Tara (00:51):
Thank you for tuning back in. It's Tara here, your host of The Art of Estate Planning Podcast. And today, I want to talk to you about should your first meeting be free.
(01:04):
Now, it's the start of a new year, so it's always a good time to just check in on our customer journey and our processes and the way that we have set up the timeline of our estate planning matters and check that it's working for you. Is it time for a difference? Is something causing you a frustration and can you change it? So you probably have heard in recent episodes that I am really passionate about being really clear on your estate planning workflow and that being one of the keys to maximising profitability that everyone in your firm knows exactly which trajectory your matters are going to go on. The steps are the same so that you can automate, systemize that process. Your clients are clear, your team is clear, and it increases your profitability. So when we are looking at pricing in the estate planning matter context, the question always comes up with the initial meeting with clients, should that be free or do clients have to pay?
(02:12):
So I thought, let's go through the pros and cons. Now, this conversation or my perspective of this conversation ties in really heavily with the assumption that you are fixed or value pricing. So we're not talking about just time recording here and that you are setting a fixed price for your clients for their matter. Now, I just want to give a little shout out to our estate planning pricing toolkit because if you are new to pricing your services, you want to move from time-based pricing to fixed and value pricing, our toolkit is the resource to help you get there. It has detailed training on how to set your prices, the philosophy of value pricing, resources to help you with that, including education resources to read, training from me, but also practical resources like questions to ask when setting your prices, actual price list templates as well.
(03:17):
And we've got our cost agreement, precedent in there to protect you from things expanding your scope and going pair shaped on your matters. We've also got calculator on there to help you work out your minimum break even price after you've paid your GST, your super, your tax, all of your expenses so that you actually take home enough of profit for your firm. So it really is an incredible resource. And if this question about the first meeting is just one of a series of questions on this topic, then get your hands on the pricing toolkit because it will really set you on the right path. So I'll tell you what I used to do for my meetings was I grew up learning it this way and basically we would always quote the whole matter upfront before meeting with the clients. Firstly, that really only works if you have the full context and background.
(04:21):
So what we would do, how I was trained, and I did this when I was working with clients as well myself, was ask for the full background. So we had a wishlist and it was basically like, give us your family tree, a list of your assets, all of your trustees, constitutions, asset surges, or your related entities, business agreements, like partnership agreements, insurance funded agreements, all of that. I want to know the full story, and then I'm going to give you a price. And that price included the meeting, multiple meetings, but an advice meeting and the documentation. I think I want to preface that this worked really well because a lot of my matters came from financial advisors or accountants referring them to me. So we had already been pre-sold to the client. They weren't like a mom and dad layperson wandering in off the street thinking they're going to get a $100 will.
(05:20):
So that really helped. And I think a big part of deciding this will come down to you understanding your market, your target demographic, your customer avatar, and where you want to position yourself in the market as well. So you can actually change who your ideal client is from the people who are seeing you. Maybe you want to actually deter tyre kickers or have particular types of client demographics actually not waste your time because you feel like they don't go ahead or you're not the right fit for them. So I think it's important to be strategic about this decision. So I obviously have a bit of bias about the first meeting not being free and that we get funds in trust upfront, but that bias comes with the privilege of matters coming to us from referrals and a bit of a brand in the market as well.
(06:20):
The reasons why I like the clients paying for the first meeting is that you can just give value from the very beginning. So I feel like it actually can waste a lot less time, a lot less of the client's time at least. You might find that your time is wasted if you've reviewed everything and given a price and then they don't accept your quote. I sort of overcame that with being very systemized about what I reviewed and I might spend 20 minutes just getting a snapshot of where this client is at, being able to work through my checklist, my tick box checklists to see how many risk issues there are, which meant is it a standard vanilla matter or are we in a more high end, bespoke, complex matter, which would then feed into the pricing and the price list.
(07:15):
And do you know what? If you actually, I guess another part of this question, which we can talk about in a minute is whether you have a price list that's with set prices or if you give a unique price to the client, this will also feed into that decision. So we can talk about that in a moment too. So I really like it that when you get in the meeting with the client, you have money and trust or they've prepaid and you can just dive straight into giving them value. You're not dancing around, "I can't give you legal advice yet. We don't have an engagement." You're just going straight into strategy, which I really like. You do obviously need to have some preliminary conversation about communicating the price. So whether that's email or phone call, my preference was to call them, introduce them, myself to them, try and build a rapport in a 10 minute, 15 minute phone call, try and sell them a little bit on testamentary trust just to get them familiar and then email through the quote and then they would choose to go ahead.
(08:19):
Possibly, a lower conversion rate for this, but I felt like there was a bit less time wasting and you're also not wasting the client's time. Let's chat about what it might look like if your first meeting is free. So firstly, is it like a sit down meeting or just a phone call? Are they coming into the office, sitting there and sort of thinking they're having their first estate planning meeting? I always feel nervous at that concept because you're getting put on the spot big time and you don't have an engagement with these clients. You technically can't give legal advice, you don't have the full picture. And so I really struggle with that because I just want to dive into problem solving answering mode. And I feel like you have to be a bit more cagey dancing around the issues like, "Here's what we can do for you."
(09:15):
A 15-minute phone call can be a bit easier to manage that. That said, if you are great at sales, especially sales in person, then getting them in a room with you I think can be really powerful. And this makes me think of one of our members of the TT Precedents Club, Bernadette Terry. So we've had a big discussion in one of the hot seats about this a while back, and I remember that Bernadette said she knows that if she is in a room with clients, she can convert 95% of them. They'll go ahead. She's just that charismatic. She's got her scripts down. The clients trust her when they see her in person and she feels like she's actually not wasting time meeting with anyone because she knows that nine out of 10 clients will go ahead. So that first free meeting was quite important.
(10:18):
But from my perspective, I feel like you could end up with your diary full of prospective meetings. You don't know how many are going to go ahead and you could end up feeling very busy without really understanding how much fees you're going to bring in that month. Whereas if your meetings are really only for clients who have already committed to a cost agreement and preferably paid fees upfront, your diary is not filling up all day every day, taking you away from drafting and strategizing and business marketing, and you can spend the time that you do do in meetings really strategically giving advice. Particularly, I think if you find that you are getting a lot of tyre kicking meetings, people shopping you around, not really that serious, and you are not particularly good at converting the sale in person and no judgement . I mean, I really struggle with sales as well, then maybe another alternative would be seeing if you can move that meeting into a phone call, especially if they are pre-vetted or maybe you get someone else in the office to do a phone call where they're pre-vetted and you just ask some questions first to see how serious they are.
(11:43):
The boss or supervisor who I learnt to do estate planning from always kind of said, "By the time they've given you, rustled up all their background material, the rates notices, the trustees, they're kind of invested in the process with you. So if they're not serious, they won't ever send anything through and it was just a quick phone call or email and no worries. But if they are serious and they do pull all that material together, they're kind of like, it's that fallacy where they're already invested in the process and they've got the sunk cost fallacy, so they're not necessarily going to abandon it and feel like they want to start it all over again, shopping you around. So if you're finding that you're getting the first meeting free, but it's not really working, you could try seeing if a phone call, like a 15 or 20 minute phone call works or some other suggestions that our community has put forward is you actually charge for the meeting and it's maybe it's only $150 or $200 and it's actually also a redeemable price or that money they've paid is redeemable on the cost of implementing the estate planning.
(12:58):
So if they've paid $200 for the meeting, well, at least your time hasn't been wasted. And if they actually agree to go ahead, then that $200 is like a deposit or put towards the ultimate payment of the price. Now, I kind of think your time is valuable no matter what, but it can be a good way so that the meeting actually is free, but if they don't go ahead, it's not free. I think if you are feeling frustrated that these free meetings are taking up a large amount of time that's taking you away from your paying clients or stressing you out, then it could be really worth experimenting with some of these different structures. So the other thing I just wanted to mention is that this kind of ties into your marketing funnel that you already have. So I think the choice that you make is going to depend on where a lot of your leads are already coming from.
(13:54):
So if you have a strong brand for your business or your personal brand, like I'm thinking of a particular member of our TT Precedents Club like Jamie Stefanac of Family First Estate Planning, where her social media is just growing. She's got thousands or like 90,000 followers, she's probably got more now, following her Instagram for her estate planning law firm. So in Jamie's case, she's got an evergreen marketing funnel that is working for her. People are finding her through her social media videos. They already know, like, and trust her. If they're getting their estate planning done, they're getting it through Jamie. They're not wondering who's going to do it. They've found Jamie, she's convinced them they need to get their estate planning done. So they're not shopping her around. And it's really just a matter of can they afford the price and do they have the bandwidth in their schedule to do their estate planning now?
(15:01):
So in Jamie's case, I don't think she needs to do a first free meeting. She's so busy. Her calendar is booked out and it's just a matter of her automating and continuing to remind them and let them know when the splots are coming up so that they can decide when they're ready. She can send them the price list or even have the price list on the website, and I think the conversion's going to be easier. So I wouldn't do a free first meeting if you have got a passive marketing machine already working for you. If your leads are coming through people walking past your office because you're on a particular street and they see your office and your ad or they're maybe listening on the radio or something and they don't really know you yet and they haven't built that trust and rapport with you, then maybe the first meeting free or at least a phone call free is going to be helpful because they actually need to know, like, and trust you before they're ready to go ahead and they haven't really invested that much in you as the provider.
(16:12):
So I do think just sort of taking a step back and thinking about what's your larger plan, who's your ideal client, what's your firm's marketing strategy is going to feed into which of these options work for you? And I just want to say you don't really have that much to lose. You can try something for a month or two months, track the data, see what happens, see if there's a difference, see how you feel about it, how the team feels about it. You can always go back. I mean, maybe it's a pain to change a few things on the website, but you can just experiment and see no one's going to die. Well, sorry, we are talking about estate planning, but this isn't going to change the outcome of that. The stakes are not that high. You can just experiment. We're not saving lives here.
(17:00):
People see what happens if they pay for the meeting or not. The next thing I want to talk about is, should you be doing a price list and have that price list on your website, or do you give each client a unique fixed price? So I've actually done both. I started out in the firm, I was at pricing the client, which ... So we had templates, but the actual exact scope and the numbers in that scope would change and based on the value pricing factors and also on vibes. And that I think has its benefits because you can really feel like you're customising the price to meet the client's circumstances. So the simpler clients aren't paying too much, the complex clients that is being factored into the price. You are also, however, having to spend time analysing and thinking about the price. And you might feel like there's some clients where your price is just a complete mismatch to their expectation.
(18:05):
They've come in thinking this is a $500 investment and you're thinking it's a $5,000 investment. So you've just really out of alignment and you've spent all that time preparing the unique price for them. But I do feel like you're more likely to have the value as a win-win because you're really matching up what you think the value is for the clients and for you. It can be a little bit slower in the sense that if you're going to take a while, a few days to review the material and put the price together and that client is ready to make a decision now, then you might be left behind and they've gone with someone else who has their prices on the website. So I have to say, my preference now is to put the price list on the website. I ended up moving across to that model and having a standard price list.
(18:56):
It certainly made things easier for me in terms of just being really confident in my pricing, being able to just communicate it really quickly with clients and help close that sale. It also meant I was definitely had to nail my process. So I had to know how many meetings we were going to do, really clearly set that out, have all my instruction forms, everything set up. So to have the price list and the different packages available, I then had to get the systems behind that working really smoothly. I do think you'll find there's unders and overs. So there might be some clients who are more simple and wouldn't necessarily have been charged that much had you done a unique price for them. And then the more complex clients might end up getting their package for a little bit less, unless you're really good at doing variations on the price list.
(19:54):
So I think there can be some unders and overs, but for 80% of the clients, I think it would work and that might be the risk you take. Where you've got your price list on the website, it can eliminate the opportunity for you to sell. So if you're like Bernadette and you are really good at those sales conversations, then clients might self-select and filter themselves out of your funnel based on the prices without you giving the chance to communicate the value. So you might still have a price list, but you give it to them during your conversation or present it on a Zoom call or hand it over in the meeting so that they've already got to know you a bit more. I think also having it on the website though can stop those time wasters and really just sort of put your line in the sand about where your market is.
(20:47):
So I think there's pros and cons. Again, you can just try it. There's no harm in experimenting and really trying to work out what's the best model for you. And I think it will possibly depend on the way you've always done things. Is that the best way? What's your client demographic? Are you looking to change your ideal client demographic? And just what works for you in terms of your free time and looking at what is taking up a lot of your time and is that really the best value adding or can we post something on a website or have a system so that you are having more time to yourself during the day to actually serve your paying clients? So I hope that gives you some food for thought. We dive into this in a lot more detail in the estate planning pricing toolkit. So that resource is there on our website if you want to go deeper.
(21:45):
I think the new year is a perfect time to sit down, evaluate, assess how you're doing things. If something is driving you crazy from last year, you don't have to keep doing it. I give you the permission to change it up. There's so many different ways we can approach this. Find a way that works for you and your clients. Thank you for listening. Hi, it's Tara here. You might've heard us mention our TT Precedents Club membership a few times throughout the episodes now. So I wanted to share a little bit more information about what it is and how it works. The TT Precedents Club is a membership for Australian lawyers. Whether you're an estate planning specialist, an early career lawyer, or you're experienced in another legal area and you want to add estate planning as a compliment to your existing services. It doesn't matter as long as you're curious about estate planning and keen to learn and share in our estate planning mastermind group.
