If your connection to your clients is based on their lives, then they will expect you to help them navigate through the financial im- plications of each life transition. Access to their financial resources is the natural outcome of this process. Your access is no longer predi- cated on getting a better return but rather on answering the finan- cial challenges they face. Access is evidence of trust. An intelligent and comprehensive inquiry process is necessary for initiating this level of trust.
Good questions are the key to a better advisory business. Good questions reveal as much about you as the answers reveal about your client. Think of the people you personally trust the most and reflect on the level of discovery they have done in your life. Chances are they have intimate knowledge of your life because they cared enough to ask the right questions and had the time to listen to your answers.
In the psyche of clients, your level of inquiry indicates your level of caring.
Why would any clients want to trust an individual who only in- quired about their account balances? Such inquiry is a poor founda- tion for establishing trust at any level—especially at the level required to maintain long-term relationships and endure turbulent markets. Your future hinges as much on your process of discovery and the care and curiosity that drive that process as it does on your ability to manage and invest the assets entrusted to you. Begin today
to increase the depth and breadth of your inquiry process and wit- ness the transformation it can bring to your client relations—and ul- timately to your business success.
5 / Questions about Life 57
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58
Using the
Life Transitions Survey
How do we measure the degree of separation between what the vendor vends and what the buyer buys? In the minds of most people, it comes down to motivation: Why is the vendor vending, and why am I, as a consumer, buying? This inexact and nebulous measure of moti- vation is often the hinge upon which the door of opportunity swings.
Clients come to professionals for practical reasons, emotional rea- sons, or sometimes both. In matters where clients understand precisely which product they want to fill a specific need, they are likely to take a practical approach and simply compare products and prices. Such pragmatic prospects are likely to be quite sensitive to price point.
On the contrary, those who come to professionals to answer a nagging concern are more sensitive to relational factors than price.
More than desiring the lowest price solution, they want to know that the individual they are working with understands their needs and will provide a solution that is sensitive to the subjective as well as objective nature of the problem. They want a solution that will still the stirring emotion. In other words, these clients come to a financial advisor with a perceived problem hoping to connect with the kind of professional who can empathize with their needs and concerns. For these individ- uals, the specific product solution is a secondary priority.
Because the decision to partner with a financial professional is grounded in emotional concerns, these clients are most likely to partner with the professional who can connect with them at the level
6 / Using the Life Transitions Survey 59 of their specific emotional concerns. With this thought in mind, we need to take an honest look at the client profile tools that are cur- rently being used in the industry and ask how well these instruments communicate this ethos of concern for clients. Do they adequately address emotional as well as rational concerns?
We have seen a trend recently on the part of financial services companies to soften the feel of their profiles and financial surveys.
An example would be a financial profile used by an insurance firm that uses terminology like “dying too soon” to introduce life insur- ance products or “financial concern” and “living a long life” to in- troduce retirement planning. This particular profile displays further emotional awareness by asking clients such questions as how they feel about providing for their children’s education, or what they feel a reasonable rate of inflation would be for making financial calcula- tions for the future. This is an enlightened approach in that it does not automatically assume that the provider knows what the client wants, and that the provider does not perform calculations with numbers she assumes the client will agree with. Other companies have made attempts to link financial and emotional issues by using more visceral language.
Another example is a checklist distributed by a mutual fund com- pany that uses language like, “helping yourself,” “helping your par- ents,” and “helping your children,” and asks questions such as, “What is it that keeps you up at night?” before presenting topics that ad- dress a wide variety of life topics. This particular checklist is on the right path because it offers to send clients nonfinancial information on their areas of concern. A common shortfall of other hybrid instru- ments is that they try to marry emotive language with financial indus- try jargon that most people outside of the industry don’t understand.
Consequently, some of these profiles succeed in making clients feel warm and fuzzy, but they still feel completely confused about the course of action to take.
A good example of a financial tool moving in the right direction is Lutheran Brotherhood’s Life Map™—a financial life planning pro- cess that focuses on clients’ values, goals, and plans for their life. The Life Map process helps clients plan for their lives and legacies and covers all their financial bases in the process. This sort of planning is a relatively easy transition for a company that works in a closed sys- tem and markets its services to members of Lutheran congregations.
Our assessment of scores of financial profile instruments is that, by and large, their use of life planning vernacular is token at best.
The intent of these profiles at times appears to be trying to soften the language in order to get the same hard facts; and that is, “How much do you have and where is it?”