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 research shows that most financial advisors are ill-prepared and lacking in knowledge that is fundamental to these disciplines. However, Internet-based corporate training can quickly build those skills that are prerequisite to employees capturing the sales opportunities before them and get employees back on track.

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 Trust administration
, 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;

* Confident experts delivering the information and providing practical expertise; and

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

The Steps to a Great Estate Planning 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.

Step two in an effective training program is to quantitatively assess the knowledge of your staff. That means, being able to test them and identify who needs work and on what subjects. If you don’t know where an individual stands, you won’t be able to effectively train the person. Without results that you can see, you will not only be unable to train your staff, but you’ll be incapable of assessing the effectiveness of your training.

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.