“The key is to put yourself in the shoes of the client – figure out what they are thinking first before you decide how to help,” he said. “The decisions to be made could be financial or they could be how to help the client deal with day-to-day life.”
The firm has provided recommendations for grief counselors, home health-care providers or consultants, attorneys, accountants, funeral homes, real estate representatives and even pet-care facilities. In short, the firm does whatever it can to put clients and their families in better positions after the death of a loved one, he said.
In other circumstances, particularly in the current atmosphere, an advisor may lose a client who is particularly close, and then have to deal with his or her own grief.
“I recently had a good friend pass away who was a client, and I was grieving,” Campbell said. “I went to the funeral and I grieved, but I still had a job to do. Luckily I did not have to do anything immediately. A short while after the death, we came back and started making the financial decisions.”