Back in the day, I did a lot of work in the “lifestyle financial planning” space.
Anyone who spent time around MLC will know what I’m talking about. It was about making the conversation about something more than just investment returns, or which shares were best but…
…it had a big flaw in it.
It worked like this:
- Advisers and clients have a great conversation all about what really matters to them. Energy and motivation are high.
- The end of the meeting approaches. There’s a list of things the clients want but…. not all of them the adviser can deliver (hmmm. Which investment options provide the best returns on personal career fulfillment?)
- Meeting ends with the adviser committing to send a proposal through to the client. It arrives a few days later and… well…mixed results, usually.
When you can close your appointment by providing clients with clear next steps, then you’re taking advantage of the momentum the discussion provides.
This isn’t about some outdated “Always Be Closing” strategy designed to exert pressure on clients to make snap decisions.
It’s about helping clients to make a decision to move forward, not to procrastinate, and start down a path to making the right financial choices sooner rather than later.
The big flaw in lifestyle financial planning was it didn’t have built into the key switch needed to make first appointments work as they should.
The switch from diagnostics to declarative, leading clients, helping them define the key issues (and why they need solving). your solutions (and the benefit), before explaining simply how your business works, and what it all costs.
If your first appointment process has done its job, there will never be a better or clearer headspace to move forward than they are at that moment.
