Families often leave an adviser after the death of a client. The reasons vary, but most likely the adviser did not develop strong relationships with other family members.
Reaching out to other family members can be tricky. You can have client appreciation events where family is invited, or create special programs or offer complimentary services to extended family members. Whatever you do, the more valuable the service, the more likely you are to develop a meaningful relationship.
Our Whealthcare Planning platform makes it easy for advisors to create opportunities to connect with a client’s family and other important people in their life:
- Offer to create a Proactive Aging Plan for a client’s parents that helps them with living, driving, and/or health care decision-making transitions.
- Offer to create a Financial Caretaking Plan for the younger generation. Anyone can experience an accident or untimely illness. Having financial affairs in order is important at every age.
- Offer to do Whealthcare Risk Profile assessment to help a family member guard against poor financial decision-making.
- Suggest a meeting with the client’s future financial caretakers and health care surrogates to review the client’s Whealthcare Planning reports. Having this connection before an event occurs makes it more likely the family will follow through on the client’s wishes and will make it easier (and more likely) for them to reach out to you when they need help.
- When your client develops an issue managing finances, offer a meeting for the entire family to provide an update on the client’s situation, what you are doing to protect the client, and to create transparency to reduce the chance that family members take advantage of your client.
Clients and their families will see you as an ally and the “go to” person in times of need. By helping clients prepare for aging, you provide peace of mind to the rest of their family. This will help you retain clients through the generations.
