When Your Client Is Grieving:

How to be Compassionate, Confident, and Steady While Stepping Into the Storm of Grief

A seminar for financial advisors, estate planners, lawyers, and insurance agents

The effort you make now to understand and support your grieving clients will increase their loyalty to your firm for years to come. Whether they’re new widows or widowers, grieving the death of a parent, or they are bereaved parents themselves, the grief process causes profound suffering and, for a time, challenges your client’s short-term memory, their ability to focus and make decisions, their sleep patterns and their appetites – all at a time when their financial futures have been disrupted.

The Bottom Line:
Attending this seminar will help your business.

Your commitment to learning more about grief will affirm to your grieving client the following:

You are someone who cares
You are a good listener
You have skills to create a safe space as you work beside them
You understand that they may have difficulty processing new information and making decisions
You believe that although they may feel overwhelmed and compromised, over time they will become more and more able to skillfully manage their lives

Even while the storm is raging in their hearts, you will be their trusted, steady, patient, compassionate advisor
You can be trusted to walk with them at a time when they are frightened and feel out of control
Moreover, by attending this seminar, you will be more confident, better prepared, and more competent when working with clients whose lives have been shattered by loss.
You have knowledge of resources for them if they need additional information and/or support as they grieve

Skills You Will Come Away With

You will have a better understanding of Early Grief, The Second Storm and The Search for Meaning
You will learn deep listening skills
You will understand personality styles that contribute to how we grieve
You will learn to practice empathic listening, non-judgment, unconditionality, and a feeling-focused communication style
You will learn to anticipate and understand certain more complicated grief reactions, and how you can be of assistance with clients facing complications

Essential Information You Will Take With You:

Templates for condolence letters for specific categories of losses
A strategy for making effective Condolence Phone Calls
Anticipating difficult scenarios when visiting bereaved clients in their homes
How to successfully stage the first post-death, face-to-face business meeting with your grieving client
Strategies for anticipating unanticipated encounters with your grieving client
Do’s and Don’ts for meetings with your grieving clients
Confidence in knowing you are prepared to help your clients during the hardest times will ever face

Seminar Details

The following syllabus can be presented in one six-hour seminar or in two three- hour segments on two separate days. I am also happy to design a personalized presentation to meet your particular concerns.

Part One

How deepening your understanding of grief will help your business
Learning to listen deeply to your clients in order to enhance their confidence and faith in you
The Three Phases of Grief: Early Grief, The Second Storm, The Search For Meaning
Personality Styles that influence how your clients grieve and what kind of support they will require
The Four Pillars of Communication with Grieving Clients that make all the difference in building client trust: Empathy, Non-judgement, Unconditionality, Feeling Sensitivity
Review and Questions

Part Two

Predisposing factors that often complicate the grief process
How the cause of death may complicate grief
How to compose an effective, personalized condolence letter for particular kinds of losses including death of a child, partner, sibling and parent, and for deaths that were anticipated as well as those that were sudden.
Preparing for a condolence phone call
Preparing for a home visit with your bereaved client and/or attending the funeral
Staging your first post-death office visit with your grieving client
Do's and Don'ts to remember when preparing to interact with your grieving client
Review and Questions

"A Financial Adviser needs to pass numerous State and Federal licensing exams, engage in ongoing continuing education and adhere to a best interest standard as it relates to all dealings with the public. Unfortunately, none of that teaches us how to help our clients during the most difficult times in their life… when they are experiencing grief.

Our firm invited Rob Zucker to conduct a workshop on the grieving process entitled, “When Your Client is Grieving – How to be Compassionate, Confident and Steady While Stepping into the Storm of Grief. His insights, experience and expertise helped educate both the Advisers and support staff in our firm on how to help our clients during these difficult times. We learned about grief and how to identify where someone might be in their grief process. We learned how to use that information in meetings, phone calls and correspondences with our clients in order to help them navigate the complex financial world in a manner that is compassionate, while also adhering to necessary administrative protocols and best interest standards.

Rob's presentation was powerful. His teachings not only impacted our dealings with our clients, but also with our own friends and family. Furthermore, his guidance helped each one us better understand and manage our own feelings of grief. I highly recommend his services on both an individual and company basis.”