Connecting With Physicians
Many financial advisors have problems, however, connecting with physicians. Very often it’s difficult for doctors to find the time to meet (91.4% of those in our survey said they had little or no time, in fact). Because they are busy, they have a tendency to frequently put off those things that aren’t pressing, which is usually the case with abstract concepts like estate and asset-protection planning.
In fact, they don’t tend to act until some major life event suddenly triggers their interest—it could be an inheritance, the birth of a child, a death in the family or some other event that suddenly requires them to think about the long term. They might try to make decisions about trusts and investments on their own, but they would do better to reach out to professionals such as their accountants and lawyers. And it’s key for financial advisors to know who those professionals are if they want to work with the physicians.
That’s when it helps advisors to be good at discovery—finding out what the clients really need and ways clients could be served that they weren’t thinking about. Advisors who are good at discovery can find themselves fairly quickly introduced to doctors who they can help, and it’s common to get referrals in the very first meeting with other trusted counsel.
Advisors can also get referrals from other physicians. That approach doesn’t work as often as introductions from attorneys and accountants, but it’s still very effective under the right circumstances. For example, when you’re good at discovery and can show one doctor how to save $500,000 or more annually in income taxes, he or she will likely introduce you to other doctors.
Again, because physicians are time-deprived, they often turn to substandard financial solutions and suffer from missed opportunities. For those advisors technically proficient enough and good at knowing what a prospect’s long-term goals and desires are, there are many ways to add value, and in that fashion the advisors can build their own practices as well.
Russ Alan Prince is president of R.A. Prince & Associates. Brett Van Bortel is director of consulting services for Invesco Consulting.