BachrachBlog

Larry is early in his Values-Based Financial Planning™ Journey building his Ideal Client Community and he wanted my point of view about the benefits for clients or potential clients in creating their Financial Road Map®. Whether you are new to the Values-Based Financial Planning™ journey or a veteran you will appreciate my response to Larry.

First, for the clients, they LOVE the Financial Road Map®! It’s big, colorful, and visual. Yes, a picture is worth a thousand words… maybe more. The Financial Road Map® takes what’s most important to them and puts it on one single piece of paper in a way that is aligned with the flow of time. Husbands and wives see their values side-by-side on the values staircases, their goals are clearly defined with target dates, specific amounts of money, and the positive reasons these goals are a priority have been expressed. Also, there is simple summary of their current financial reality.

Once equipped with a Financial Road Map®, most people feel as though they have never been better equipped to make smart choices about their money so they can achieve their goals and fulfill their values.

A visual tool, like the Financial Road Map®, is very important because most Financial Advisors are much too linear and tend to way, way… WAY over-explain financial concepts, financial products, and financial services. The Financial Road Map® makes the whole idea of having a financial plan and a relationship with a Trusted Advisor, to create and implement that plan, much easier to understand —- for the client.

When I wrote the Values-Based Financial Planning™ book I asked the practitioners of Values-Based Financial Planning™ to ask their clients to describe their experience with the Financial Road Map®, some of which were published in the book. Comments like this one from Jerry Mercer were common, “The Financial Road Map® concept is ideal for the serious investor. Being able to compare our holdings with our needs has led my wife, Ruth, and I to a financial plan that gives us peace of mind and maximum control of our funds. Our Financial Road Map® is a terrific tool for managing our future.”

The clients love the Financial Road Map® and so do Advisors who learn to facilitate the quality experience described above. What’s in it for you?

Delivering the Financial Road Map® experience gives you a process to make a strong human connection in less than an hour. During the Financial Road Map® interview your prospective clients talk for most of that hour giving you the opportunity to make an intelligent choice about whether or not you want to invite them to join your Ideal Client Community. Done properly, they learn that you really care about them as humans and that you are trustworthy.

This is very important because a huge career mistake made by most Financial Advisors is not being more discriminating about who they accept as clients in the first place. Most Financial Advisors end up, after years of working hard to build a business, with only a handful of truly Ideal Clients. We call this a dumb business. Look at the cold hard facts of life for most Financial Advisors, even before the recent economic problems: they work too many hours, for not enough money, with too much liability for the reward. This is at the root of why so many who enter the financial services business fail and most who “make it” past the first several years look a lot more like mediocrity than success.

How much more successful would you be if you were skilled at conducting an interview where, in less than an hour, people hire you to write a plan, want you to be their Advisor for all of their financial affairs, entrust you with all of their money, act on your advice, and refer you to others for the same service?

That’s the impact the Financial Road Map® is having for other Financial Advisors and it can do the same for you.

Using the Financial Road Map® and building an Ideal Client Community by referral only on the Values-Based Financial Planning™ platform will enable you to have your Ideal Life in 4 years or less. It’s the ultimate client-centered win / win and it’s how we train Financial Advisors to build an Ideal Client Community by referral only in 4 years or less.

If you have not done so already, contact us to schedule your complimentary Success Road Map interview with one of our Accountability Coaches today.

Remember, it’s a great time to be a Financial Advisor!

In 2001, CEG Worldwide founder John Bowen conducted a survey of financial professionals. His question: “Do you think you’re client-centered?” Every one of them answered yes.

No surprise there. Most advisors care about their clients and, I suspect, that’s what these advisors thought John was asking them about. But when asked to apply twelve (12) objective criteria, only 14% of the advisors’ businesses were actually all about the clients. The majority of these businesses were set up to cater to the advisor’s preferences. (FYI, the 14% who were truly focused on clients were also attracting as much as 30 times as many assets under management as investment-centered advisors and doing especially well in the downturn that began the year the survey was taken.)

The truth is there are a lot of people who think they are client-centered, and who don’t behave that way. What’s more, most advisors agree that their businesses should be all about their clients, but they’ve never formulated or implemented a plan for actualizing this ideal. It’s the same as folks who say, “I have a healthy lifestyle,” but then smoke cigarettes and eat poorly. Maybe they go to a tanning salon and the gym so they can look good, but they really aren’t creating a health-centered life.

You can probably come up with dozens of new ideas for making your business all about them. Then again, maybe you’re stymied. Perhaps you’re thinking, I’d really like to do a lot more than I do for my clients, but another thought also crosses your mind: I don’t have the time, the energy, the staff, the knowledge, or the resources.

Your rationale may even include the idea that your clients won’t let you do more for them. I recently heard this at a meeting with the CEO of a major insurance company in California. He made an offhand remark about the wonderful things the agents do for “the clients who will let us.” I couldn’t just let that pass without comment, so I told him it shouldn’t be up to his clients. Of course, a client can choose whether or not they work with one of his agents at all, but the CEO needed to decide what level of service they were going to provide to everyone who works with them. When you get on an airplane and the flight attendant closes the door, does the pilot ask, “Does everyone want me to fly the plane today?” or “Does everyone agree with my flight plan?” An airline doesn’t give its passengers discretion about whether to board the plane on time or not, whether to take off as scheduled, whether to divert to another airport at their whim. And why not? Because the other passengers suffer when the pilot abdicates his responsibility to serving all of them equally.

How does this translate to your profession? When you commit to having an all-about-them business, you do what’s right for the clients. Period. No hemming or hawing, no allowing them to dictate how you run your business. You figure out what is in their best interests, and then you do it. You don’t simply revere the idea of doing what’s right for them; you actually implement every time. As Guy Kawasaki wrote in The Macintosh Way, you don’t compete on strategy; you compete on execution.

I know you really care about your clients and would really love to run an all-about-them business, but the question is how? How do you go from running your practice as it is now to operating the kind of business that puts the clients first? And if you think you already run a business that’s all about them, then how do you take it to the next level?

1. If my business were really all about them, how often would each client see me each year, and how much time would they get?
2. If my business were really all about them, exactly what would I do for each person?
3. If my business were really all about them, how would I make my clients’ lives simpler?
4. If my business were really all about them, how would they pay me for this value?
5. If my business were really all about them, how many clients could I do all this for?
6. If my business were really all about them, how many people would staff my office?
7. If my business were really all about them, would I have strategic alliances and partners?
8. If my business were really all about them, how would I take care of myself physically and emotionally?

This should be your objective: Once you’ve brainstormed answers to the eight questions above, make a list of everything you will be delivering to your clients and how it benefits them. (If you’d like to see what one highly successful advisor calls his “10 Client Deliverables,” go to www.TrustedAdvisorToolkit.com. You will be surprised, I imagine, to find that many of these benefits create a better, more manageable business for you, too.

For example, if you were to spend the kind of time with your clients they deserve, that would probably mean less clients, which would mean you’d need to work with clients who yield you more income per capita. You’d need to be extremely competent to work with these folks, and they’d expect you to be focused on your professional growth. Ultimately, you’d need to figure out a way to run a business that allowed you to become very good at what you do, to limit the number of clients, and to serve all of them very well.

So no doubt there’s a learning curve to contend with, new management practices to adopt, staffing issues to resolve, and client contact to be made. And that’s probably not all. It’s not an easy thing, being client-centered. But if you’re going to make it all about them, it’s what you have to do.

Near the end of one year, I called someone who had invested in a year-long program but had bailed out at about the halfway mark. As we talked, I reminded him that he had paid for a full year of training and coaching and offered to help him get more of his money’s worth before time ran out.

He declined and gave me a variety of excuses. But underneath the “Things are crazy right now,” “This was a bad year,” and “I have a bunch of legislative and administrative concerns,” the truth was blaring much louder than his words. He actually said, “I don’t really need to change,” “I’m a talker,” and “I’m good at winging it.”

Tucked in between his rap about how busy he had gotten, he mentioned that he had begun another program concurrent with the one he’d paid me for, and this other program taught presenting, convincing, and persuading skills—a.k.a. the advisor does most of the talking (traditional transaction –oriented sales). He obviously felt more comfortable with this approach.

The training we deliver and advocate at Bachrach & Associates makes it all about them, not you. It’s about asking questions then listening rather than talking. It’s about creating a profound experience for the prospective client rather than persuading and convincing everyone you meet to pay for your services. It’s about leading clients to draw their own conclusions on whether to hire you or not rather than persisting (or even stalking them) until they say yes.

But this fellow had decided he was more suited to the old-school sales model: He was simply more comfortable talking instead of listening. This wasn’t the first time I had heard someone prefer to present rather than ask questions, but thank goodness it doesn’t happen frequently, and the financial services industry is going away from this mentality. Most of the advisors in my programs had the sense to ask themselves, If I were considering hiring a financial services professional, what would appeal to me more: someone who extolled their own virtues and tried to talk me into hiring him or her because they scared the snot out of me or made me feel guilty (negative emotions), or someone who asked a lot of really good questions that helped me think, explore, and discover, then come to a reasonable conclusion about whether working together was a good idea or not (positively inspired me to take action)? Not How do I prefer to deal with clients? but instead How would clients prefer to deal with me?

When you put other people first, you get all the business you’d ever want to get, because that’s what they want. Yet there’s the paradox: You can’t be thinking I’m putting clients first so I can get what I want, because the dominant thought is get what I want. Although you accept this as a fundamental truth of your business—that putting clients first gets you what you want—you have to put that principle out of your mind when you are with clients. Focus only on putting them first and forget the rest. Trust the process, which means letting go of certain old habits that could be holding you back from realizing your true potential and developing new ways of being with people—ways that may feel more comfortable to you.

Yet there can be pitfalls. In my experience, advisors make three common mistakes, which can be avoided easily with a shift in skills and mindset. These mistakes are 1) most advisors talk too much, 2) many don’t bother to listen, and 3) even when they do manage to be quiet and hear what clients have to say, they don’t clearly communicate to the client the connection between their recommendations and what’s in it for the client. How can you remedy these mistakes? Simple.

1. Stop talking so much.

Stop rattling off your credentials, employing manipulation tactics, and jabbering on in the hopes that if you just say the right thing, they’ll buy. It’s simply not true that a sales-chatter method leads to a greater number of clients than a client-centered approach, so let go of the illusion that you can control the outcome of the conversation by doing all the talking. Learn to let the outcome just happen: If they decide to work with you, great. If they decide not to work with you, equally fine.

Instead, concentrate on learning about the person. The objective is not to win him or her over, but rather to determine whether there’s a fit with your business. You don’t take on all comers; you are selective and choose to work only with those people who will help you build a profitable, solid business so you can ultimately enjoy a great quality of life.

2. Listen.

How can you distinguish the best clients for your business? How can you communicate to people that they are important to you? How do you let people know “it’s all about them”? Simply ask questions and then listen to the answers.

This is different from asking manipulative questions to probe for pain and instill fear. The questions we teach advisors to ask in the initial client interview are designed to help the advisor and, more significant, the potential client make some discoveries about what’s most important to them: their core values. And as people respond, the advisor listens not only by hearing the words people speak, but also by being attentive to the experience they have while they talk. We use a tool called a Financial Road Map® to record people’s answers and demonstrate that they’ve been heard.

3. Make the connection between what you can do for your clients and what’s in it for them.

If, after this conversation, you feel there is a good possibility for a working relationship, then offering to work with someone needs to be phrased in such a way that people understand how you will benefit them, not the other way around.

The wrong way: “How would you like us to create a financial plan for you so you can make smart decisions about your money?” (Focuses on what you do and what you think is important to them.)

The right way: “Now that we’ve explored what’s important to you, we can see how I might be of service to you. Your financial plan will be designed to help you so you can spend more time with your family, build the retirement home of your dreams, help your grandchildren with their schooling, and lead a life filled with the happiness, freedom, spiritual development, and sense of balance that you identified are so important to you. Let’s say we create a financial strategy that has this kind of impact on your life, is that the kind of relationship you would like to have with a financial professional?” (Reiterates what they’ve said is important and connects your helping them make smart choices with their money to actualizing what’s really meaningful to them.)

Although all three of these actions clearly put the focus on clients, clearly this is not an altruistic business model. It’s simply that, because of your ambition to have a practice that yields the highest possible income, runs smoothly and efficiently, and serves clients who value your services enough to gladly make referrals to friends, family and peers, you are unwilling to put your desires (for momentary comfort or control) ahead of what’s in the best interest of somebody else and, therefore, the business. So you’re willing to walk away from people who won’t augment your business and welcome any opportunity to meet someone who might be just the client you want. But it’s always all about them.

5. A Smart Script Has a Specific Call to Action

I’m famous for telling people not to reinvent the wheel. There are internal training programs and external resources that can help you develop a smart script. The key is to find a process or system that works for you. Most people have no process, therefore they have no script. The call to action is get yourself a system that works and fits with who you are and how you want to show up in the marketplace. Too many people try to take bits and pieces from a myriad of systems and make them into something for themselves, and that doesn’t work. Choosing and implementing one system as it is designed will produce results. Use the guidelines in this article as a tool for measuring a smart script.

The primary point here is get a system, have a process, and memorize that process. The script is what you say and do to make the process work, and there are plenty of them out there. Those of us who offer such systems are very easy to find. We’re not hiding! We’re writing articles in various publications. We’re speaking and exhibiting at the conferences. Some of your colleagues are already working with us, so ask around.

One final note. Make sure that when you choose a system, the people using that system are achieving the results you want to achieve. Plenty of systems can help you get clients, but you may end up with a business that you don’t want to manage. Stephen Covey says when you pick up one end of a stick, you pick up the other. I once talked to a financial advisor who said, “At my company, our role model does $2 million in production.” I asked, “How many staff people does he have? What’s his overhead? How many hours a week does he work?” The advisor replied, “Oh, he’s a working machine! He’s been in business 20 years and he still works five or six long days a week. He loves it.”

In truth, many advisors who make a lot of money don’t really like the kind of business they’re running. They work too many days and too many hours. They’re running what I call a dumb business. Wouldn’t you rather run a smart business where you make the kind of money you want, work as little as possible, enjoy the kind of lifestyle you want, and set an example for your clients? If so, then before you adopt a system or a process, look at the whole picture and choose the system and the scripts that will take you where you want to go.

4. A Smart Script Has a Clear Agenda

Many advisors think they have to recite the agenda to the client. You know the old high school format: Tell them what you’re going to tell them, tell them, and then tell them what you told them. A smart script does not describe the agenda, it lets you do the agenda.

When you make an initial contact, you should have obtained meaningful information about the prospect from the person who referred them. You can incorporate that information into your smart script. For example, if you know the prospect has four children, you might say something like, “Stan, your friend suggested we get together because there are some concepts in Values-Based Financial Planning™ that could help you provide a better future for your children, Mary, Jenny, Peter, and David. Did I catch you at an okay time?” Notice that I called the prospect by name, made sure it was an okay time, and stated my purpose clearly.

A dumb script often has a very different purpose and agenda: It’s designed to scare people into buying products designed to overcome their fears. For instance, a dumb script might be used to sell life insurance to address the fear of dying prematurely. Or it might be used to sell long-term care insurance to address the fear of not dying prematurely. I was trained by people who perfected those kinds of scripts. They taught mantras like: Dig ’em a hole and throw ’em a rope. Find a need and fill it. Paint them out of the corner you’ve backed them into with your product or service. Break their leg by asking questions that make them feel stupid, and then they’ll know they need you. One system calls it tunneling for pain. Another one of my mentors used to call it being a scab picker: Pick their scab, make it bleed, and offer your product or service as a Band-Aid.

I wouldn’t want to imply that dumb scripts don’t work. A dumb but well-executed script will make sales—but how does that bode for the long-term relationship? How do you think clients feel about having a regular meeting with someone who inflicts pain and makes them feel stupid? How do you think they feel about providing referrals to that person? Even if they’re happy with the products, they typically tend to buy what they need and then run.

At the end of the day, you can motivate people by fear, but most people would prefer to be inspired. A smart script talks about values, goals, and what’s important to the client. It offers to build a bridge to a positive future. A smart script is positive and inspirational, not fear mongering.

Stay tuned for the fifth way to tell a smart script from a dumb one.