The challenge: While there are countless ways a retirement advisory board can be of value to your practice, it’s difficult to sustain the board’s excitement and energy after the first meeting. That’s often the reason advisers fail to make the most of advisory boards in general and retirement advisory boards in particular.
The opportunity: Last week we discussed the advantages of establishing a retirement advisory board. Such a board can help identify the retirement needs of your clients, prioritize your efforts and spread the word about the retirement resources of your practice. If you’re still putting together your board, stick with it until the job is completed.
This week:Once you establish your board, you’ve got to keep it going. The best way to ensure that is to outline an annual board calendar. Developing a board program and calendar is a lot less complicated or time consuming than you might think.
The retirement board calendar below will give you a jumpstart. It doesn’t take more than one or two hours to set the first year calendar. It will be the foundation of your meetings and demonstrate your commitment to meeting the retirement needs of your clients. The key is to keep it simple, stick to your agenda and keep meetings to 90 minutes or less. You can customize the calendar once your board is launched.
Sample calendar:
The XYZ Practice
Annual Retirement Calendar
Board meetings held the first Monday of each quarter from 7:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.
January, Date and Time
Kick off the year with an upscale board appreciation dinner. At the dinner, review your business plan with the board and share your ideas for positioning your practice as a retirement resource. The goal is to gain feedback and bring in new ideas.
April (invite a friend), Date and Time
Provide an update on your business plan and bring in a guest speaker. This is the time of year to discuss capturing client rollovers and Roth IRA conversions. The guest speaker could cover a retirement topic. This also may be the right time to have an estate-planning attorney review tax opportunities in connection with Roth IRA conversions in 2010. Consider offering a retirement check-up to each guest after the meeting.
July, Date and Time
Use this session as a business meeting update. Ask the board to identify three services and/or investment products you might add to enhance your practice’s retirement resources. Engage your board ahead of time and ask them to do research with friends and family.
October (invite a friend), Date and Time
Begin with a business meeting followed by a certified public accountant as a guest speaker to review important year-end tax planning issues. Again, this becomes a referral opportunity for your practice by following up with each guest.
Next week: We’ll discuss additional meeting topics with ideas for guest speakers. Again, you want to create value for your members by making the meetings productive and beneficial for all who take part. Remember, this is not all about you and your practice. One top adviser follows this format and now runs two advisory boards. They have become his main source of new clients and the feedback has improved his profitability.
