The challenge: Because of the increase in corporate layoffs, retirement plan rollovers are becoming bigger than ever. As we’ve discussed over the past several weeks, grabbing your share of the business requires becoming a retirement expert and positioning your practice as a retirement resource. Once you’ve become knowledgeable about issues related to retirement income, Social Security, estate planning (including taxes) and health, it’s time to target benefit and human resources managers at companies that are downsizing.
Last week, we learned how to uncover companies in your area going through layoffs. Now it’s time to take action.
The opportunity: To succeed in meeting with corporate human resources and benefits managers, you have to follow a step-by-step communications process. Here are the four steps.
Step one: Create a tracking chart with company name, contacts, plan size, number of layoffs and their status, and most importantly, a referral to tap into. This can be a client, friend or colleague who can generate a referral to the benefits administrator or to senior management. Remember, a plan administrator may not see it as his or her responsibility to help employees transition to unemployment. But senior management at a small or midsize company may feel inclined to provide a service to employees they are letting go.
Step two: Write a letter to introduce your practice, team and you. (By the way, an old-fashioned paper letter on nice stationery is so unusual these days that it almost always gets attention). This is an opportunity to mention strategic partners such as certified public accountants and estate-planning attorneys.
Here’s a sample you can adapt.
Sample letter
Date
Name
Address
Dear ______________,
Your company’s recent announcement of layoffs probably have added to your responsibilities and stretched your resources thin. We may be able to help.
Tom Smith, your senior vice president of operations, suggested I contact you to share how our practice has been simplifying the retirement rollover needs of human resource managers like you. We can help your employees understand their current retirement plans and provide them with financial guidance and advice.
By way of background, Tom has been a client of ours for the past 10 years. He can tell you about our service. We bring that same level of attention and care to helping people make some of the most important financial decisions in their lives: what to do when faced with make rollover decisions about 401(k) plans and other retirement programs.
I would be happy to explain how, specifically, we might help your employees through a customized mix of seminars, personal consultations and literature. I also can explain how our retirement review and rollover process can save you countless hours of paperwork and headaches — and give departing employees demonstrable evidence of your attention.
I plan to call your office at 10 a.m. Friday, March XX to set up a short, convenient time to meet.
Best regards,
Jim Jones
XYZ Co.
Step three: At the meeting you set up, walk the manager through your education and one-on-one rollover review process. Offer an on-site retirement education program immediately to establish credibility and offer to hold individual meetings at your office. Try to have the manager list all employees being terminated and the amount of their rollover plan. Consider a group education session for the smaller rollover plans.
Step four: This opportunity may provide significant new business, as long as it becomes a repeatable process. Streamline the process and, if necessary, hire an intern or temporary employee to complete paperwork resulting from rollovers. The future opportunity is to secure meetings after the layoff period is over to hold financial reviews, and estate-planning and Roth IRA conversion sessions.
Going after retirement rollovers is not complicated; it just takes focus and execution.
Next week: How to conduct on-site employee rollover seminars and lock in new opportunities.
