Let’s face it, the success of your divorce mediation practice is highly dependent on the success and satisfaction of your divorce clients. The more successful and satisfied your clients are, the more referrals they will make. Most divorce mediators earn 80% of their income from referrals.
One challenge a divorce mediator has is the variable of individual attitudes that people have coming in. Whether amicable or hostile, while the process and objectives remain the same, individual attitudes can make your job much more difficult. As difficulty and expense rises, client satisfaction and success, goes down.
Control for the Variable of Bad Attitudes.
At SplitSmart, we believe that the great equalizer and antidote for bad attitudes in divorce mediation is organization. Quite frankly, the single best way divorce clients can help themselves, individually and as a couple, is to be organized. Organized and transparent in their marital worksheet and in their financial disclosures. We discuss custody and child support mediation in a separate post.
SplitSmart was specifically designed to mitigate and manage the bad behaviors people with bad attitudes can have in the divorce process. Designed for the worst of the worst, our process adapts to the needs of the couple. While each state requires financial disclosures between the parties, their real obligation is to satisfy the other that they are complete and transparent.
SplitSmart streamlines the intake process for divorce mediators so that most individuals can transparently complete their financial disclosures and data entry within just a couple of hours. SplitSmart allows users to connect directly with over 15,000 banks, credit cards and financial institutions. Not only are disclosures collected with a click of a button, the transactional history is valid and current balances are updated whenever needed, thereby mitigating many bad behaviors. Learn more in our two explainer videos posted here.
Key to getting clients transparently complete and organized in their disclosures, is to instill individual accountability into the process. Through our unique disclosure/discovery management approach, we enable clients with dashboards, an opposing party audit feature and an audit trail to help individuals self-correct their own behaviors.
Your Intake Process on Steroids
Divorce mediators can think of SplitSmart as their intake process on steroids. By clients using SplitSmart in advance of mediation, either remote or in person, they show up fully disclosed, many minor issues already resolved, and with their remaining items organized for productive settlement meetings. Your clients get greater value from your expertise because no one wastes time on collecting documents or petty issues. Bad attitudes are kept in check and your clients are more successful and happier with your service.
While some divorce mediators might think empowering clients to do much of this on their own might negate the need for a mediator, to some degree, they are right. More and more divorcing couples want DIY options in an effort to keep costs down. However, the vast majority can’t figure out everything without help from a professional. The more a mediator embraces streamlining and simplifying the process, the more clients they will attract.
It’s time to up your game as a divorce mediator by empowering your clients by embracing the most capable intake process available. Learn how to up your game by leveraging SplitSmart.com