How Retirement Plan Providers Can Write Great Content.

When I started at a law firm a few years back, my idea was to start a National practice that was devoted to ERISA and single employer retirement plans. The idea was that utilizing the law firm's existing clientele to cross sell my services would be a great way to jump start it and develop relationships with other plan providers. Thanks to law firm partners who didn't want to help, I decided that developing content in the form of articles and social media that a plan provider could use to maintain and develop their business would do the trick. The law firm had other ideas and so did I, so we thankfully parted ways. With the freedom of my own practice, I was able to develop content that helped retirement plan providers around the country produce results that helped me in the long run in developing a National ERISA practice that continues to grow. Retirement plan providers have had issues in developing content, so the purpose of this article is some tips on how retirement plan providers improve their marketing content, so it can help develop results.

Complacency for a TPA is bad business.

Patting yourself on the back isn't good for business either.

For me, one of the worst things that any business can have is a sense of a complacency; I have spent too many years working at places that were just way too complacent in their work, where so much time was devoted to proclaiming how everybody was so wonderful and so great. If I am so complacent in business where I think I'm so wonderful, I'm going to retire or ask someone to put me down like Old Yeller.

I don't think any retirement plan provider can afford to be complacent. The industry is consistently changing and any change breeds more competition.  Unless you're a payroll provider TPA or one of the large consulting companies like Buck or Towers Watson, you can't afford to hire a top-notch marketing firm. If you're like me, you weren't taught marketing in school. So when I say that TPAs as a whole have lousy marketing, it's not an insult because most professional firms have lousy marketing because of a lack of resources.  Heck, most law firms have lousy marketing and there are quite a few TPAs who have excellent marketing. As a whole, it needs improvement.

So when I say that TPAs as a whole have lousy marketing, I see it less as an insult and more of challenge for TPAs to get better at communicating with plan sponsor clients and potential clients. Just saying that a TPA can't do much because it's a competitive business and this is just how the business they chose to go into operates is just a lazy man's argument.

I decided long ago that I wanted to build a national ERISA practice, to work with plan sponsors, advisors, and TPAs around the country at a flat fee. I was surrounded by an attorney leadership who thought that my way was the wrong way and that is not how a law firm operates and markets itself. Of course, I went on my own and proved them wrong. I could have sat back and just written it off like Hyman Roth did in Godfather Part II by saying that this was the business I chose. If I did that, I'd hate to think where I would be now.

TPAs can just sit back and be bitter on how the TPA business has turned into, but bitterness and complacency don't get clients. Thinking outside the box, being bold and being creative goes a long way into getting clients. That's why I thoroughly enjoyed speaking at a panel of Great West TPAs because TPAs giving each other good bits of information to get more competitive. Sitting back and feeling sorry for yourself is a lot easier than doing something.\

The "Real World" on Changing TPAs.

When you make the TPA change, how the fired TPA treats a plan sponsors says everything.

Hard to believe but 20 years and 29 seasons later, The Real World is still airing on MTV. The Real World ends their opening intro with "to find out what happens... when people stop being polite... and start getting real." As an ERISA attorney working with retirement plan clients I often find that what determines a good third party administrator (TPA) from a bad one is when we find out what happens, when the TPA gets fired, and we start getting real.

TPAs get fired for a multiple of reasons and for a good chunk of the time, it's not for a lack of competence. TPAs can get fired for higher fees, change of advisors/brokers (who want to make the change), or because the brother of the law firm's partner works for the mutual fund company that will now be the new TPA. So it's business, not personal.

Again, it's easy to determine who the good TPAs are from the bad ones. The good TPAs will not take it personally and will try to make the transition to a new provider as seamless as it can be. I think reputation means everything and since it's such a close knit industry, making it easier for a former client to transition business away from you will only help your reputation. Also, there is always the chance that the former client maybe your client once again, especially if the new TPA fouls things up. I always believe in the concept of paying it forward, that making it easier for former clients to leave will only make it easier for new clients to come in. The good TPAs will also spell out in their original service agreement with the client, the exact cost (if, any) of the de-conversion when the TPA is replaced.

The bad ones are easy to spot out. They take things so personally and they feel the need to take out the frustration of being fired on the former client. Again, it's business, not personal. I had a client who changed TPAs a few years back. During the change to a new TPA, an IRS audit discovered that the Top Heavy test was done incorrectly because a couple of law firm partners were misidentified as non-key employees. Rather than admitting the error, the TPA placed blame on the client for the error and then whined that the client still did not pay all their invoices, forgetting that the client had spent thousands in legal representation to correct that Top Heavy error.

Divorce can be difficult, changing TPAs should not. I think it's important for TPAs to maintain a high level of professionalism, especially when it comes to the time when the TPA is being replaced because it's at those times that delineates the good TPAs from the bad ones.

Plan providers and meaningless statistics.

It's only meaningless when the provider has a bad statistic.

The Southern California Institute of Law has a bar passage rate of 7%, which means 93% of their graduates failed. They sued the California Bar on free speech grounds because they didn't want to be forced to state that 7% amount in their materials. According to the law school, the bar passage rate is a meaningless statistic.

Of course, the only people who claim a statistic is meaningless are those that don't do well in these statistics. Yes, I remember my issue with billable hours for law firm associates.

In the retirement plan industry, providers who don't do well in specific instances will just dismiss their poor placement or lot as something meaningless. I remember hearing a financial advisor who lost a plan sponsor client to fiduciary heavyweight James Holland that ERISA 3(38) fiduciary services is just marketing. How many providers dismiss their client retention rate or claim that fees aren't so important because they just want to hide the ball and/or the truth?

If a provider glosses over a specific statistic or dismisses a notion rather quickly, don't take their word for it and find out why. Maybe the statistic really isn't that meaningless and it's relevant. Just don't take the provider's word for it.