Retirement advisory boards can be invaluable to your business, but the fastest way to make them fail is to make them all about you. Participation and the meetings themselves must be a winning proposition for board members, not just you.
At a recent workshop, one adviser told me that he didn’t see the point of having guest speakers at board meetings, because it would then feel like a client event and the outsiders would take attention away from his practice.
That’s exactly the point — an advisory board is the highest-level client event you can provide. When advisory boards work well, they engage your best clients and strategic partners and provide them with something of value.
To make sure your quarterly board meetings are memorable, enjoyable and have take-away value, focus on topics of interest to your board members.
This is the perfect time to build a
Top Client Background Chart specific to your board. This will help you get to know them and their lifestyle interests. Look at the column on the right — Lifestyle Interests/Financial Concerns — and be sure to capture this information. It will help you identify the topics and guest speakers that will make your retirement advisory board meetings memorable.
Here are some meeting topics that many top advisers have found to be board favorites (they don’t have to all be directly about retirement). Let your members know you want their input to consider the topics for future client seminars.
Preserving/Transferring Wealth: You can address your top clients’ concerns about their children or grandchildren and the issue of having heirs spend down their inheritance by inviting an estate planning attorney or CPA to present options, including charitable giving.
Building Family Relationships: For clients with younger children or grandchildren, you may want to bring in an expert on how to raise financially responsible children. If your board members have children or grandchildren of college age, you can bring in an expert on college admissions, financial aid or student loans. These plans are critical in the scope of retirement planning.
Business Succession Planning: Ask a local attorney specializing in small-business succession planning to review the need for a well-documented plan and address some common problems in succession planning. This is especially valuable if your board members are small-business owners.
Healthy-Heart Gourmet Cooking: Healthy eating is often at the top of the minds of affluent clients. Turn that interest into a fun board meeting topic by holding the session at a gourmet kitchen and having a nutritionist and chef on hand to offer advice. Just check a local online guide for a kitchen near you.
Alternatives to Traditional Health Care Plans: Bring in a knowledgeable insurance agent to explain alternatives to traditional business health care plans, including long term care. Make it clear to the agent and board members that the meeting has no sales agenda and is purely for informational purposes.
Once you have selected a topic, let your board members know. You have already set your board meeting dates set for the year, but send a written invitation or an e-mail three weeks before the meeting with an agenda. And be sure to place a reminder call two days before.
Here’s a sample for the healthy eating:
6:00-7:30 p.m. Welcome, wine tasting and hands-on tapas or other gourmet dishes. Discussion of new developments at your firm and input from guests on service and other issues.
7:30-8:30 p.m. Brief practice update and follow-up from outstanding issues from the previous board meeting (15 minutes). Guest speaker.
It may make sense to encourage board members to invite a friend to join. There is also a trend toward calling your group a council, rather than a board, so members don’t feel uncomfortable.
Now your board members have been selected, a calendar planned and topics determined. What’s next? Holding a successful meeting and having a strategic follow-up plan. Next week we will share the success stories of top advisers.
