Conducting employee rollover seminars

The challenge: Because of the increase in corporate layoffs, retirement plan rollovers are becoming more important. As we’ve discussed over the past several weeks, grabbing your share of the business requires becoming a retirement expert and positioning your practice as a retirement resource. In this final week of a four-week program to help position your practice as a rollover resource for companies experiencing layoffs, it will be critical to set up group and one-on-one meetings. Last week, we discussed how to set up appointments for meetings with benefit and human resource managers. Here’s the action plan for the actual employee meetings.

What to do: The goal of offering your services to companies experiencing layoffs is to help the newly unemployed keep their retirement nest eggs intact. You are also providing financial and tax strategies that will save them money and help them maximize their own contributions and those of their employer. Benefits and human resources managers will be relieved to hear your plan, because they know that employees tend to spend their rollovers if they exit their jobs with no plan or financial adviser to work with.

This week we will outline the three steps to manage this process.

Step 1: Hold retirement rollover seminars at the company, if possible.
In order to make the seminar approach manageable and cost-effective, try to use a conference room or lunchroom on-site. Timing is critical: Give your seminar while the employees are still on the job, because once they have stopped working, it is harder to reach them. Consider holding two types of sessions: One for the employees being let go and another that is a retirement check-up session with a focus on asset allocation.
Show the depth of your resources at every meeting by inviting an estate planning attorney, a CPA and a health insurance agent to join you. Allow enough time for individual questions after the sessions. Don’t rush the attendees.

A knowledgeable health insurance agent can explain alternatives to COBRA as well as the new COBRA reduced-cost plan and ways to manage health care. The CPA can review the rollover tax consequences and Roth IRA conversion opportunities, and the attorney can provide insights into specific estate-planning needs.
Since this is a challenging time for employees, make it easy for them to roll over their retirement assets by having one or two assistants accompany you to the session to handle paperwork. Company managers will appreciate your bringing along your own resources, as they are already stretched thin.

Step 2: Stick to your planning checklist and timetable.
1. Set a date for the first rollover planning session while you are in the benefits manager’s office. Ask for a list of employees, segmented by termination dates and titles. Ask the manager to e-mail an invitation to the seminar to each group of employees (if possible try not to mix the groups). For employees already terminated, hold the session at a local library.
2. Make sure the invitation includes the time, location, names of guest speakers and the benefits of the seminar. You might consider using the title, “Retaining Your Retirement Plan in Challenging Times.” Be clear on the key points that will be covered.
3. The day before, send out reminder e-mails with an agenda.
4. Bring handouts and materials to handle the rollovers and review the steps and presentation with your team before the meeting starts. Professionalism and being prepared will be critical.
5. Bring name tags with big type.
6. Arrive one hour before the event to check the room setup and introduce your team to the staff.
7. Consider playing quiet background music playing as guests arrive. This will help keep the calm in the room (consider how the airlines try to do this as passengers are boarding the aircraft to keep the clients quiet).
8. Stay to your timeline.
9. Close the seminar with action steps.

Seminar Timeline
2:45-3 p.m. Check-in and welcome for guests. Ask your assistant to record total retirement assets for each client or prospect and welcome them personally. Be sure each guest wears a name tag.
3-3:15 p.m. Open and take this opportunity to share your retirement resource branding, introduce your team and have one or two clients give testimonials about how you have worked with them.
3:15- 4 p.m. Retirement rollover planning session. Have your guest speakers share their topics and then provide attendees with a retirement timeline. Explain the need to review their asset allocations and rollover plans, and pass out the retirement resources your team has brought.
Finish your seminar on time and let guests know you will be following up.
Step 3: Follow-up: Send a follow-up e-mail the next morning to thank your guests for joining you. In each case, tell them what’s next, based on your follow-up action plan. This is the key to turning a client’s guest into a new client or a referral. Have an e-mail template prepared before the seminar (one for referrals and one for clients). This can even be set ahead of time into your computer for delivery the next morning.
March: How to create a retirement advisory board