In today's one-stop service world, financial services professionals are expected to do everything - attend estate planning courses, understand taxation issues, be able to handle trusts, understand insurance policy and on top of it all, manage investments.

However, most financial advisors are often not ready to take on such a wide range of responsibilities. Most have one knowledge base - like a focus on mutual funds or tax minimization. However, Internet-based and ongoing corporate training can help your employees achieve that additional knowledge and build those skill sets.

At a time when the demands on trust, estate planning and other financial professionals are greater than ever, many institutions find themselves with a serious gap between staff expertise and baseline skills needed to deliver a consistent level of service quality. As a result, many employers are turning to in-house corporate estate planning courses. But, what goes into a good course?

What Constitutes a Sound Training Program?

Knowledge and expertise are your primary tools as a financial planner and financial services company. That means your employees need to be experts when they're dealing with clients. A hesitant client will walk away from an investment opportunity if their potential consultant seems unsure or less than totally confident.

Because financial services and estate planning are so complex and constantly changing, they need training programs and resources that are equally flexible. That means they must have:

* A sound curriculum crafted to meet the specific needs of each organization;

* Confident experts delivering the information and providing practical expertise; and

* A sound process that covers all the essential skills and reinforces them.

The Steps to a Great Estate Planning Training Program

Step one to an effective estate planning training program is to set out the basics. For any financial planner working in estate planning, that means outlining their basic job requirements. Instead of having your planners focused on reeling in new clients or upselling insurance add-ons, get them to focus on their job - effectively planning estates and retirement packages.

Step two in an effective training program is to quantitatively assess the knowledge of your staff. That means, being able to test them and identify who needs work and on what subjects. If you don't know where an individual stands, you won't be able to effectively train the person. Without results that you can see, you will not only be unable to train your staff, but you'll be incapable of assessing the effectiveness of your training.

Step three of an effective estate planning program is to constantly reinforce what they've learned. If your financial planners aren't retaining what they've been taught then that training program is a waste of both money and time. You need your employees to prove they've retained the information from their estate planning courses, whether through ongoing workshops or testing.

Once you valid the effectiveness of this training procedure, then you can take additional steps to implement similar steps with other employees and additional courses you that would be beneficial for their professional development.