Editor's Note: 50-Plus Communications Consulting specializes in helping firms and advisors improve sales with Baby Boomers at or near retirement. For further information, contact Mike Sullivan at: Mikesullivan@graymoney.biz.

Why do large amounts of money move? Typically, because something happens in clients' lives that allows planners and advisors to provide financial solutions, add assets and gain new clients.

All too often, the client doesn't think the advisor can help, or the advisor doesn't relate the life event to a financial opportunity. Many advisors miss life event opportunities, even with their own clients. By institutionalizing the understanding of the value of life events, financial services companies can win big.

Life Events Move Money
Life events move money, often large amounts! Almost three-quarters of consumers who seek financial advice do so because of a major life event, according to recent research by Tiburon.

Statistics show the potential magnitude of money flows associated with life events:

• 30% of an average broker's book of business results from job changes and retirement.
• More than $7 trillion dollars will pass as inheritances as the World War II generation dies
• Having a grandchild results in more than onethird of all pre-paid college tuition plans being paid for by grandparents.
• According to an AARP life event study among households age 45 and over, in the prior five years:
• 31% became responsible for the care of a parent. (Resulting in ultimate reorganization of parent assets, consolidation of accounts and often including the sale of a home and redeployment of the proceeds.)
• 26% had the last child leave home. (Increase in free cash flow for savings, investment or spending.)
• 19% divorced or remarried. (New accounts; possibly mortgages, lump sums to invest, trusts, estate planning.)

Life Events Trigger Opportunities
Life events — over 35 by our count — trigger the need for financial and lifestyle advice, products and services. Events like births, weddings, a new grandchild, graduations and retirement move money. So do the not-so-joyous events like family illness, death, job loss, business failures or family break-ups. Every household needs help dealing with the financial implications of life's inevitable ups and downs

The biggest opportunities are with the older life cycle groups: the life events are often more emotionally powerful and the amount of money involved is greater. In a study conducted for AARP, most people interviewed experienced ten major life changing events within a five year span during their fifties. The opportunity is even greater for more affluent families, who typically have more financially complex lives.

Multiple life events often occur at about the same time — divorce often is followed by remarriage, getting a new job sometimes involves relocating, returning to work occurs frequently in retirement. Typically, life events occur over a period of time, often in two or three stages. Think of the illness and death of a parent, for example. These offer recurring opportunities to capture large amounts of money in motion.

Life Event Categories
Life events that drive behavior can be placed into five categories: household formation events, inheritance events, career events, retirement events and health/dependency events.

Nearly all life events have common elements:

• They represent periods of high stress.
• The client typically lacks time, and usually the knowledge, to handle at least some of the life event-related tasks.
• Over the time period the event occurs, it is extremely important to the client and, therefore, any help with solutions has a high level of relevance to that client.
• Communications about the topic are likely to get the attention of someone encountering that life event. Think of an older spouse about to enter a care facility. They and their family members are acutely attuned to information about the facility. Well-conceived marketing and sales activity focused on the issue becomes highly valuable to the family caregivers.

Financial Implications of Life Events
Clients frequently do not have the knowledge or experience to see through the event to its financial implications. For advisors, being more proactive regarding these issues will inevitably result in increased sales.

Nearly all life events have a financial aspect, although sometimes it is hidden from the client. If a mother can no longer live alone, that suggests she probably needs help managing and probably reorganizing her assets to pay for additional care. A new job may mean a qualified plan rollover or extra income that should be invested or a need for more life insurance — or all three. New grandchildren imply new responsibilities; the best time to start a college funding program is at birth.

Selling & Building Relationships
In our considerable experience helping firms to capture money in motion, we have found that life event selling is built on three simple, but vital, concepts:

• As people age, a number of life issues, such as taking care of aging parents or grandparenting or transitioning into retirement, become extremely important.
• There are aspects of those issues where a financial advisor can be of considerable help — but only if clients and prospects are made aware of the fact that the advisor can help.
• When clients and prospects become aware of the ability of financial advisors to help with a life issue, many will welcome the help. This will lead to both stronger relationships and more business.

Helping clients through major life events builds customer loyalty by demonstrating an understanding of their needs. It builds the advisor's credibility by expanding the scope of advicegiving, and it leads to intergenerational business (spouses, children and grandchildren).

The Advisor Is Key
Advisors get life event-driven business occasionally, but they can — and should — get much more of it. In fact, over time with appropriate sales and marketing support, they can create a continuing stream of income from events that happen in the lives of clients and prospects.

It is that connection that makes advisors valuable to clients, differentiates them — and ultimately allows them to grow their business regardless of events, shifts in how business is conducted or economic conditions.

In order to make that connection, however, planners and advisors must have some knowledge about the extensive list and types of life events faced by their clients. They don't have to be experts. But they do need to understand the life events well enough to see how their financial products and services connect to them and then be able to explain the connection.

How do you create a program that captures money in motion? Develop a "Life Event Selling System" that helps your field distribution force to:

• Identify a client's life event that is occurring now, or expected to happen soon.
• Explain the event's financial implications.
• Tie the life event to your firm's financial solution.
• Provide information about the specific event as a handout to the client.

Life events, from births to deaths, put money in motion. Those events are happening right now to your advisors' clients and to potential prospects. It is up to you whether or not you capture some of the money that is going to inevitably move. DSG

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