Tara (00:57):
Welcome back to the Art of Estate Planning podcast. I'm joined with Carrie as usual. And Carrie, I can't believe this is our last episode for 2024.
Carrie (01:10):
I'm feeling very festive already. We've made it!
Tara (01:13):
Oh my goodness. And I just want to say thank you to everyone who has tuned in and listened to us from episode one. We're up to episode 16 today and it is just the hugest honour that you take the time to put us in your ears and have a chit chat with us about estate planning. And we wanted to wrap up the year with a topic that is really practical and hopefully it gives you some food for thought about things that you might like to do in the coming year ahead. So today we're talking about how to manage clients overwhelm, particularly around getting instructions from them. So Carrie, you still see clients and I imagine you're faced with this issue on the regular. So tell us what's in your head.
Carrie (02:00):
I think, I mean I wanted to preface this conversation with there's no secret source right to the answer because obviously we are dealing with so many different people who have so many different ways of learning, ways of interpreting information. We have so many different just mental blocks when it comes to certain things. So I think that what my suggestions here are certainly not all of the suggestions, and you do have to think about who the end client is each time. Obviously I'm kind of going to give middle of the road client recommendations here, but certainly there are always going to be times where you have to tailor that based on the circumstances, particularly when we're dealing with the vulnerable people. I think we need to make sure that what we're doing is that notch up for people who don't have the tools to be able to interpret stuff the same way.
(02:49):
So that's my kind of lawyer disclaimer at the start that I want to make sure that my comments and suggestions are something that we need to take in context. I also wanted to say too that obviously it's no secret, Tara and I love our technology and so when we talk about a lot of the stuff that when we suggest a lot of things about using technology to create a more seamless delivery that works really well for anything under a boomer let's say. It's not necessarily something that's going to make it easier for everyone. And maybe, and this is kind of my next point, maybe that's a part of you having to consider who your ideal client is. So if your services are set up around kind of this certain type of client, you have to be aware that your strategy should be focusing on those people so that if you are a really tech savvy firm, totally virtual or something like that, you need to make sure that your advertising doesn't suggest a little old lady can walk down the street and come and see you in the office and sign documents in front of you sort of thing.
(03:54):
So sending her out a cost agreement via DocuSign is not going to be the way to go. So I think that's probably another thing I wanted to talk about is that everything we're talking about here is in the context of what you want to do with your firm and how you actually want to attract a certain type of client. So I think when it comes to trying to help minimise the overwhelm that clients get when they're making decisions, so that almost like estate planning inertia about giving instructions to get something in front of them, I always refer to that. I think Tara, you have a better way of explaining it, that multiple touchpoint argument, what is the number of touch points they say before you get someone in?
Tara (04:36):
I was like, oh, what? No, I'm with you now. Yeah, it used to be seven, but I've heard lately the number being 11. Yeah, same that many times. And that doesn't mean a phone call but it sing a social media, listen to your podcast, hear an email or just something about you to go, okay, I'm confident that this is the person I want to move forward with.
Carrie (04:58):
And I think that you can apply a very similar psychology to giving your clients information to make decisions as well as that there should be multiple touch points for that information so that you're not just chucking everything on them in the meeting and then kind of leaving them in the deep end. And so I mean the way that I personally do it and open to hearing from people, if you have different ideas, please send them through. But from the first point I make contact with the client. So if we get an inquiry that comes through that's totally kind of, how would you say out of the ether, I'll pick up the phone call, I'll pick up, ask them to pick up a phone. I'll actually have a conversation with them and I'll sort of talk them through some concepts. I'll ask them for example, oh, have you heard about testamentary trusts so that I'm not kind of dropping this big knowledge bombshell on them from the first meeting.
(05:49):
And then when I hang up that call, if I've prefaced the conversation saying, listen, if you've got minor kids, if you've got X, Y, z, you might want to think about this. It might not be relevant for you, but I want you to have the information to help you. You can then actually follow that phone call up with some materials about testamentary trust so that by the time your client gets into the meeting, that's kind of one less thing that you have to overwhelm them with because trusts are complicated. And what we should be focusing on ideally in those meetings is how many trusts there are when the trust should come into effect and who should be the trustees, who should be the pointers, all those kinds of technical things that are really specific to the client if they understand from the get go that a trust is probably something that you are going to make as a recommendation to them, you've already got half of that discussion out of the way by touching about it the first time and then sending some information.
(06:45):
I also think that too, I tend to make sure that I have a follow-up after the planning meeting that sets out or summarises the key structure of their estate plan and so that it's really clear like, Hey, we've talked about these things so they can kind of tick it off in their mind for things that they remembered. So I know when we used to work together, Tara, we would send out an email kind of with a summary of the structure. I kind of take that a bit further now. I actually send out just a separate document so they've got kind of something they can easily print out, take it home. I always say open the really nice bottle of red and sit down with your partner and talk about some of the key things. But I think with that it's I've got this summary document and then more information in the back.
(07:30):
If again if I've talked about testamentary trust, I'll again attach that flyer. I've got some other information, things on things like foreign person ownership, those sorts of things. So I think that that touch point is what I'm trying to get across here. Having multiple times where you are giving clients crumbs of information so that when it gets to the big stuff, it's much easier. I also just wanted to talk about generally speaking as well is learning methods for people. People learn very differently. I think we've probably heard of these kind of concepts of audio kinesthetic, visual kind of learners. And I think from last check, and again happy to be corrected, a lot of people are visual or kinesthetic learners. And so if you don't have diagrams, if you don't have imagery, if you're not sharing these with the clients, you're kind of not actually giving them the information they need to be able to make decisions.
(08:26):
So I know for example, if you've purchased Tara's precedents, the works packages, they'll come with a bunch of diagrams that you can use to show clients the breakdown of what you've recommended and you can use highlighting tools, those sorts of things to show what you still need to give me so I can get you some draught documents. And it comes back to that statement I've said before in one of our podcasts, people eat with their eyes, so give them the information they need in more than just words, make it pretty so that it's easy for them to draw their to the things that matter. And I think that that will help people get on the right page. I think to that point, I said before at the start about finding it easy for that particular client. So I tend to be lucky in a lot of the clients I see are kind of digital, let's just say.
(09:12):
So I try and use things that will make their life much easier. So I use set as an example, one of the products I use to help a client actually punch in the information and give me everything I need as background to be able to help them out. I use electronic signing stuff to help avoid having to print something out. I had a company quote me on something and they said, oh yeah, you have to print it out and sign it and send it back. And I'm like, DocuSign costs 50 bucks a month. I'm lucky I have a printer, I'm a lawyer. But do young people even have printers now? I don't know. They might have a cricket or a cry cut or whatever they call it, but they probably don't have a printer. So I think using those technologies where you are dealing with those clients to make it easy for them to give you what you need to be able to do your job, that's kind of the main things I've got. I've got some other comments, Tara, I didn't know if you had something you wanted to add into anything there?
Tara (10:04):
Yeah, I love all of that, Carrie. Honestly, and I think we said it before, but it's like put yourself or a close friend or a partner or something through your customer experience process and just to see where are these barriers or where are you inad readily making it hard for your client in terms of a client getting their instructions together, I feel like there's this tension in my mind between firstly client delays, especially if they're dilly ding and can't decide on their executors or something that is just going to erode into your profit margin and I don't want that for you. So we've got to try and do our best for speeding this along. And I think the shorter the matter goes for the more profit there is versus recognising that estate planning is a confronting and can be an emotional process for some clients and being a caring and compassionate lawyer and holding space for them to go through the process of making these decisions. So I'm kind of torn because part of me is like, look, let's just get them through. But I think there's things that you can do that are supportive of them taking their time to make the decision and we'll actually help them make their decision sooner in a supportive way rather than rushing them. So I guess that's kind of the thought process I had coming into some of the tips.
Carrie (11:35):
I know what you said before, Tara. I actually do think that doing the process quicker is actually better for the client because they're already, that concept of having to reacquaint your brain with where things were at six weeks ago is easier if it was six days ago.
(11:52):
So if you've some of those hard discussions with clients and otherwise if it goes on too long they have trouble remembering X, Y, Z about why they did something and also just almost retraumatizing them again if they've had to have this really awkward discussion around why they aren't in a good relationship with one of their children. Having to rehash that again in six to eight weeks is not in their best interest in many ways. So I do think some often I would say almost always going through the process in a timely fashion is better for the client as well.
(12:26):
A couple of the things I tend to use to help things keep moving with clients, number one, I always sort of say, listen, in most cases an estate plan that's 80% correct is better than no estate plan. So if they've come to you and they don't have an estate plan or they've got a one page will that doesn't even recognise that they've got kids, I sort of say to them, let's get something in place because it's got to be better than whatever you've got at the moment. This only works if you know what they've got in place at the moment, obviously. The second thing is showing them, and we talked about this in our, you'll have to correct me the number podcast Tara, but it was about pricing showing a client that if they did change their mind about anything and wanted to update things, here's kind of your fees for a small update.
(13:09):
So if they can't decide between Ben and Jerry, the trustees and they pick Ben because we just want to keep things progressing and later change their mind to Jerry, just show them, Hey, to do a small update to swap Ben out for Jerry, this is the price, so it's not a big cost. I'm not going to recharge you the full couple of thousand dollars. This is what it is. So I think that helps them keep things moving forward that they know that the decision that they make today isn't set in stone forever and to get out of that decision, it's also not a really expensive exercise.
Tara (13:42):
So true, so true. And that was episode 14 where we dived into all the things to think about when you're setting up your pricing for those amendments.
Carrie (13:53):
Yeah, yeah. I think one of the things is too, I think I set this up really early in the conversation. I've got a slide in my presentation slides that talks about who I'm acting for. So when it's a couple, and I should say this is only going to work in a couple scenario, but I sort of say, I'm acting for both of you. And so when it comes down to who to appoint in different roles, I focus on the concept of joint wealth. This is joint wealth for the benefit of your children, and sometimes that helps them realise that it's not really about them and what they want to do. It's about joint wealth for the children. If you set that up early in the piece, it does make that conversation a bit better. I usually talk about too that the whole point of this exercise is to make it easier on each other and your family if you're not here. So if we use some of these little stories and little anecdotes early on in the piece when we get to the hard stuff, it's all of a sudden not so hard.
Tara (14:50):
Yeah, I love that. Just positioning it and getting them in the head space. A few things that I used to do when I was practising with clients is I would like to, as you said, Carrie, send out that information in different formats and I really liked videos, so I would send out a little video in the email with the list or with the written flyer as well, just saying, Hey, in our meeting coming up, we're going to talk about testamentary trust. Here's a bit of information about them, why we're going to talk the benefits and all of that just to prime them. Maybe they watched it, maybe they didn't, but it didn't matter if they didn't watch it. But if they did, then it just meant they had a bit of a headstart on the meeting and had already started thinking about a few things for those keen being clients who want to really get it done.
(15:47):
And then after the meeting and whether it was either I had a combination of proforma videos that were kind of general enough general, and I just recorded them sort of with a little script even and then sometimes I'd just do an off the cuff video for them and just say, Hey, these are the things I want you to think about and here's some more thoughts or what you should think about when you're doing them. Some people will love that suggestion. Others will go, I can't think of anything worse than having to record a video. Thank you very much. So heck it, I'll leave it. But just another, as you said, appealing to those different types and especially the emails in the lists, the written form can feel overwhelming to some types of clients, so food of thought there. The other thing I used to do as well is just take a step back in terms of trying to bridge the gap between what I needed to fill in my precedence, especially around the controllers and the key roles.
(16:50):
I was like, we, who's your first trustee? Who's your backup trustee? How are they successive or joined? Who's your first trustee? Who's your backup appointor? Who's your executor? Who's your financial attorney? Who's your medical attorney? Who's your guardian? There's quite a lot of spaces to be filled in on the instruction sheet when you list it all like that. But at its core, I would say to clients, I need you to make three or four decisions if they're a couple with minor kids, four decisions if they don't have minor kids, three decisions. And it was like, let's group all of the financial controlling roles together into one decision. So our executives, our trustees and pointers or any trust and our financial attorneys, I just want them to think of them as under an umbrella of financial decision makers or financial controllers. And that's what I'd say, who's going to control the finances if you die or lose capacity?
(17:55):
And let's assume it's your spouse in the first instance, if they can't do it, if you're both incapacitated or dead, who is making the financial decisions? And then tell me if you are incapacitated, who's making the medical decisions for you? Who's going to look after your kids if you're both not here? And then, yeah, where do you want your assets to go if your kids are here and then if they're, you've all been wiped out, so four decisions, where's the assets going, medical decisions, guardians of kids and financial decisions. And then I found it could fit on. One, I had a one piece of paper as you said, Carrie, have a glass of wine and just spitball some ideas of who do you want to put in here if you're both not here. And then even getting that out of them. I found if I had that before a meeting or if they had just done that thought process and brought that thinking to the meeting, then it was really easy to ask a few questions and make a few suggestions and lead them to dividing it.
(19:00):
And then I would just ask a few questions, not even necessarily going, the appointor does this and the trustee does this in an instruction taking meeting. We do have to explain that at some point, but not getting my job of all the different roles and the interrelation between them, the clients don't need to know that yet. They just have to think in board principles. So I found that was really, if they'd suggested here's the three people in our family who we trust, then I could just very quickly go, okay, and do you see them acting alone? Would you be happy or do you want them to have some support or someone to keep them as a check and balance and And then what if they die? We were really able to extrapolate the instructions quite quickly out of them just thinking about those four things.
(19:48):
That's what I'd like to do. I'm just thinking I had another thought I wanted to say about that, but I've kind of forgotten. Oh, actually it is. Yeah. What's your job? I think historically I've heard stories of you just go to the lawyer's office and you tell them who to write down and put in the form or in the will, and I don't believe in that. I don't think that's our job. We are obviously just here to take instructions and at the end of the day, that's what we have to do, especially if we don't agree with the client, we have to document their instructions, but I also think we have a bigger role of supporting and guiding them to make the best decision they can because we have a lot more information than they do about the legality and the practical impact, but they have a lot more information than we do about the dynamic and what this person is like and how they'll handle responsibility and all of that.
(20:48):
So together, I think it's important that it is very collaborative conversation to decide on how to appoint people to these roles. Because I find with a lot of couples, if you say, who do you want to look after your kids? And they'll nominate their best friend or maybe their sister and the brother-in-Law and they'll go, yeah, this couple can act for taking care of my kids. And then you're like, well, okay, if your sister dies, do you really want your brother-in-Law to be the guardian? And they're like, oh, well not in that case. I really only want him around if he's with my sister and she's doing the job, but they don't ever think about contingencies. They just sort of stop at the first plan and go, well, yeah, this is the couple that we like the best for our kids. And so we're appointing them as a couple. So as a lawyer, I think there's a lot that you can do to just stress test and provide some helpful tips or guidance and ask some insightful questions that kind of lead them to really going, oh yes, this is the right plan, but only with these parameters around it.
Carrie (22:01):
I think I agree, Tara, we're more than just document providers and I do believe our insurer thinks we're more than document providers as well because we're on risk for the decisions if we haven't told them that their decisions might not be great and have bad outcomes. But I also agree what I'm saying is that people do change their mind based on if you tell them that something is going to have a different outcome than they think it's going to have. So I think it's really important to not just write down things to actually explore those with the clients. I do find, and this is probably just my last point, that a lot of the inertia comes from how they feel about appointing people in certain roles. A lot of that goes away if you spend some really good time with the client at the front end doing a deep dive into the family tree.
(22:48):
So we've got a really great family tree template, which I just don't have an estate planning meeting without a family tree. I wouldn't do it because my brain doesn't work that way anymore. But I think that if you can understand everybody, everything from, I usually go through what I call the three Rs risks, roles and responsibilities. So who are the risks? Who can play certain roles and who are you responsible for? And that's everything from do you trust that person with money? Do you trust their spouse influencing them with money? Are they in a high risk job? It's all of the detail that I think that you've got to go through and when you understand the client, if they're struggling, you can say, what about this? Would this work? So I think that if you understand their family and particularly how they feel about certain people, you can help make suggestions to them to help them overcome some of those issues.
Tara (23:45):
I really believe in everything you've said there, Carrie, and I think that can be, if the clients have come to you with a starting that point, then I think it's on us to try to really extract out the best possible combination or plan. But if you have a starting point, then at least you know where to start with suggestions and then you can pivot when they give you feedback about yes or no or not like that or not with this person. And I actually have, oh yeah, we do have a little freebie download that comes with this episode about financial controller mistakes. So I guess things that we've seen either clients suggest or that have just gone poorly in practise when helping a client decide who best to appoint as their financial controller. So one of those examples is yet for the guardians, do you put your best friend and their spouse in as the joint guardians or do you really not want that spouse involved unless your best friend's there type thing.
(24:49):
So there's a bunch of tips. It's in the show notes, you can download it for free and have all the three, you probably know everything in there, but there might be a few tips that you pick up that's hopefully helpful. The other thing I wanted to talk about is just the boundaries around how long we let a matter drag on and how long we let a client dilly dally over giving their instructions. And one of the things that we've recently released is a cost agreement precedent for estate planning matters. So it's in our estate planning pricing toolkit and we've got a whole host of terms that we think should be in your estate planning cost agreement that deal with the quirks that come up in estate planning matters. And for instance, I think that's a litigation matter or something like that. Usually you've got deadlines driving it forward, clients are eager to get this issue solved, estate planning, it's usually not urgent and client might embark on the process on a bit of a whim or an energy surge and then kind of lose momentum and it just drags on.
(25:58):
And so one of the things we deal with in our pricing cost agreement terms, sorry, our cost agreement terms for estate planning matters is like, Hey, we need full and final instructions from you within this many months or days of starting the matter so you can put in whatever you think is your firm's policy and we will follow you up x amount of times to get those and if we don't get them, we are within our rights to close the file and if you want to go ahead down the track, there will be an additional price or we will give you a new price. Our pricing only lasts until this many days, and if you haven't provided full and complete instructions from that many days, then you know what your price expires. Just things that hopefully you never have to actually call upon, but it lets you set up a process whether you automate those follow-ups or whatever you can do within your practise management software, but you kind of know you communicate it clearly to the client upfront, ideally verbally put it in your pricing price list as well, but it's in the cost agreement terms just so that the expectation is super clear because I think it's all about clear is kind if you've written it down, if the client see it, they know what's expected of them and you can't then turn around and be frustrated with the matter or with them or want to charge more.
(27:27):
If you haven't communicated this, that's on us. If we are not saying you can't just drag your feet here, you need, this is the timeline where moving to, I think that is just one of the kindest things you can do to the client.
Carrie (27:40):
I think too, for those listening that are worried about us kind of saying from the 7th of September, we're going to draw a line in the sand and we can never help you again kind of thing. Just being aware that we have some really great user notes that come with the cost agreement terms and one of the user notes associated with this kind of timeline stuff is that just because it's in your cost agreement doesn't mean you have to draw the line in the sand at the 7th of September. So it's more so just keeping everybody aware that there is this underlying timeframe that you'd rather stay with and if you do have to disengage from a client, it gives you that option and then we would expect you would discuss with with someone like your ethics team as to whether it's appropriate based on that client's scenario. So it's not so much that we're saying it absolutely must end, but a lot of the stuff we've done, a lot of the research we've looked into with the cost agreement terms are that whatever the position is that you adopt or even kind of how it's interpreted, the base position is always, is it in your cost agreement?
(28:36):
When we're talking about those terms, we're trying to keep the timeframe for you for your risk because the longer you leave things, the more chance there are that things might change in the client scenario that you don't know, but for them as well, as I said, I do believe that a more robust process leads to a better outcome.
Tara (28:54):
Yeah, it's just about setting boundaries and expectations and being really clear about those, and I feel like one client is actually reading the cost agreement terms. They're not, if they can't give you instructions, I doubt they will fully read your cost agreement terms, but by you putting it in your cost agreement terms, you're protecting yourself. You've actually had to go to the length of making a policy decision for your firm, which then you can also put in your, maybe you're an email saying, great, thanks so much for accepting the quote. Here's the next steps and here's the timeline that we're going to aim to stick to. So this cost agreement is almost like the first step and then you make the policy and then you can just communicate it in a more client friendly way to keep your matter on track if you feel that is a recurring issue for you and you're just getting clients sitting there and not completing instructions and not following through.
(29:47):
I suppose another thing just quickly, and I guess it depends on the complexity of your client and whether they have got other advisors in their team, but if you're asking for information about insurance policies, super details, trust deeds, balance sheets, that kind of thing, I always just used to try and get an authority from them that I can just contact and liaise with their professional advisors directly so that we can collate all of that information behind the scenes for them and set up a report rather than relying on the client to be in the middle. I just thought that always slowed things down and added to the overwhelm of their managing documents because let's face it, the estate planning process, there's a lot of paperwork involved. It's just a lot of document and if you're not a documents person, let's cut that down. Okay. I think the only other thing I had, and you sort of touched on this, Carrie, it's just some framing things you can do.
(30:50):
I kind of say when you're filling out the four questions, just think about what happened if you had died yesterday, what would've been the perfect choice if yesterday you had died and this is what needs to happen, try to limit this crystal ball and trying to think too far ahead in the future. And as you said, Carrie, if you give them the reassurance that a little update is not a huge deal and it's not going to be expensive or take up a huge amount of time, then sometimes that can be the thing to get them across the line too.
Carrie (31:26):
Yes. I think it is such a difficult decision making process for people because it is such a complex area and quite emotional area. I did have a thought, Tara, too. We are going to be having a podcast with Amy, which is on the back of one of our Facebook lives that we did, and that's going to be really valuable for anybody who thinks that the issue with getting instructions from clients might be in relation to what we call money, money blocks. So feeling or having difficult emotions around making money decisions. So I do believe that if you get to the end, you think you've done everything perfectly, you've had your best friend vet your process and you're still having this issue with this client, have a listen to that podcast, which will be coming up in the future because it will help you try and almost a little bit of learn a bit of psychology around how to help people make decisions around money.
Tara (32:17):
Oh, that's a great point, Carrie. Yes. So I guess that sort of leads into us wrapping up. So we are going to have a take a break after this episode. I'm sure you're taking a break too over Christmas and we will be back. Our first episode for 2025 will be the 7th of January, and following that on the 14th of January, we have got the Facebook Live audio, Carrie, where you interviewed Amy Berg about money blocks and estate planning and all of the behavioural impacts that affect a client's estate planning process and decision making. And that's, it's really worth tuning in. It's a little bit of a different format because it's more of a presentation style, but it's a really great, listen, I actually was moved to tears a couple of times listening to it. Amy's just gives such a powerful insight and guidance on the things we need to think about.
(33:16):
So yeah, check that out in the new year. If you're going for a walk or got a bit of spare time, we'll be back from the 7th of January, so we'll still be there. And then Carrie and I will be back sort of closer to the end of January with our normal chit chat and deep dive into, and we've got some great topics coming up for the new year, but if there are any particular topics that you do want us to cover, we'll be planning our content calendar, so get your requests in and we'll make sure that we'll accommodate it as well. Carrie, anything, I've sort of wrapped us up already, but is there anything else you wanted to say about managing client overwhelm?
Carrie (33:55):
No, I just feel really sad that I'm not wearing reindeer ears because I'm pretty sure this time last year you wore reindeer ears to something that was the last episode before or the last of it before Christmas. So just for those listening, I'm wishing I was wearing reindeer ears.
Tara (34:11):
Well, there's still time for the TT Precedent's Club last hot seat of the year. We sure we can bring our best costume there in that case, we're going to wrap it up and I just want to again say thank you so much to everyone who has tuned in to our podcast over the last few months. We are so grateful for each and every listener and we want to wish you a very happy holidays. I hope it is extremely rejuvenating and you come back in 2025 feeling well rested and your cup is full. So yeah, stay safe and look after yourself and we'll see you on the other side.
