The client facilitator is usually the lead professional who works directly with clients. The client facilitator can also be the rainmaker, but this is not always the case. When the expertise desired by the client is the province of a professional within the network other than the rainmaker, it's very likely that professional becomes the client facilitator.
The critical function of the client facilitator is to make sure the other members of the network are brought in when appropriate. To do this, the client facilitator must have more than a peripheral understanding of the network members' capabilities.
Meta-Facilitators
To ensure that all its members have an opportunity to work with a client, elite professional networks often get together to discuss the client-with all issues of confidentiality attended to. Members will discuss a client situation and where they believe the expertise of others in the network may apply. In these brainstorming sessions, it is the meta-facilitator who makes sure each member has a say.
Meta-facilitators keep the network humming. They generally mediate differences among members, keeping everyone aligned.
Meta-facilitators are often responsible for managing projects that involve the pooling of the network's resources. They work with everyone to ensure that no one feels slighted as they contribute their time, energy and money. This can be complicated when different experts feel they are better positioned to represent the project.
In some networks, money moves internally. Commissions or fees are shared among some-but rarely all-of the members. The meta-facilitator typically ensures all parties are paid without complications. Hence, he or she has to be aware of the pricing for all the services the network is providing to each client.
Specialists
Each professional in the network is a specialist, bringing a certain expertise, be it legal, investment management or insurance competencies, to the engagement. Rarely are competing specialists in the same network. This doesn't mean that members are licensed to provide various products, as this is a requirement for internal payments.
Members must conclude a specialist offers a top-flight technical capability before accepting him or her into the network. Each network member has to have total confidence that the other members will do their job expertly as well as be client-centered. If one of the professionals in the network falters, it reflects badly on the rest of the members and will likely result in the super-rich client disengaging at some level.
Value-Added Expertise
Aside from legal, accounting and financial professionals, every network has a number of other experts in their ranks or, more likely, on call. These other experts provide the network's members with value-added services that help differentiate them from competitors. An even bigger advantage of these value-added experts is that they can help source tremendously wealthy clients.
I was first introduced to elite professional networks years ago when a network contacted me to "fill in a gap" in their expertise. A billionaire prospect wanted to know how to set up a single-family office, including how to compensate its senior executives. I was the resource they provided to their prospect. While the billionaire always had the final say about whom to work with, by being able to intelligently address this matter, a number of the network's members ended up providing their services to the billionaire-and are still doing so today.