Yes. Use your judgment. If you are fairly certain that an existing client does not and will not meet your Ideal Client Profile, it is okay to not set a Financial Road Map Interview™ with them. In Values-Based Financial Planning™, we strongly recommend that you assess your Existing Client list regularly for those Clients that are costly and plan to replace them with Clients with whom you want to work with. This is the principle behind creating your Ideal Client Profile. Keep the best-of-the-best and let go of the rest. Then, build a practice on purpose that only takes on Ideal Clients. You cannot achieve your goals, actualize your Success Road Map®, and live your Ideal Life by serving non-ideal Clients. However, this process does not happen overnight. You are transitioning your entire practice to one based upon Values-Based Financial Planning™, and that takes time and careful planning. This transition will happen in steps. It sounds like you are dealing with what we term...

The main reason that it’s not happening for you is because you don’t believe it’s a good idea for them to move everything to you. Therefore, you are telegraphing that in your way of being. And, YES, many advisors have their clients agree to move EVERYTHING to them during Commitment to Hire™ and Commitment to Implement™ and the clients actually follow through during the Implementation Meeting™. The question is, “is it better for the client to move everything so one advisor is the orchestra conductor?” And the answer is yes. Why? Consolidate. Coordinate. Simplify.

As her financial advisor where would you recommend she draw the money from to pay you? If she really couldn’t afford to pay you, you would not have offered to be hired. Instead, you would have said, “After reviewing your financial situation I don’t believe you can afford a Financial Advisor, or you can’t afford for me to be your Financial Advisor. My advice for you going forward is…” and you would either refer her to a Do-It-Yourself website / process or to a less expensive Financial Advisor. However, if you have completed her Financial Road Map® and offered to be hired, then you must know the facts about her financial situation. Knowing those facts, you would say something like, “As your Financial Advisor my advice is that you pay your Financial Advisors fee from…” The options are checking account, savings account, money market account, etc. If she is already not following your advice from the very beginning this is not the way to begin a good client / Financial Advisor...

First of all, one of the common experiences of advisors getting started with Values-Based Financial Planning™ and doing Financial Road Maps® is that they discover clients have money elsewhere that could make them Ideal Clients, so do yourself a favor and do not assume you have all their money or even know where all their money is. Have them come to the Financial Road Map Interview™ appointment, with both spouses, and bring all of their financial documents. There is a clear pause between All The Money Conversation™ and Commitment to Hire Conversation™. If you do not want to be hired, do not offer to be hired. Just tell the truth about why you don’t believe you should be their Financial Advisor and give them advice about what do next. It could be a referral to another advisor or guidance to connect with quality Do-It-Yourself resources. Not everyone is supposed to be working with you and not everybody is supposed to be working with a Financial Advisor at all. Please click the...

When you schedule the appointment ask them to bring their checkbook. If they don’t bring it, just have them mail one.

It is. Almost every time you offer to be hired they will ask how much you charge. Just tell them. It tends to unfold very similarly to how it unfolded with Robin and Larry on the DVD in Mastery Series #1.

I am not so concerned about the psychology of the situation. I just think it’s good business to get paid when you get hired. If you are able, with your current licensing and / or registration, to collect a fee during the Commitment to Hire conversation of the Financial Road Map® interview then do that. If not, do whatever works within the parameters of the law / regulators for you. We don’t have “work-around.”

We're not lawyers, so we avoid giving legal advice. My general advice is that your agreement should clearly indicate the amount of the fee and what they get. Your agreement should be signed by the client during Commitment to Hire and everything related to being hired should be completed before Commitment to Implement.

Take a deep breath and relax. It all unfolds one step at a time. And it takes a couple of years to learn and implement the entire Values-Based Financial Planning™ Turn-key Business Model. The best thing I can tell you, at this stage of your learning, is that it is not your job to know everything the experts know, but to make sure everything gets done. You may do nothing more than tell a client, "One of your homework assignments between now and our next Progress Meeting is for you to meet with your homeowners insurance agent to review your policy and be sure that you have the right coverage to meet your needs." You are on a journey to becoming a top 1% Financial Professional in terms of value delivered to your clients, business success, and quality of life. Enjoy the journey!

I appreciate that you are already thinking about being a better Financial Advisor who delivers more value to your clients. Well done! The short answer is that you do the best you can with what you have. Rome wasn't built in a day, as the saying goes. It takes one to two years to build a Deliverables Team of best-in-class Subject Matter Experts who can help you deliver on the full Values-Based Financial Planning™ Value Proposition. Your main objective during the evaluation phase of working with us is to do as many Financial Road Maps® as possible so that some of your existing clients do more business with you and your prospective clients hire you more quickly and do more business with you than they did when you did not use the Financial Road Map®. This produces two results: 1. It generates the money you will need invest in the Committed Advisor Program (CAP). You should have a $30,000 - $50,000 Return On Investment by the time you attend your first Academy in San Diego. 2. You...

I appreciate that you are already thinking about being a better Financial Advisor who delivers more value to your clients. Well done! The short answer is that you do the best you can with what you have. Rome wasn't built in a day, as the saying goes. It takes one to two years to build a Deliverables Team of best-in-class Subject Matter Experts who can help you deliver on the full Values-Based Financial Planning™ Value Proposition. Your main objective during the evaluation phase of working with us is to do as many Financial Road Maps® as possible so that some of your existing clients do more business with you and your prospective clients hire you more quickly and do more business with you than they did when you did not use the Financial Road Map®. This produces two results: 1. It generates the money you will need invest in the Committed Advisor Program (CAP). You should have a $30,000 - $50,000 Return On Investment by the time you attend your first Academy in San Diego. 2. You...

You may choose not to give your existing clients the book. Once they have experienced the benefit of Values-Based Financial Planning™ by working with you they don't really need to read about it. If they want a copy of the book for their library and ask for it, fine. Otherwise, I wouldn't offer it or make a big deal of it.

I can't think of a situation where this would apply.

Yes: $22,000 / year is your fee. Quote it, with confidence.

This is covered when you follow the Commitment to Hire Conversation™ script telling them, among other things, that you will tell them how to allocate their assets so they have the highest probability of achieving their goals when you summarize the for quadrants in the lower left of the Financial Road Map®. No, I would not have a complete list of Deliverables, but you might refer to the Deliverables Team illustration to be able to explain, GENERALLY, what key experts are used to help them get their entire financial house in order.

Ask clarifying and expanding questions in response to their comment and in response to your questions. Go deep. They make talk themselves into working with you. You may also prefer a more direct approach such as: - Are you saying that you believe that I am better advisor who you believe would do a better job of helping you get your entire financial house in order and actualize what's on your Financial Road Map? If the answer is yes, then you might consider giving them a script or some talking points that will help them politely disengage from their existing advisor. It might go something like this, in writing to provide to them to use when they make the call or craft the email to their soon-to-be former advisor: "We appreciate the work that you have done for us in the past. We have come to the point in our life where we have decided to simplify our financial life. As such, we will be consolidating our financial affairs with one advisor so we can take full advantage of all of...

First of all, they don't meet your Ideal Client Profile. Ideal Clients hire you when you invite them to join your Ideal Client Community. So, the real question is, "how long and to what extent do you pursue non-Ideal Clients to try to get them to join your Ideal Client Community?" In the future I suggest that when they say they want to "think it over" that you say, "No problem. I’ll leave you two alone for a few minutes to talk it over.” Come back in five minutes and see what happened. We’ve been teaching this for years, and usually they just want a moment alone to confer that they are on the same page about wanting to move forward with you. As far as following up with these non-Ideal Clients, I wouldn't bother. At the end of the first conversation where they tell you they don't want to hire you, say something like, "I enjoyed meeting you and I'll leave my offer for you to join our client community open for another 2 weeks. Please don't infer from the fact that I will never call...

It's exactly the same. When they ask, "How much does it cost?" Tell them the truth about how you get paid.

Exactly, move on to someone who "gets it."

This particular person sounds like a do-it-yourselfer to me, therefore I suggest you pass on having him as a client and move on to the next person. Do not assume that if you described your value better that this person would have hired you. Keep in mind that you are not trying to convince, persuade, or sell. Most of the time you will know there is a fit, or not, during the Values Conversation™. Then it's a fairly simple matter of completing their Financial Road Map® and determining if they can afford you. If they can afford you and you would like to have them as a client you offer to be hired (Commitment to Hire Conversation™) and answer any questions they have about how much you charge and exactly what you do for them to help them actualize their Financial Road Map®. This is a professional conversation between you, a business person, and them, a prospective client. It is NOT, or should not be, a salesperson trying to "close." If they "get it" they hire you and if they don't get it...