Planting and reaping a harvest, building your settlement planning practice

If you read the introduction to my month long series on rebranding and growing a structured settlement practice in which I discussed sowing and reaping, hopefully you are looking forward to todays commentary as I finally roll out the topics for the rest of the month and give you the first glimpse at some solutions to your current marketing malaise.

I know the column has been highly negative for the last few weeks as I first took the defense brokers to task for decades of business practices, as well as last weeks rip job on plaintiff settlement brokers and agents. I’ve taken this approach as I believe while the conversation in the structured settlement profession has been relentlessly negative and non-productive for years, that we  acknowledged the sins and issues of the past, but it is time now to get started on discussing what is solid and good about our profession and plant the seeds necessary to the prepare for a harvest in the months and years ahead.

In that spirit it is time to start discussing where structured settlement professionals ( or for that matter any professional ) should spend their time and money to rebrand their firm or professional practice, and start to develop a coherent, low cost social networking strategy for the year ahead. As the theme has been the parable of sowing and reaping, this column will be about putting good seeds in properly prepared soil and then tending it carefully so that a harvest “ 30 or 60 fold” can be realized in due time.

Note that phrase, “ In due time…”. Nothing I am going to recommend is going to be an immediate magic bullet or quick fix to the lack of sales you are currently struggling with, or your currently invisible online status that makes you non-existent in the eyes of your clients and potential prospects. Just as it takes a full growing season to produce a crop of wheat and in other cases years to grow a mature fruit tree or vine, you need to have reasonable expectations as to what kind of investment you need to make and when you can reasonably expect a harvest.

Decide what kind of crop you want to grow and pick out the best place to plant it.

Sure, this seems basic but in the settlement planning and structured settlement profession its not that simple. There exist three different business models to choose from, plaintiff work only, defense work only or positioning yourself as a “gun for hire” who can represent either side as the situation dictates. Each has its advantages, but in the tradition bound, adversarial world of litigation, most settlement experts choose one or the other, with the few successful straddlers typically being experienced brokers who have ties and contacts on both sides who trust them and send them business. 

The plaintiff and defense models are both dealing with emerging business factors that are shaping their practices, but the branding message challenge is typically pretty straight forward. In my case I make it clear that Wahlstrom & Associates represents trial lawyers and injury victims in settlement negotiations and that our commitment is to be a plaintiff advocate exclusively. We will partner with other planning and settlement professionals on multi-claimant or attorney retirement planning strategy, but there is no question who we work with and thus who we market too. We have selected the kind of crop we want to grow, assisting injury victims and trial lawyers, and can thus move to deciding the best place to plant our seed.

However, the problem I see in looking at our profession is that many brokers now just seem to state they are structured settlement “brokers” and appear to imply that they can or will work with anyone who thinks they want or can use a structured settlement. What exactly is that saying  and what message are you sending to your market? It’s certainly fine to represent both sides if you are comfortable with that or have contacts that are ok with you working for them one day and against them another, that’s each professionals personal decision or market. It’s just that you can’t really have a coherent “planting strategy” unless you are able to articulate why you adopt that professional stance, how it benefits your clients and is clear as to how it makes you anything better then an annuity peddler, pushing your professional cart around the internet or trade shows, hoping someone will throw you some premium.

So, before we move to step two on “preparing the soil before you plant”, I suggest you look at who you market to and  the overt and implied messages your current company name, marketing materials, web site and communications send to current clients and prospects. If they can’t figure out who you work with, why you work them and who you want to attract as new clients, chances are the phone won’t be ringing.

( Mark Wahlstrom is the President of Wahlstrom & Associates in Scottsdale, AZ, and is generally considered to be the nations leading expert in structured settlements, settlement planning and structured legal fees. You can read his weekly commentary on The Settlement Channel or view his weekly broadcast at Speaking of Settlements.)

Sowing and reaping, structured settlement professionals need to revisit the parable

Whether you are an Old Testament/Torah kind of guy, a New Testament/Bible reader,  or agnostic/gardener, most people are familiar with or have heard the parables and concepts of sowing and reaping as it relates to getting a harvest. Scriptures and self help literature are replete with example after example of how the harvest you receive is naturally determined by the kind of seed you sow and where you sow it.

In the most elemental sharing of the story, it involves a farmer who sows seed over a field, with the seed falling on several different types of ground. Some of the seed falls by the side of the road and is quickly devoured by birds, some of it falls on rocky ground where the shallow soil causes the plant to wither due to lack of depth, some of it falls in the thorns and is choked as it grows, but some of the seed falls on good soil and produces a crop thirty to sixty fold to the farmer.

I don’t want to get all theological on everyone, but this parable endures and resonates with people for a reason, with the reason being that it makes sense and it drives home to people that unless you are sewing seed in good soil and tending to it, your expectation of a harvest is in vain as nature, both human and otherwise, ordains what it takes to get a fruitful harvest. What it also drives home is that in order to get a harvest you do have to take the initiative and actually sow some seeds, as the field doesn’t exactly plant itself and if left untended it will produce a tangle of weeds.

So, using this concept lets take a look at the structured settlement profession and the past history and current practices as it regards sowing seeds for a harvest of sales.

While the life insurance companies in the structured settlement market typically have huge advertising budgets and some of our biggest structured settlement firms produce in excess of $1 billion in annual premium, I contend that the amount of money that is spent “sowing seeds” among what should be our target markets for structured settlements and settlement planning, is a mere fraction of what it should and could be and that much of the money that is spent is falling by the side of the road, is sown in shallow ground or tossed in among the thorns. Some examples would be:

Wasted seeds by the side of the road. Lets start with anyone who spends even a dime on yellow pages, printed corporate brochures and Google pay per click advertising as well as any non-specific directory of “professionals” in which you are listed and get zero leads. Why any firm or solo professional would spend any money at all on these is beyond me. Recent studies show that at least 25% of all Google clicks involve fraud and I would contend in an expensive click term such as “structured settlements” that the fraud level is probably closer to 50%. Why in the world would you waste your money and marketing effort on any medium where you reasonably know you are being cheated or where your clients and prospects never think to look for you?

Shallow seeds that spring up but whither quickly. I’d put vanity broadcasting efforts such as audio podcasting, direct mail and engaging public relations firms in this category. With each of these you get a little bit of action and excitement for a moment, maybe a phone call or your mother see’s your name in the newspaper or magazine, but almost as fast as it is out there, it withers away and is gone, along with the money, time and effort you put into it. It’s short term, feel good spending that after the initial rush leaves you wondering what happened to your marketing dollars and why your phone still isn’t ringing.

Seeds in the thorns that are choked as they grow. In this category I’d put any money spent on trial lawyer or claims associations that is clearly unproductive and unmeasurable, but that you feel compelled to do out of fear that you will lose access or favor with that group. Any marketing that you do out of fear or a sense of coercion is ultimately doomed and non-productive. As I stated in my prior posts, these organizations generally will take all they can get from you and when you are used up, they will find another source. Associations don’t provide access to lawyers as they claim, it is the individual trial lawyers and claims professionals that are the decision makers on 99% of all their cases and any effort you make that doesn’t speak directly to the decision maker is ultimately wasted, no matter what the association promises. 

As for the favorable and receptive soil in my little illustration, I will be covering those options in part two of this commentary to be published this Thursday. As you might ascertain from viewing my last month of writing, I am starting to transition away from a listing of what is wrong with our profession, to instead what is good and productive about it and how we can start building it back up to even more then it was at it’s prior peak. I’ll be laying out some simple, measurable and productive ideas as to how you can begin to build your professional practice in the weeks and months ahead so make sure you keep reading and viewing as I share some of what I have learned in new media over the last 10 years.

( Mark Wahlstrom is the President of Wahlstrom & Associates, based in Scottsdale, AZ and the host of Speaking of Settlements, a weekly broadcast with the nations leading expert on structured settlements, settlement planning and structured legal fees. )

Plaintiff structured settlement experts stray from the path

In part two of my commentary this week on the questionable marketing and side tracked mission of the plaintiff side of the structured settlement profession, I look at what I consider to be the four major flaws plaguing the plaintiff only side of the structured settlements. You can read part one of my earlier commentary on this by clicking here.

The problems as I see them are:

1. Brokers who state they are a “plaintiff experts” when in fact they are opportunists who work for whomever has the power in a particular case or transaction.  One of the biggest trends of the last 5 to 7 years is the almost comical rush by previously "defense exclusive" structured settlement brokers to rebrand themselves as plaintiff experts. In many cases their only pitch to trial lawyers is that " we worked for the casualty companies for years and we can get your case settled faster because they know us and trust us." Really? If your competitive position is that you are exploiting your long standing relationship with defendants for your new "friends" in the plaintiff bar, simply so you can get a commission, can I also assume you would just as quickly sell out a plaintiff if it meant you getting paid by a defendant. In short, these guys blow with the wind and who ever pays best and are no more friends of plaintiffs then a fox is friends with a barn full of chickens.

2. Using long ago discarded claims practices such as rebating or post case underwriting to needlessly defame and discredit structured settlements being offered by defendants, simply to get yourself inserted into a case. As anyone who has read my commentary over the years can attest, I've been very rough on the defense side of our profession and the claims practices they perpetuated in the business for years. However, I am here to tell you that most of those abuses are gone, the few remaining are on their last legs and it's time for plaintiff guys to move on. The continual rehashing of stories and tactics that haven't been practiced for years does nothing at this point other then discredit our profession, our products and diminish us in the eyes of trial lawyers. As I stated in my last post, calling everyone else a crook or clueless doesn't elevate you, it just drags down our professional status with trial lawyers and diminishes our value in their eyes and the eyes of their clients. In short, if all you bring to the table is that you are less rotten and less crooked than the other guy, you can probably expect to be replaced when your product is no longer competitive. ( Oh wait, thats where we are now, right?)

3. Lavishing contributions, “soft money” and entering into business deals with trial lawyers or their professional associations simply to try and get the same “exclusive agent status” that was at the heart of many of the defense abuses and hubris over the decades. This is the one that really gets me. I would contend that few brokers in my business have been a bigger friend and ally of trial lawyers than I have. However, the attempts by many structured settlement experts to buy access and endorsements from trial lawyer groups and associations is both sickening and ultimately diminishes our profession. While anyone is free to donate to political campaigns and support trial lawyer groups, the fact that our profession is now often the first ones called to write a check for trial lawyers indicates not our loyalty but that we are being viewed as patsies and an easy mark when it is time to raise funds. We need more professionals willing to say no to this financial arm twisting and our requests for pay to play exclusivity as the "approved broker" for an associations members. We need to instead stand on our professional competence and our ability to help lawyers resolve difficult claims and to take care of their clients. When you continually hang a "for sale" sign around your neck, you will never be valued as a professional peer among trial lawyers.

4. Representing yourself as a settlement planning expert, when in fact you make most of your money from alternative investment products or brokering annuities, and you wouldn’t know what a MSA, SNT or QSF was if it hit you in the face. The professional training and education of many plaintiff structured settlement experts is woefully lacking with many of them unable to properly explain what a special needs trust is, when it is used, what a MSA is or why it is crucial to trial lawyers, not to mention the complete cluelessness on non-qualified annuity issues. We need as a profession to stop relying on a single product sale and start crafting complete solutions for injury victims.

In short, the plaintiff structured settlement experts need to get out of the past and stop telling lawyers to not go on cruises because the Titanic hit an iceberg and sank a 100 years ago. Get over the past, shape a coherent and professional rationale as to why we provide value to trial lawyers and injury victims and get started spreading that message. The days of scare tactics, trading on inside information and attempting to buy loyalty must come to an end or our profession is going to stay stuck in the mud.

( Mark Wahlstrom is the President of Wahlstrom and Associates, one of the nations leading experts in structured settlements, settlement planning and structured legal fees. Based in Scottsdale, AZ he also writes for The Settlement Channel and hosts the weekly show Speaking of Settlements.)