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A members-only section on your website can allow enrollees in your maintenance program to sign up for exclusive events, download videos of workshops they might have missed, and more. It also allows you to generate revenue through advertising (as does your newsletter). How? By offering companies that provide services of interest to your clients the opportunity to advertise on this portion of your site. House cleaners, estate sale firms, delivery services, caregivers… service providers like these and many more will pay handsomely for access to a targeted demographic. So, too, will financial advisors, accountants, attorneys who practice in areas outside of your own, and other professionals.

Of course, you must screen potential advertisers carefully to make sure they are good at what they do and worthy of your clients’ trust. Also, don’t run too many ads. Enrollees in your maintenance program will appreciate exclusive access to companies that provide services they need and can trust. However, you don’t want to leave the impression that generating advertising revenue is the only reason you offer a newsletter or a members-only section on your website.

Your maintenance program will help you forge solid bonds with your clients and members of your clients’ families. Consider the latter for a moment. Inviting family members to social events, encouraging them to attend review meetings and workshops, providing counsel to the family following a client’s incapacity or death… all of this allows you to bond with the adult children of your existing clients. Not only will your client’s adult children see the value of proper planning first-hand, they’ll know exactly who they want to design their plans—you.

Encouraging your clients to bring their advisors as well as their family members to social gatherings and plan reviews also allows you to form bonds with the advisors themselves, who can then become valuable referral sources for future new business. Many law firms struggle to develop profitable referral relationships. Your maintenance program can help you get your foot in the door.

Once you’ve established a maintenance program, there is another opportunity worth exploring… advertising. Well discuss that next time.

The TLC™ Estate Plan Maintenance & Fee Guarantee Program offers all of the services listed below. Remember: This information is intended to provide you with an idea of what a maintenance program can offer. Your program must reflect your clients’ needs and your firm’s capabilities.

The TLC™ Estate Plan Maintenance & Fee Guarantee Program EPLC includes:

• A quarterly newsletter
• The hosting of an annual social event
• Free review of documents with agents and/or family members at disability and/or death
• Invitations to public events sponsored by EPLC
• Phone calls by clients or their advisors to office staff at no charge
• An annual client meeting for groups of clients aimed at keeping client documents current within the changing legal environment
• A complimentary meeting for family members to explain the client’s estate plan upon his or her death or disability
• “Word processing” amendments to estate planning documents requested by the client
• Specialized and Advanced planning workshops offered throughout the year
• Assistance with funding new assets
• An annual trust review
• A guaranteed, discounted fee to administer the client’s estate plan after death. For clients who remain in the program, we will guarantee the family (in writing) a fee of 1% rather than the customary 5-7%

As you can see, this is an extensive program. You might also have discerned that the components of the plan involve services that do not cost you a great deal of money or “attorney time.” For example, let’s say a client wants to make a simple change to a will or trust, like swapping out a daughter for a son. You already have the client’s documents in your system, so making a change like that is easy. Or consider the annual client group meeting, where all of the clients’ changes can be made at once. Your staff can handle the vast majority of such changes, as well as client calls, a newsletter, and the program’s various social events.

Your maintenance program provides enrollees with easy access to your firm and a sense of belonging to the “firm family.” It will also provide them with the peace of mind that comes from knowing the plan will work, and that the firm will be there to counsel family members in the event of the client’s incapacity and/or death. All of this sets your firm apart from competitors that do not offer a maintenance program. In addition, your program creates loyalty, a bond with your clients. We’ll talk about the benefits of  that next time.

When it comes to maintenance programs, one size does not fit all. You should tailor your program to the needs of your client base and your firm’s capabilities. Also, as we mentioned last time, you have to limit the scope of your program. It’s supposed to be a source of steady revenue, not a loss leader. Accomplishing this requires offering services in your program that you are already providing free-of-charge, or services whose fees are insignificant. As one attorney with a successful maintenance program put it, “The administrative costs of billing for photocopies exceeds the income generated by it.”

You can also offer different types of maintenance programs. At EPLC, we have our main program, the TLC™ Estate Plan Maintenance & Fee Guarantee Program. We also offer a program for Medicaid clients, which basically provides enrollees with the annual certification they need. It is important to note, however, that our goal is to have clients who need nursing home care keep their TLC Program and add the Medicaid program to it as part of a package. We don’t want clients dropping the TLC Program when, say, one spouse enters a nursing home while the other continues to reside in the couple’s primary residence. Finally, we have a relatively inexpensive Will-based program for clients whose plans do not include trusts.

In our next email, we’ll detail the elements of our TLC™ Estate Plan Maintenance & Fee Guarantee Program.

Some attorneys dismiss maintenance programs out of hand because they don’t see why clients would participate in them. Don’t think like that. Maintenance programs are very appealing to clients, for two powerful reasons.

First, a maintenance program helps ensure that a client’s plan is always up-to-date and capable of accomplishing its goals when the client needs it. By explaining this benefit to your clients, many of them will quickly see the program’s value and the importance of enrolling in it.

Second, one of the main complaints people have about working with attorneys is the notion that attorneys bill for just about anything, whether it’s an email, a photocopy, or a one-minute phone call. Your clients will appreciate the fact that you will not “nickel and dime” them, and that there will be no unpleasant “surprise” invoices in their mail boxes.

By addressing these two issues, a maintenance program provides clients with peace of mind—the same long-term benefit that motivated many of them to want an estate plan in the first place.

So, what services should be included in your plan? You need to offer enough to make the program attractive to clients, but you must also be cognizant of not selling yourself short and offering too many services. We’ll discuss the particulars of an effective maintenance program next time.

Generating a consistent, reliable revenue stream is a challenge for many law firms. An annual maintenance program can provide a solution to this problem, and, in effect, function as a line of credit for your firm.

In the coming weeks, we’ll discuss the elements of a successful program, the benefits of such a program to your clients and to your firm, how your plan can generate additional income beyond what you charge for the program itself, and more.

At EPLC, we currently have approximately 600 clients enrolled in our various maintenance programs (we’ll talk about how our programs differ from one another in a future email). We charge $650 a year for what we call the TLC™ Estate Plan Maintenance & Fee Guarantee Program. If you do the math, you’ll quickly see that this income, which is both continuous and predictable, serves as a line of credit we can draw upon to cover any number of expenses over the course of a year.

At this point you may be saying, “Well bully for you EPLC, but frankly I don’t know why any client would even want a maintenance program, let alone pay for it.” We’ll talk about that next time.

People have different needs regarding the amount of attention they want to receive in a relationship. For some of your referral sources, getting together once a year might be fine. Other sources might want to meet every six months, or even once a month. If the referral source is providing you with plenty of profitable leads, track the frequency of your touches to ensure you’re meeting his or her needs.

You also want to track the goals of each touch. Is the meeting strategic and focused on future opportunities? Is it a joint workshop or presentation? Is it a review meeting designed to make sure the expectations of both parties are being met?

Tracking touches allows you to ensure your relationship is moving forward and that it’s on solid ground. Remember: You’re not the only attorney in town. The last thing you want is a competitor swooping in and “stealing” your referral source simply because you haven’t done enough to keep the relationship going. Finally, don’t underestimate the power of a hand-written thank you note. It may seem old-fashioned, but it works.

As your referral relationships evolve, you want to track a wide range of information. For instance, make sure you know how many referrals you’re getting from each source, together with the average fee and retention rate per referral received.

If one referral source is providing prospects that generally turn into long-term, high-fee clients, you obviously want to do everything in your power to keep that referral source happy (we’ll talk about how to do that later). Conversely, you might want to reconsider your relationship with a referral source whose clients only want, say, a basic will or a power of attorney, or whose decisions are based on your price rather than your value.

You also want to make sure you’re measuring expectations. If you hosted a joint event with your referral source, were both your and the allied professional’s expectations met? Do you even know what the expectations and goals are? If you do, are they being met consistently?

If your referral source expects you to provide referrals to him or her, be sure to track that. A word of caution: tit for tat relationships can become problematic. If it’s all about “who’s getting the better deal” the relationship might not be a healthy one.

This is not the relationship you want nor the type of relationship we have been describing.

Finally, whenever you discuss results with your referral source, be sure to talk about future opportunities to strengthen and grow the relationship.

Next time we’ll talk about another piece of information you should be tracking—touches.

Last time, we detailed the types of questions you need to ask to both demonstrate your value to the allied professional and to quickly determine if working with the professional will be of value to you. Now let’s discuss the latter topic a bit further. What are some of the red flags you should look for? That is, how can you determine whether the referral source in question is a “fit” or a “mis-fit?”

First and foremost, you need to know whether the professional is willing to meet again and follow specific actions you find helpful in generating a profitable relationship, such as attending one of your workshops. Similarly, you must know that the professional will tell his or her clients to contact your firm or attend a workshop. If they won’t follow your process, or don’t follow through with their commitments, the best course of action is to walk away. Or better yet, run away. How can you have a profitable relationship with a professional who is not interested in your needs or learning the basics of the services you have to offer?

As you meet with your target professional, you’ll also want to ask yourself the following question: Does this individual have the “heart of a teacher” or the “heart of a salesman?” You want to forge referral relationships with the former. Also, does the professional have poor communication skills, that is, does everything seem to be about him or her? This is another red flag.

The fact is, you only have so much time. Don’t make the mistake of believing that you can turn a prospective referral source around to your way of thinking. Maybe, with a great deal of time and effort, you can. However, your time is better spent on professionals with whom you have synergy and who can identify your value quickly!

One more thing: If all goes well during your meeting, be sure to specify exactly what the next steps in your relationship will be. “Great meeting you, I’ll be in touch” is not an effective way to end the meeting. Success depends on creating a plan for how to work together that produces results, not having a nice first meeting.