CREATING STRATEGIC ALLIANCES WITH ATTORNEYS by Steve Moeller One of the keys to building successful strategic alliances is creating a structure in which your alliance partner benefits as much as you do--and ultimately the client is the biggest winner. By understanding the key challenges your potential alliance partners face, you can develop strategies that benefit everyone. For instance, estate-planning attorneys have three main challenges you can help them with: prospecting, data gathering and transferring title of assets into trusts. In the attorney's perfect world, every potential client he or she meets with would have a neatly typed net-worth statement with an attached property schedule indicating the cost basis and correct title of each asset. Every prospect would be pre-sold. All the attorney would have to do is answer a few questions, and quote a final fee. Then, after the trust is completed, all the assets would be magically transferred to the trust or retitled to reflect the proper form of ownership. The biggest frustration for estate-planning attorneys is having to spend time with unqualified prospects who don't order estate plans. This costs them valuable time they could have billed to other clients at their hourly rates. Here are some ideas about how you might be able to help attorneys solve their biggest frustrations. The best place to start is to conduct joint marketing with the attorney. Many estate-planning attorneys don't like to market. They need help in generating a consistent flow of prospects. Estate planning is a powerful lead-in to asset management services, and it can be a compelling seminar topic. Offer to put together a joint seminar with the attorney. If you split the cost of marketing and holding the seminar, and you take charge of invitations, logistics and even the presentation--if the attorney wants that--you can offer a powerful seminar that will generate great leads for both of you. In order to reduce the time the attorney has to spend with each client, offer to be the main contact person. That way, the attorney isn't wasting time meeting with uninterested prospects. Explain that you'll take the time to gather the data from attendees. You'll send interested prospects to the attorney with net-worth statements, property schedules listing current market value, cost basis and title of each asset, and brief memos about what each prospect wants to accomplish. Another possible service to offer is transferring the assets into a trust for a nominal fee to cover your time. Attorneys hate doing this, and most clients don't know how. This arrangement solves some major problems for the attorney and doesn't increase his or her overhead. It gives you access to a steady flow of qualified prospects and allows you to do in-depth data gathering with each new prospect. Your pay-off will come from investment recommendations and insurance commissions. The individual clients will get more thorough service and one-stop shopping to meet their estate-planning needs. And after you have established a bond of trust with the attorney, he or she will start to refer existing clients to you as well. In a strategic alliance with an attorney, you become the architect--helping to design the overall plans--and the attorney becomes the engineer--making sure the design stands up under any adverse circumstances. Copyright © 2001 by Steve Moeller, Tustin, CA. All rights reserved. Steve Moeller is one of North America's foremost experts on marketing financial services to the wealthy. Over the last decade, Steve has studied and researched the best strategies for building a super profitable financial services business. He is a highly sought-after financial services industry speaker and management consultant. He is the author of "Effort-Less Marketing"and other learning tools and coaching programs. To find out more about his coaching programs, learning tools or to find out how to hire Steve to speak at your meetings, call 800-678-1701 or e-mail bizviz@businessvisions.com. For a free subscription to Steve Moeller's Client-Centered Advisor e-mail editor@businessvisions.com.