
Who's coming into your funnel from the first impression? What happens on a phone or email inquiry? How many free calls or first meetings are you converting into paying customers so that you can see where people are falling out of the funnel and what you need to spend more time on? Also systemizing who needs to do what if you have admin support, who's doing it? So all of that ties again into your pricing and your workflow decisions about what are the possible paths. So if you are just freestyling it, then I think that you might find there's opportunity to build out some more systems and automation so that there's less certainty for you. The client has a clear expectation of the process and you're making more profit. So I don't want to go into that fully. We have an incredible resource called the Estate Planning Pricing Toolkit, and it has priceless templates training on how you should be pricing, what you should be charging, helping you decide if you want to do your first meeting free or not, if you're going to do packages, how to get away from time billing and as well as cost agreement terms, what you need to include in your cost agreement disclosures.
(07:12):
And as we have a lot of practical resources in there too in terms of factoring in what to charge, what your breakeven price is. So that's an incredible resource. If you haven't done the groundwork on creating a policy or for your firm and making those decisions, I recommend starting there. We made it especially to help you navigate your way through all of those issues. I will just say though on pricing, I think that is an area where lawyers can borrow from other industries who do this really well because I wouldn't say that lawyers traditionally handle pricing well, especially when you think about the guidance from your law society, everything they're giving you on pricing, especially with the disclosure terms and framework, is to mitigate risk and reflective of the professional obligation legislation, right? It's not designed with delighting customers and the user experience. So I dunno if you've ever used a photographer, a professional photographer, I think of my wedding and the bunch of times that we've either had professional photos taken for the website or just the professional family photos, they all do it so well where it's super easy to sign on.
(08:37):
They send you an email or a text with the link to the portal where it's got the cost agreement terms. It's really clear about who owns the photos and what happens and the different timelines. You sign it, it's clear when they're billing you all of that super easy. You get sent the complete cost agreement disclosure at the end and it's a really nice user experience and that usually integrates into their price list and you booking the time for the shoot. So I would say that if you've worked with a photographer who has all that set up, the user experience is great, there's no barrier to working with them because of the way that pricing is handled. I would also say I worked recently with the ads agency who does all my paid advertising. They have a similar setup that's really schmick, just jump on a link.
(09:32):
It shows everything where you're at. You can download the contract terms and as a first way that your client is engaging with you. It's a really nice experience comparing that to what some lawyers do where we send them a really complex cost agreement that's hard to read and we have to print it out and sign it manually and scan it back in and all of that. When it's your first interaction with the client, you really want to remove the barriers for them to avoid working with you. And we already struggle enough with inertia in estate planning. So for people who aren't great at following through with paperwork, we can really be turning clients off just by the way that we are handling the pricing. So think about that in mind and particularly if your practise management software has a tool that does that, I'd really be encouraging you to look at it.
(10:34):
The other thing that I would encourage you to look at is the general customer journey. So put yourself through the experience or get a family member to go through it and really give you some honest feedback about little things that can be fixed up because again, the client hasn't even met with you yet and we just don't want to have little things chipping away at the customer experience. So some of the things that I hate, I recently booked a telehealth appointment with a physiotherapist in Western Australia and I'm in Queensland, and it was a telehealth appointment obviously, and on their website they had two buttons, an in-person or a telehealth, and I booked it online, but when they started confirming the appointment with me via text and email, they kept sending me the parking directions and that really threw me because I was like, oh, have I booked the wrong appointment by accident?
(11:35):
Not only were they sending me the parking directions, they were mentioning the cancellation policy each time. So it got me quite worried that I wasn't going to turn up in the clinic like they were expecting and I was going to be pinged with this cancellation policy because they kept sending me parking. So they're expecting me in person, so I had to go back and double check and even email them and say, this is a telehealth right? And that whole process and funnel was just really clunky because they should have had a separate funnel for telehealth appointments where they go, here's the zoom details, or we'll send you the Zoom details 24 hours before or whatever it was to set the expectation. But because no one had looked at it independently and gone, oh, telehealth, people don't need parking directions, it just really made what should have been a seamless transaction, really clunky on that front.
(12:35):
I love using something like an online booking system like Calendly, Microsoft or Tidy Cal. Other people have suggested you can set it up so that it confirms the location perhaps. I think you can set it up for different types of meetings so that you have different post sequences. It allows you to automate the reminders and you can put the different email or information that you want in that email or SMS. So that just means you can really communicate everything that you need to the client without you having to manually do it. I personally also only use services where I can book through an online calendar unless I'm absolutely forced to like a specialist because I don't want to be sitting there going back and forth, can you do this date? Can you do that date? I want to think about how it fits in with everything else that I've got going on in my life.
(13:32):
Another thing that I would really recommend is customer intake forms. It is my main pet peeve when I have to fill in an online intake form and then I get to the provider and they make me repeat all that information again. And I especially remember when I was pregnant with my second son going to a new dentist because we had moved towns and when I filled in the online booking form and everything, I said, I'm pregnant. And then when I got to the appointment reception gave me the clipboard and made me fill in everything again on the paper-based form. And then I was in the dentist's chair and they're like, okay, we're going to send you off to get your x-rays now. And I was like, hold on, I'm pregnant. I don't think I can have x-rays. And it was total news to the dentist and I was like, I've told you guys this two or three times, how has it not made its way to the service provider?
(14:38):
So going through and testing that client experience can really just highlight those types of things. The same as in terms of fact finding. And when you are asking for that information, are you asking for it multiple times? Can you be more seamless with the way that you are asking for it? Now while we're still talking about preparing for the meeting, one of the things that I think really can help with your time management, because let's face it, we don't have enough time in our meetings. There is so much to cover. We are always rushed, and anything we can do to maximise our time in the meetings is going to be so helpful. So in terms of managing the time, I really love to prepare the client beforehand, position them with some emails that have PDF flyers or videos, even just informal casual videos that you've prerecorded either directly for them or just generic ones so that you're priming them with information that you're going to dive into in the meeting as well as homework.
(15:50):
Give them a list of the four questions that they need to think about before the meeting and say, we are going to get instructions from you on these things. So for instance, in the TT Precedents Club presentation, I've given them a template of a very short form estate planning instruction sheet, which just has the decisions that they have to make of where do you want your assets to go If you die, who's going to be your financial controllers? Who's going to be your decision makers for medical treatment? And if you've got kids who's going to take care of your kids? So I've got templates for couples and individuals that our TT precedents club members have that you can send before the meeting to start getting them thinking about who they want to appoint. And if they fill that in and give it to you, then it's really easy for you as the lawyer to sort of fill in the gaps or just tweak the instructions with some recommendations about backups or filling vacancies and that type of thing.
(16:51):
I really encourage you not to fact find in your meetings unless you specifically want a meeting for that purpose because there is so much to cover and I think you're better off discussing instructions and giving recommendations in that meeting. So again, in the longer training, our TT precedents club members got what I call a snapshot checklist. So a list of everything that I think we should be asking for prior to the meeting, but perhaps even prior to scoping so that we have a full understanding of the scenario.
(17:33):
And in that way, I would recommend that once you've got costs sorted out, you can use the information in that fact fight to develop recommendations, narrow down the key issues that you want to spend most of your time in and build out your risk management meeting agenda. So another thing I think about just before the meeting is in those post-booking, pre-meeting preparation communications, which should be automatic.
(18:03):
Not only are you obviously communicating the meeting time and date and location, but be really practical about anything you can do to reduce anxiety. So tell them how long to set aside for the meeting. There's nothing worse than having a member of a couple where one of them goes, oh, I've only booked 50 minutes for this. I've got a meeting on the next hour and I've got to run. And you are thinking it's a two hour meeting and you've lost one of your decision makers for the second half of the meeting. So I always recommend saying this is going to be a 90 minute meeting. You both need to be there for the entire duration of the meeting so that you don't even have a scenario where one of the couple doesn't turn up, tell them what to expect. We're going to discuss these things after the meeting.
(18:57):
This is what will happen. You might even want to say who can't be there, especially if you've got an elderly client where the meeting has been organised by a family member and you can just say, look, they can't sit through the meeting, but we have a great coffee shop downstairs. That type of thing. Just set their expectations so that you reduce the chance of them turning up late, frazzled, stressed, worried, that type of thing. In terms of actually being in the meeting, I want to just switch gears a little bit and talk about the mindset that we should bring to the meeting. So I assume that most of the time you are going to have so much spinning around in your brain in terms of the technical and legal issues you need to address in that meeting, but it's really important that when you're facing the clients that you step out of that brain.
(19:54):
You don't want to bring the will drafting brain into the client meeting. It's a different skillset, right? And I would really encourage you to see that your role is one of guide rather than lecturer. So more listening, less telling. You can use listening in the meeting to build trust and connection with the client, create that rapport at least at the very beginning. I think use listening to let them warm up. They can tell you about themselves and what they will do is give you clues about what is important to them. So you cannot cover everything in the meeting as we know that we are always under time pressure. So you have to choose what is going to resonate with that client. Hit on the key points and just take a beat and let them tell you before you dive into lecturing. So the other thing I want you to think about is clients might be coming to this meeting having a lot of feelings.
(21:01):
They might be feeling vulnerable, judged, shame about their circumstances, shame they haven't done anything yet scared or fearful about the process that estate planning isn't for them, scared that they're going to jinx themselves in denial that they have to even deal with this or that their situation is going to cause problems. It can bring up a real range of negative feelings and I would class myself as someone who is pretty sophisticated. I'm a lawyer, I work in this space all the time, but I have this similar feeling when we changed financial advisors and we had our first meeting with our financial advisor a while ago and I felt so nervous. I actually thought preparing for the meeting. I was like, am I getting my report card for my life? Are they going to be judging me on the good decisions and the poor decisions that we've made financially?
(22:07):
Are they going to say that we're not far enough along or tell us that because of other things our options are limited or I don't know what it was. I just felt so nervous even though I know this financial advisor, they've actually been a client in the past For me, I had no need to be nervous, but it's just something about the process and laying everything down, we are asking our clients to be so vulnerable with us. So just bear that in mind when you are meeting with a client because it is just the greatest honour and privilege that we have to help our clients build their legacy. And I think it can be so easy for us to go, oh, it's just another meeting I've got. I've had 10 of these this week, but for the client, they are only doing this a couple of times in their lifetime and it is a huge deal.
(23:06):
And the same as in the birthing suite at the hospital. It is life-changing for the people giving birth. The doctors and nurses, this is their fifth baby that born that day, but they all have to show up and treat it like the monumental occasion that it is. So bring that into the whole process. Don't act rushed even if you're crazy busy. I know you are so busy, but you have to leave that at the door and present with a calm and peaceful manner. Be present. Honour the privilege that we have in the meeting. Think about the space that you are creating. Is it calm? Is it clear? What are the power dynamics in terms of where everyone's sitting? Are you choosing seating positions that emphasise power positions or a collaborative cooperative presence? So think about that. The other thing, and this is so particular and perhaps you won't even resonate with this, but I think when it comes to estate planning, there's so much that we can do to show our personal side and be relatable even down to things like your choice of clothes.
(24:24):
And Carrie and I used to joke about this, but I don't think it does us any favours to show up in really corporate attire with the big power suits and the super high heels, and it might be based on the client demographic that you have, and in that case new to you. But for a lot of moms and dads, they don't need you in the crazy power suits. I think smart casual can be a really nice way to present yourself where you are professional, but you are still relatable because they need, at the end of the day, they need to feel like they can open up to you. And if they are intimidated or judged or can't connect with you, then that's going to make it really hard. Another couple of little tips just generally think about the energy that you are bringing. So read the room.
(25:18):
I like to try to keep it light and uplifting even though we're talking about death. That said, if you are aware that there is an event that has brought your client to you because someone close to them is dying or has died or they have a particular issue happening like a medical diagnosis where they need to do this, then you may need to be a little bit more sensitive around that. I also think from the client perspective, they are probably coming to you really thinking that this meeting is going be boring and they just want to get it over and done with. So if you could try to flip that expectation on its head once they're in the room with you by using analogies, storytelling, humour, where appropriate, you're really firstly going to make them engaged and pay attention. But also we've got a job to cut through the legal jargon and using alternate methods of communication like analogies and storytelling is a really good way to break down these really complex concepts in an accessible way.
(26:35):
On that note, if you are offering testamentary trusts, I really think you have to put the work in to perfect testamentary trust explanation as Albert Einstein says with that famous quote, if you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough. Learning how to nail your testamentary trust explanation will do you and your clients so many favours. Honestly, your meetings will go faster, the clients will get it and they'll have more confidence in you and the recommendation. So we've obviously got a heap more recommendations for your meetings. But in the interest of keeping this podcast episode short, a couple of others I'll just mention is be careful about your language. Sometimes people appreciate just clear and direct communication. So acknowledge that what you're talking about can be a sensitive topic, but then just use clear language like die rather than, oh, not here anymore, or you don't have to pussyfoot around the particular topics.
(27:48):
So another thing I really love is diagrams. I think we've talked about this before, but I would really encourage you to use estate planning flow charts, family trees and group structure diagrams in your meetings as much as possible. Draw on the whiteboard, give them print out a copy for each of them people in the meeting to have so they can draw on it. They love having that tactile thing to interact with. They can pick up if there's any errors. If names aren't right and a picture paints a thousand words, it helps you, but it really resonates with the client as well. And we can tap into the different ways that people learn. So we are covering off on the verbal as well as the visual too. I'd also really encourage you to leverage the whiteboard diagrams as much as possible. Draw out all the different scenarios that can come up and the contrasting strategies that you need them to approve of, especially work shopping through all of that gives the clients really practical examples of how the recommendations and structures work, which really helps with your knowledge and approval and helps you capture any instructions and gaps that you might've missed.
(29:15):
I also just want to make a note in terms of capacity assessment. You cannot assess a client's capacity if you're the only one talking. So make sure that you do give them the chance to summarise the strategy back to you to ask questions which indicate an understanding. And if you use our testament tree trust precedent packages, we've got a checklist in the file note and meeting agenda templates that you could refer to so that you can check it off in the meeting. In terms of some of the practical things, just make sure you give the client lots of space, listen and also give them space to ask lots of questions. The more that they can summarise decisions and concepts back to you, the easier it will be for you to prove that they really understand what they're doing. If you are not doing one meeting to capture your strategy and signing the make sure you book in the next meeting before they go and after the meeting, send out any action lists or a summary of what needs to happen and who's responsible for what steps.
(30:29):
Circulate those diagrams and family trees and be really clear on timelines as well. I also encourage you to make your file notes as soon as possible because no one is more miserable than the lawyer who has left their file notes a week and can barely remember what happened in that meeting. I also just want to give a shout out to our file note precedents in the works precedent package because we really leverage those file notes and things like check boxes so you can tick off the decisions that were made on all the common decisions and strategies so that you should be able to get your file note really pain free down to about 15 minutes of just adding in the unique issues that happened for that particular client. When it comes to preparing our client for the signing meeting, especially when it's separate to the strategy meeting, I think that almost starts when we're sending out the draughts in our precedent packages.
(31:33):
We don't have a clause by clause summary of the will, and people sometimes ask me, can we make one or why don't we have it? And I have done that really deliberately because I personally don't think that this's a solution to document overwhelm is giving the client more documents to read particularly lengthy wordy documents. I like to use the estate planning flow chart summaries or things like video. So maybe you'll record a generic video about your testamentary trust wheels and your basic wheels that just help the client navigate the document and show them where they need to check. Or you might even do just a quick loom video or iPhone video a few minutes long for them specifically. Hey Tara, it was so good to talk to you the other day. I've put together your draught will. What I want you to do is just check your name is right, I know it's a lot of pages.
(32:35):
I want you just to read clauses one to five. So the first three, read that through, have that flow chart next to you so you can see where we're gifting things to the testamentary trust. Hopefully that will make sense and we can talk through the rest in our meeting, something like that so the client can look at it but they're not overwhelmed with the 30 page testamentary trust will give them permission just to look at the key things. And I've talked about it before, but when we are doing our signing meeting, don't dive straight into reading. The will obviously give them space to ask questions. But I recommend spending the first 30 minutes or so drawing out or looking at the estate planning flow charts, all the different scenarios, go over those concepts that you planted in the previous communications show where the assets are going to go, who's going to be in control of the assets and the trusts.
(33:34):
And really just dive into practical scenarios that will demonstrate how the testamentary trust works and build their confidence in the strategy. So say, okay, the beneficiary wants to purchase a house. How are they going to get the money out? Can it be a loan or a gift? How does the money actually become available to pay the guardians for the living expenses of the kids? What happens when this person dies? What happens when that person dies? And then in the meeting, I would just start with keeping it really simple and build familiarity and confidence in the documents. So ask them just to check the names are correct, the addresses, explain the first couple of clauses, don't need to read all of the testamentary trust will. And if particularly if they have a family trust or a self-managed superfund deed, then leverage that knowledge. You have a family trust deed sitting in your house filing system somewhere.
(34:41):
You know that the accountants are the only ones who really pull it out and look at it regularly. We need the same thing for our testamentary trust and we've put it at the back of the will here that you can see. So we don't have to go through all of those clauses unless of course there was something that you did have a question about that type of thing. So I also just want to mention briefly with online meetings. I think some people get really scared about online meetings for estate planning, but they can be really powerful, especially for the strategy meeting. There are risks of course, in terms of it's harder to pick up on the client queues, harder to know what is happening offscreen, especially like undue influence or coercion. If a client is upset, you may not pick it up early or at all if they're just sitting there quietly.
(35:36):
But on the whole, I think there's a lot of upside, especially if you lean into the technology and embrace it. I put together for the TT precedents club members an entire slide deck and Canva template of virtual whiteboard slides that demonstrate the key concepts for the meeting, the different things and the agenda that we're going to cover off and the testamentary trust explanations, the decisions they need to make so that it's so much easier as a framework and a virtual whiteboard to actually enhance that meeting. And sometimes I think it's actually a better client experience because we can bring in more technology and pre-prepared explanations through diagrams and drawing. So that's an incredible resource that we've shared with our TT precedents club members to support them with the virtual meetings as well. And I'm a big fan of doing the online meetings. You've got a full recording of the entire meeting.
(36:44):
It's really clear the advice that was given. It's clear what the client or the test status objectives and instructions were. There's no ambiguity. Now, I did talk about this topic for 90 minutes and longer and we had an incredible dialogue with our members about tips and tricks that they use in their meetings in the TT Precedent's Club. So if you like what I'm talking about today and you want to dive deeper, come join us in the TT Precedent's Club. Otherwise, I hope that's given you some food for thought about things you can do on the client experience to maximise connection and improve profitability with your estate planning meetings. And if you've got any great tips, please feel free to post them in the Art of Estate Planning Facebook group. I would love to hear and keep learning. I know some of you are so creative and give a lot of thought to the client experience, and I would love to hear any smart things that you've come up with too.
