Avenues to Assemble Insightful Training for Estate Planning Pros

In today's one-stop service world, financial services professionals are expected to do everything - attend estate planning courses, understand taxation issues, be able to handle trusts, understand insurance policy and on top of it all, manage investments.

However, most financial advisors are often not ready to take on such a wide range of responsibilities. Most have one knowledge base - like a focus on mutual funds or tax minimization. However, Internet-based and ongoing corporate training can help your employees achieve that additional knowledge and build those skill sets.

Today, the demands on financial professionals, particularly those involved with estate planning, are massive. Baby boomers are aging and estate planning is a major industry. So, how do you get your employees to not only understand estate planning, but to master it? Simple - estate planning courses. The question is, how do you create a good course?

What Constitutes a Sound Training Program?

Knowledge and expertise are your primary tools as a financial planner and financial services company. That means your employees need to be experts when they're dealing with clients. A hesitant client will walk away from an investment opportunity if their potential consultant seems unsure or less than totally confident.

Because financial services and estate planning are so complex and constantly changing, they need training programs and resources that are equally flexible. That means they must have:

* A sound curriculum crafted to meet the specific needs of each organization;

* Effective delivery by professionals with actual industry experience; and

* A sound process that covers all the essential skills and reinforces them.

Three Steps to an Effective Training Program

The first step of an effective training program is that you must define the basics. For estate planning services professionals, that means identifying the baseline requirements of their jobs. If your staff is focused on the wrong things, practice doesn't make perfect; it entrenches ineffectiveness.

Secondly, you must quantitatively assess knowledge. This needs to be done on the front end to identify knowledge gaps because you cannot effectively train if you don't know an individual's current status. Without this, knowledge training is unfocused and inefficient. Only by assessing each individual can you match the training to the needs of the individual.

Step three of an effective estate planning program is to constantly reinforce what they've learned. If your financial planners aren't retaining what they've been taught then that training program is a waste of both money and time. You need your employees to prove they've retained the information from their estate planning courses, whether through ongoing workshops or testing.