I often use the question "Do you have someone walking you through the financial aspects of...?" during my initial conversation with potential clients when they tell me of upcoming changes in their lives. If they answer, "Yes", what is an appropriate response? For example, Betty is telling me she is going to retire this week. I say, "Wow, Betty, do you have someone walking you through the financial aspects of retirement?"

Article ID: 469

Last updated: 20 Nov, 2019

Your question is not part of our process; therefore I have no coaching feedback for you. I suggest you stop asking that question and follow the script you have for conducting Financial Road Map interviews.

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Are there any pre-written scripts or talking points for spouses or family members to use when engaging with potential clients? My wife attends many work functions with high-income people and she is often asked what I do. Should I arm her with similar scripts that I would use in that situation?

How should I handle a Financial Road Map Interview™ with potential clients who are living together but not married and who don’t co-mingle their finances?

It has been just over 12 months since I bought a client base of neglected clients. Over the holidays I have had time to consider where I am at in the context of Values-Based Financial Planning™. The situation is that I am still struggling with the question of who do I offer a Financial Road Map® to. I feel I must offer an appointment to these acquired clients to discuss their current accounts (whatever they may have), I can’t extract any value from them or increased revenue from them otherwise. I cannot ignore them and only offer an appointment to those who want a Financial Road Map® which is what I took from Bill’s response to a question last year. The initial contact with them is effectively a cold call given the neglect they had by the previous adviser, therefore impossible to offer a Financial Road Map® as no trust or relationship is in existence. The apathy and attitude towards an adviser from the majority of these people made it such that my assistant’s success in getting people in to just review what they had was less than anticipated. I could count maybe 10 appointments over 3 months he arranged and at a guess I know of three that cancelled or didn’t show up. In the context of the ‘Ideal Client,’ I am seriously questioning whether I presently have a client base of the wrong type of people to be able to afford the service and to be able to mentally connect to the philosophy required to be an Ideal Client. If this is the case, then where do I get an Ideal Client from??? In speaking with Shane Hatch he mentioned that in his experience the person would probably need to have at least $500K in investible funds to be able to afford the program. And I would tend to agree to an extent. This would rule out every one of the clients I purchased. I am thinking that the process I use may have to change to something as follows: 1. Invite each client in to review what they have and discuss this. This allows them to meet and maybe gain some trust and I can get a feel for them and their position. 2. After reviewing what they have, offer two options, to provide advice on what they have or anything else I pick up during the meeting, or, if I think warranted, offer a further appointment to undertake a Financial Road Map®. In the discussion offering the Financial Road Map® I explain what my business is about and they get a feel for what I do and not the perception of just being an ‘investment’ or ‘insurance’ adviser. The end result is that I get a win either way and re-engage with them. I have some competing interests at play here that is difficult to work around. Firstly I have lost a lot more clients than budgeted for in the first 12 months (in fact a lot had cancelled before sale) and expected income is well below what was purchased. So I am trying to maintain this income or increase it any way possible by any amount to make the loan I have a worthwhile exercise. This is competing with wanting to deal with more engaged clients that want a meaningful advice relationship that is comprehensive in nature; those that have some money and the ability to make changes and can pay for service. Can you give some advice as to how I deal with these people and secondly how I source Ideal Client if this isn't the solution I thought it was?

I get referrals from TD Ameritrade and many times the referring representative at TD wants me to "reach out to" these people over the phone. Can you give me some help with a script to use on the phone? Typically, they really don't have any questions and the phone conversation can be a pitfall of awkwardness. I typically tell them about my discovery process. I would simply like to know how you would approach such calls. Some of these TD referrals have turned into Ideal Clients in the past. I simply want to be more effective with weeding out the Non-Ideal Clients and get more proficient about enticing the Ideal Clients to want to schedule a meeting.

When I attend self-referral functions and events and I am able to go deep and put the offer on the table, some of these people believe that they have everything in order and seem to be very organized and know exactly what they want to do with their life, or they say that their accountant does all that . I believe they would gain benefit from the concepts of Values-Based Financial Planning if they had a chance to understand what Values-Based Financial Planning was and may reconsider their own arrangements. Do you have any coaching that would help move these people to the next step in the process, that is accepting the book and a 20 minute conversation over the phone?

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