Covisum's software started out as services in my own financial planning practice. We use Tax Clarity® at least once per year with every client, mainly because skipping it just doesn’t make sense. Let me explain our thought process:
We get at least one client referral each year to provide a Tax Map and advice on a tax-efficient retirement. The lifetime value of a client to our practice is over $15,000. It’s a no brainer to spend $960 on software to make that happen.
A closer look...
Let’s say that you have 100 clients. Adding a Tax Map review to every single client’s annual review will take you approximately 1,000 minutes (On average, it takes advisors five minutes per client for data entry and five minutes for discussion in the client review). That’s 16.67 hours of your time annually to include a Tax Map review as part of your process for every single client.
Assuming your time in client meetings is worth $1,000 per hour, and your planning/support time is worth $100 an hour, that’s $10,127 of your time committed. Add the cost to license the software and your total investment is about $11,000 to make Tax Clarity a recurring and ongoing part of your practice.
Now, let’s do the math on the lifetime value of a client. Say your average client produces $5,000 of revenue and you retain clients on average for 10 years. Assuming you would expect a 15% return on any investment, your return on investment is still hundreds of percentage points.
That’s not even counting what you could do if you also use our field-tested seminar for client acquisition (which is included for free with a paid subscription to the software).
Just for fun, I put together a little spreadsheet so you can plug in your own numbers. The yellow highlights are the inputs. A little math might show you the return on your investment you are looking for. I assure you, it's worth it!