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Articles Speaker: Bill Bachrach, CSP, CPAE
Publication:
The 5 Conversations of the Perfect First Interview
Being highly effective with your initial client interview means you follow the principle of 5/55. In a one-hour meeting, you’re talking for a total of 5 minutes. The remaining 55 minutes are either your prospective clients speaking or silence. This is only possible if almost everything you say is a question, as the term interview implies. The Five Conversations of a Financial Road Map Interview are as follows. 1. Values Conversation (about 6 – 8 min./individual, 15 min./couple) As people talk about what’s important to them, they become emotional, and as you truly listen, you establish trust. You build trust by listening to their story not by telling yours. The magic moments of the values conversation are the discoveries your prospective clients have, which are more important than what you learn. As you facilitate people up their “values staircase,” they articulate, perhaps for the first time, what most inspires them in their lives and, therefore, what will also inspire them to implement their financial plan. 2. Goals Conversation (15 - 20 min.) By following this process you make the experience of goal setting more compelling than ever for your clients or prospective clients. There are four parts to every goal.
When a person declares they want to be financially independent by a specific day in a specific month in a specific year, have a target amount of money, and articulate several words that describe what they are thinking and feeling about achieving that goal it becomes much more emotionally compelling. The more emotionally compelling it is the more likely they are to consistently, over time, take the action to make it happen. This is true for any goal. And your job as a true professional is not to just write plans for people. It’s to make sure the action items the plan prescribes get implemented. Having a plan does not produce results. All the results come from implementation. And people implement when they are inspired to. Do you inspire people? Proceed by following the same formula for their 3 - 5 most significant goals. 3. Current Financial Reality (10 min.) Of course, this presumes that you provided clear instructions of what they should bring to the meeting so they could have a good experience. Documents are to a meeting with a financial professional what teeth are to an appointment with a dentist. Of course, you would bring your teeth with you to your dentist, even you first appointment. Simply tell people what documents to bring with the authority and conviction of the professional you espouse yourself to be and expect people to follow your advice. Review the documents and do some math. You need to know how much cash reserves they have, how much debt, how much insurance, and how much assets are available to apply toward the achievement of their goals. You will also have their tax returns, pension information, expected inheritance, etc. to use when creating the plan IF you choose to offer to be hired and IF they hire you. 4. Commitment to Hire You (2–3 min.) What you’ll get is a comprehensive, specific, written step-by-step plan of action that will tell you exactly what to do in these 4 areas: cash reserves, debt, insurance, and how to allocate your assets so you have the highest probability to achieve your goals. For you ______________, this means that you made smart choices about your money so you can…(recap her values) and for you ___________, this means that you made smart choices about your money so you can… (recap his values). The question on the table is, “Would you like for me to create this written plan for you?” This will be the easiest question for the client or prospective client to answer. If they say no, you’ve either done a poor job during the interview, your approach doesn’t resonate with them, or they don’t really want a financial planner. In my opinion, it doesn’t really matter what the reason is. I recommend that you only do business with people who want to do business with you versus playing the old salesperson’s game of making features and benefits presentations where you try to convince and persuade people they ought to do business with you, handle objections, and close – close - close. Are you a salesperson or a Trusted Advisor? Chances are that they will want to move forward and ask the logical question, “How much does it cost?” Just tell the truth succinctly and directly. If you don’t charge a fee: If you do charge a fee: Sometimes a client will also ask something like, “Are there any other costs for working with you?” Again, just answer the question truthfully and succinctly. Resist the temptation to over answer the questions with a lot of detail about fee and commission schedules. It could sound something like, “It’s a little premature to explain the details of how I get paid when you implement your plan because I don’t know exactly what we will advise you to do. That’s why we create a plan. What I can tell you is that we charge industry standard fees and commissions which I will fully disclose at the implementation meeting when I give you advice. Is that fair?” Transition to Commitment to Implement. 5. Commitment to Implement (2–3 min.) Again, shut up and listen! This is when you truly discover their commitment to implement. It’s good for them and it’s good for you. It’s good for them because if they are not going to implement they won’t get real value from the plan. It’s good for you because you will never again waste your time writing plans for people who don’t implement. Even if you get paid for writing the plan, you know how emotionally unrewarding it is to create plans for people who don’t implement. As you can see, if you’ll ask good questions and listen you can easily conduct a very effective client interview in less than an hour where you establish a high level of trust and earn the right to be hired and get commitment to implement. This is working for thousands of planners who implement Values-Based Financial Planning and it can work for you. Throughout the five conversations, you will succeed if you simply remember who you are: Don’t be a salesperson; be a Trusted Advisor. ©2008 by Bill Bachrach, Bachrach & Associates, Inc. All rights reserved. |
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