WORK•THAT•MATTERS

Category: Blog

  • Clients Just Don’t Care

    Is it just me, or do clients in general just not really care as much as planners do about their own financial wellbeing? Having put myself out there as a planner, I know how difficult it is to convince clients that it’s important to take an interest in the status of money in their lives, let alone pay for services that guide them through the process. Mulling over the reasons, one could be forgiven for thinking that the primary cause is that clients don’t trust us. Maybe it’s perceived conflict in our business models, you know, fees based on assets gathered / product sold? Could be they think we don’t know what we’re doing? Maybe they think the solutions are all rubbish? My experience has been though, that even if all of these potential barriers are taken away, clients are still hesitant to engage with money in their lives. It follows then that “paying for advice” is a statement to which most clients simply cannot relate.

    It’s hard for me to understand this position, having been trained by the industry since I got my first “Autobank” card when I was a kid. And I’ve toed the party line since. I started saving early. I have retirement annuities, disability cover, medical aid and all the important amenities as testament of the fact that I believe it’s important to be conscious of one’s financial situation.

    This isn’t the same though with other areas in my life. I don’t give equal priority to every aspect in my life. Flip over to the way I “manage the tyres on my car” and it’s a very different picture. I am vaguely aware that it’s important to do things like wheel alignment and rebalancing on one’s tyres every couple thousand kilometres. I know that there are a whole bunch of service providers that could easily help me to manage my car tyres to prolong their life within easy reach of my office or home – at least four, SupaQuick, Tiger Wheel and Tyre, HiQ and Dunlop. I could quite easily pop out to get the full monty every few months, but I don’t. And it’s not because I don’t trust them. I don’t particularly think too hard about their business models and whether or not they’re “conflicted in their services” or not. Don’t care enough to bother, really. And even though their services would likely save me thousands of Rands over the life of owning a car, I still don’t take time out of my life to pop in. The net result is my tyres never last as long as they should. I always have major decay on one side over the other, front versus the back and left versus the right. That’s the story of this one tiny slice of the big pie that is my life.

    Another important reflection, is that I’m not saying I never get to the point where I have to stick my head into a SupaQuick. It’s just that the times I deem important are different to the times the tyre industry deems to be important. They’d like to see me every 10,000 kms. I like to see them, only really, once the wheels have fallen off – excuse the pun. Then I go crashing into the nearest dealer for urgent assistance. Sounds a bit like clients we’re trying to convert to a story of financial planning? We want them to check in with us every few months, they want to check in with us if they’d had a baby, resigned from their job, or are ready to retire.

    I suspect that we need to get used to this. Just because money, planning and financial products are so primary to our existence, doesn’t mean it’s the same for our clients. Instead, we need to be really smart about being there for them when the thread on their tyres becomes exposed. We need to be connected enough with them in times of their indifference that once they really do need us, they know to whom to turn. Those moments need to be so rich in experience, that the shelf “financial planning” is stored on becomes relatively more important than all the other moving parts in a client’s life, notwithstanding rebalancing one’s tyres on their car.

    I also suspect that the more we are able to integrate planning as a service that belongs to the client, rather than one that belongs to the Financial Services Industry, we’ll be on a better footing to move up in their rankings.

  • Everyone Hates a Salesman

    Don’t you hate the way #sales have such a bad rep?

    I know it can be intrusive, but I even give the time of day to the unsolicited prospecting that happens from call centers. At the end of the line is someone doing their job, trying to earn an income to feed their families. I give them the space to hear whether their product might actually be valuable to me, if for no other reason than respect for the person on the other side of the phone.

    It may seem crazy, but I’ve actually built some pretty lasting relationships from these calls. There’s a blind guy that tops up our wine, the cellphone provider that slashed my fees in half and even my short-term insurance company which keeps me on the straight and narrow. All of these delivered more value than the ten minutes it took me to pay some attention to the human on the other side of the phone.

    Obviously I can also empathise because I’m trying as hard as dammit to also “sell” something new into my world. For the first time in my life, I’m bumping my head up against people that don’t have time for anything but their own distracted lives and others that are simply downright disrespectful.

    My perspective on this is that it’s not “sales” if there’s a fair exchange of value. It might be that the value pushes you slightly out of your comfort zone, but we all know that change can be hard. I’m knocking on doors and stalking you on LinkedIn, not because I’m the Wolf of Wall Street coming to fleece you of your savings. Rather it’s because I truly believe I can add value to your life. I’m excited to share it with you. I want the whole world to be better off than they were the moment before having interacted with me.

    On behalf of all the faceless call center agents and door-to-door salesmen out there, I don’t make any apologies for my sales and have every intention of considering you my prospect. Not for me. For you.

  • My Days as a Financial Advisor

    Experience as a Financial Planner is one thing that is highly regarded in our profession. We usually hear from the most successful. I unfortunately am not one of those, but I think I have a story to tell nevertheless.

    I’ve had two attempts in my life at “Financial Planning”. One as a “Financial Consultant”, selling products. And one as a “Financial Planner” selling advice. I was dismal at both.

    The first part of my story began as I emerged, vacuously naive of the world, from varsity, but fired up with conviction around theories like determinism, postmodernism and existentialism. I’d studied really practical stuff, Philosophy and Psychology, and unsurprisingly, was unable to find a J O B.

    My old man was (and is) a Financial Advisor that generously invited me into his independent brokerage to try and make a living. I spent a month on Liberty’s “ITP” course where I learned a whole library of new, indispensably important concepts, like “tax”, “deductions” and “compound interest”. #MindBlown. I’m a half-competent student and swallowed all the new information wholesale, including the use of Blueprint, the jedi-night sales tool that created a shortfall graph in the event of death, disability and retirement. This I was led to believe, coupled with the thick report as an accompaniment, was a sure-fire sale once shown to the client.

    Once again, I was emerging into the world, this time, sharp as an arrow, fired up with (more relevant?) concepts like “liquidity”, “donations” and “estate duty” … ready to bestow upon a needy populace, the benefits of life insurance, RA’s, investments and medical aids deluxe.

    I had a fancy title, a laptop computer, my old man’s 1980 730i BMW (with WildCat free flow exhaust) … all I needed was a sweet looking business card and the clients were sure to come flocking. The business card consumed an inordinate amount of energy, but I finally settled on an outright copy of the contemporary look of one of my dad’s plumber clients … portrait orientation, black background, topped off with my newly minted “BA (Hons)” credentials. BOOM. With all the important stuff out the way, all I needed now was clients.

    My strategy for new clients was to do an introduction via post, enclosing within, a shiny brochure from one of our product providers. Also, pamphlet dropping at the traffic lights for a cheap medical aid, which “everyone needs”. Sending the post and standing at the robots felt like I was earning an honest day’s wage. I was busy doing stuff. Not seeing clients though. My enthusiasm for these efforts slowly petered out as my rate of success amounted to nought.

    Fortunately, I was well diversified in my Marketing efforts, as I was also plotting the conquest of clients from my father that he hadn’t engaged with in ages and that more or less suited my “age profile”. The only stumbling block to success in these engagements was ME.

    Actually meeting with clients turned out to be like the dog that catches the proverbial bus – I’d rather have been standing in the hot sun with a an acre of pamplets to distribute. In hindsight, I realise, I was terrified of clients. I would fumble around the fancy laptop like it were a dead snake. I’d go completely blank when trying to enter data. I’d spill my coffee. I’d forget where I was from one step to another. I could barely finish a “Ben Duffy” (I’m sure some will relate to this) worthy of putting in front of a 6 year old. I felt like a complete fraud trying to talk about fancy financial stuff where I’d barely learned what income tax was, not six weeks prior. Every effort I made to rehearse the things I was taught, was met by blank faces and spiraling eyes which would send me into a blind panic. If the floor could have opened and swallowed me whole, I would’ve been ever grateful.

    TO BE CONTINUED …

  • What do Clients Value?

    What do Clients Value?

    The value you add to your client’s life, as a Financial Advisor, would be clearly understood were you lucky enough to overhear them speaking about you around the braai with buddies. Can you picture them? What might they be saying?

    Eves Dropping on Frank’s* Clients:

    •  “Frank* is such a legend, he always picks the best investments for me. It’s just up, up and up”
    • “Frank* is such a good oke – always sends me an up-to-date calendar and keeps his commission low”
    • “Frank* makes sure I’m insured up the wazoo, really appreciate that”
    • “Frank* knows what’s best – that Financial Plan is really complicated”
    • “Frank* has the nicest offices”
    • “Frank* must be a Nobel Prize-winning actuary! I can’t understand a word that comes out of his mouth”

    [NOTE: *”Frank” is not the advisor’s real name. A false name has been used to protect his real identity. No advisors were harmed in the re-enactment of these quotes.]

    The Clients’ Perspective

    I’m sure these aren’t the things you hope your clients are sharing about you. The reality though is that they speak about your service as they experience it, not how you expect them to. This “experience” is influenced by all the touch points they come across in their relationship with you – your website, business card, data collection process, the coffee chat, advice recommendations, turn-around times, email comms, ongoing reviews, etc, etc. It’s also true that some touch-points are proportionately more important than others – the cleanest bathrooms on the planet will go completely neglected in the braai-chatter if the client feels like the whole show was a charade to sell a policy.

    What Really Counts?

    I have a hunch, that your clients, value the engagement they have with you, the most. More than big documents, spamming them with emails and South American Coffee. They want to feel that we care more about them updating us with events happening in their lives than events happening in ours.

  • #Coronavirus: 6 things for financial planners to consider

    Many financial planners are currently dealing with the fallout from volatile financial markets and managing their clients’ questions and anxieties.
    However, have you considered the impact on your practice once the Coronavirus hits SA?
    1 What if you can’t travel to see clients?
    2 What if your existing clients can’t travel to your offices?
    3 How will you engage with potential clients and source new clients?
    4 What if your staff can’t come into the office?
    5 Will you be able to process client requests?
    6 Will you fall behind on client reviews? And how will you catch up?
    Most of us could probably deal with these challenges for a week or three, but what if the duration is similar to what we’ve seen in China and extends past 3 months? This may materially impact your practice and clients.
    At the same time, globally advisors are struggling to increase their productivity to make up for the increased cost of regulation, static markets, ageing client base, reduced fees, etc. As Winston Churchill said, “Never waste a good crisis”.
    Implementing change is hard – use this is an opportunity to
    1) demonstrate your value proposition to clients (the number 1 challenge facing advisors globally)
    2) show clients that you are able to adapt to using new technology, in a way that benefits them
    3) implement new ways of doing business in your practice that saves you time and money on a permanent basis
    Some areas to consider:
    – pro-actively communicate with your clients to reassure them that you are still looking after their best interests and delivering value to them, and how specifically you will deal with the possible impact of Corona Virus in your practice
    – regular engagement with clients is critical for client satisfaction and retention, so do not stop engaging with clients simply because you can’t meet them face to face. Replace face to face engagement with other forms of client engagement.
    Many South African planners do not engage remotely with clients, but the technology is now readily available to do this professionally. Applications such as Zoom has made a material difference for planners to reduce travel time, and better manage their client meetings. Clients are impressed when you introduce innovation which is engaging and saves them time. Ensure you keep your clients engaged when contacting them remotely by using software such as Asset-Map to focus their attention on the key issues, and not get distracted.
    Use this opportunity to demonstrate your value proposition and introduce new ways of doing business to your clients. This will significantly strengthen your practice into the future.
    We love using our “Heart, Head, Hand” framework to help planners think through the emotional, intellectual and practical aspects of improving their client experience. I would love to hear your comments on the steps you believe practices should take to deal with the impact of the Coronavirus.

     

  • Calorie Counting is for the Birds

    2020, another year, another decade! No doubt, to be accompanied by a new set of resolutions and hopes for a “new me.” Habitually, I’ve had on my list: “get thinner” and “get richer,” among various other incidentals.

    Curious also that I seem to have a blind spot in my ability to select the strategy that is likely to afford me the highest chances of success. Every year, I find myself trying harder to accomplish the very activities at which I had failed so miserably the year before. Was it Albert Einstein that said, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results”? Researchers say it’s unlikely,  but whoever said it, it really speaks straight to my gut.

    My “getting thinner” gameplan feels like a fresh start every year. If I break it down though, it’s the same thing year on year – a tactical plan to consume less than I burn at every serving. Sure, there may be a new app that automates my daily deficit / surplus with a few cellphone snaps of my meals, but it’s still the same thing. Some apps even go a step further by making me feel bad about myself, but I still just can’t keep compliant. 

    As hard as I try, life just seems to throw me curve balls. My life feels just too unpredictable for a programme that requires straight lines and repeat processes – day-after-day, month-after-month. It feels like there are just too many opportunities to be led astray, given the unpredictability of what life throws up at me. Every misstep feels like a failure, a reason to start again. Stack these up over a few weeks and I’ve resigned myself to, “I’ll give it up till next year.” There just don’t seem to be any programmes flexible enough to bottle up the variability that is my life. 

    Money is no different. I’ve been through the calorie counting equivalent, too many times to think about. I’ve had excel spreadsheets, data aggregating apps, magnets on the fridge, you name it, I’ve tried it. My existence knows no boundaries. 

    This gets me thinking about the strategies available to Financial Planners when giving advice to clients. How helpful is it to itemise their budgets to the decimal point, hoping upon hope that they will change their wicked ways? And if clients can’t stick to their budgets for a few months, what impact might their unpredictable behaviour have for all their other goals, projected in infinite detail, over a lifetime? 

    If I can’t stick to a diet, it must follow that my long term commitments are equally vulnerable to my humanly flaws. The effect of our behaviour means that even the BIG numbers, the value of a pension fund, investment contributions, salaries, health bills, are simply hypothetical in the face of an existence, over decades, that is so fluid. 

    I think we have the wrong approach. We have to focus on the behaviour, not the theory, not the detail. Whether we burn 1200 calories or 1500 calories, it doesn’t matter if we’ve lost the will to make any change at all.

    I think Financial Planning often burdens clients with the detail to the extent that it makes their ability to stick to the next step too overwhelming. Instead, they fall off the wagon, and rather than climbing back up, they abandon it altogether, “till next year.” 

    I think we need to move away from issuing a 3000 piece puzzle to achieving financial (and personal) well-being. Rather give me a simple rule of thumb to make better decisions every moment I shove something in my face. There’s too much anxiety hidden in the detail. We have to let go, even if it means introducing an anxiety all of it’s own – not though, for the client, but for the advisor!  

    This has to filter into how we plan for clients. Getting all wound up about the numbers and the infinite detail is nothing but academic if the client is uncontrollably walking in any direction at every opportunity. Let’s make it easy for them – show them their big picture and give clear, simple instructions: “Sugar is bad. Equity is good.” 

    Calorie counting is for the birds. 

     

  • Is Your Financial Advisor Worth the Bucks?

    The last time I went to Sportsman’s Warehouse got me thinking about the role of the advisor, “middle-man,” broker, or intermediary in the purchase of a product, in this case, a pair of takkies for my daughter. It got me thinking about the extent to which they really added value to my life and how much that cost me … if I’m effectively paying the fees, am I getting good value for the service, or would I rather just buy the product without their help? 

    Thinking about it for a moment, I realize that there are stacks of intermediaries between me and a product that I’m after, ranging from the waiter at a restaurant, to the sales guy at Sportsman’s Warehouse, even my Financial Advisor. Where I am explicitly responsible for their fees, I find it easier to set my boundaries in terms of reasonable value received. In cases where their fees are less explicit, I don’t always set adequate expectations in terms of value received and probably find myself metaphorically “out of pocket.” 

    The waiter at a restaurant for example … I feel quite discerning in my ability to quantify the value received and figure out a commensurate reward. If I feel like he/she was simply pitching the most expensive stuff on the menu, points get subtracted from the value equation. Where a waiter has spent time understanding the people at the table, the mood, and expectations and consulted appropriately, points rack up. It’s a bad sign if he’s selling the lobster thermidor when we’re only in for a “quick bite.” I usually get to a place where I feel quite validated in terms of the fee that I pay for the value received. 

    In the Sportsman’s Warehouse example, on the other hand … the fee for the “sales guy” is wrapped up into the total price paid for the shoes. I get incensed thinking about the number of occasions where I have “paid” for their services even though the job of having “sourced and fitted” the shoes was done, completely by my own efforts. “Incensed,” because of the vacuum of  discretion, thanks to the one-size-fits-all, all-in fee, where I have no choice, but to pay. This sense of “incensed” has only emerged since I’ve become aware that I actually do have an expectation for value – at a minimum, helping me find an appropriate size among the store’s merchandising chaos.

    Financial Advice feels similar. I think there is a risk that we don’t sufficiently interrogate the expectations we have of our advisors. As a result we don’t hold them sufficiently accountable and let them get away with the bare basics, representative of a door-to-door salesman. It’s not enough to expect them to be nice. Or friendly. Or just have access to financial products. Or do Financial calculations and complete forms. Or send you monthly newsletters. 

    Is there a fee at all, you might be wondering?  Yes. You paying it, either directly or via the product provider. If you, like me, are discerning about how much you pay your waiter and in return for what, isn’t it time to get discerning about how and why you pay your advisor as well? 

    Here’s what I expect from my advisor, maybe you could too: 

    • Listen to me. Listen and reflect back to me what you hear, so that I can hear myself through your eyes.
    • Help me figure my shit out. I may think it’s together, but it’s not.
    • I’m not interested in your product. I’m interested in my life. 
    • Help me take the next step forward. Don’t overwhelm me with gobbledy-gook, I just need direction.
    • Help me manage the big things. Give me perspective. Give me a dash-board.
    • Connect my life to my money. Paint pictures that make it clear.
    • Take all of me into account. My life is more than just me. I’ve got kids, a wife, a tenant, a mother-in-law, a business partner, a dog. They’re all part of the story.
    • Elevate me. Make me a better version of myself for tomorrow.
    • Don’t try to be fancy. And speak to me in language that I can understand. 

    Not an insignificant list. But in return, I’m willing to pay, not an insignificant fee.

  • Stop Worrying About the Risk, Worry about the Client

    I just cannot believe we STILL think it’s ok to hand our clients a deck of paper, full to the meniscus with fine print and legal mumbo-jumbo!! Are we just lazy to change this? What keeps us from making this better? I suspect it’s something along the lines of “Oh well, everyone else’s looks just as bad.” And because we’re lazy. And because it’ll need a slightly different perspective, other than purely Legal / Compliance / Actuarial. It might even need the perspective of the client …

    I flew to JHB last week, checked in some luggage and got my Boarding Pass printed out, for a change. The document I received was horrible, at least as poor as the stuff we present to our clients  (App forms, Legal Disclaimers, Disclosures, sometimes even the Financial Plan!). We’ll try “paper over” the eye-sore with something like, “Don’t worry about this stuff, it’s just for compliance … just sign here and here.” Equally, the Boarding Pass had the aesthetic appeal of a McDonalds till slip, spat out in the 80’s, on a dot matrix printer. Why BTW, are till slips still so kak as well? There was a scattering of “data” – definitely not what one might construe as pieces of information that would help a traveller go about his duties. For those flying for the first time, I’m sure a Rorschach Chart would produce more reliable interpretations of where to go and what to do. Somewhere between the rows of binary code, innocuous references, acronyms and airport language, I was able to identify the boarding gate and time. What is all the rest of the information for anyway? My guess is it’s markers to help the airport or airline manage it’s arse apart from it’s elbow. Definitely not a document to get a traveller onto an aeroplane with as little fuss as possible. 

    Our documentation is the same. It’s stuff created by people who “mitigate risk” as the primary goal in the relationship with the client. Angry clients present as a terrible inconvenience, best avoided upfront. Complex documents make their lives easy as they are incentivised to detail and pre-empt any / every risk under the sun, regardless of how significant or immaterial it might be. Client Documents (i.e. documents to be used by the client, not the business!) turn into Specification Documents, or Legal Contracts, or the stuff on the insert in a medicine package. I cannot exaggerate even, the massive impact this has on the client experience, where the only “tangible stuff” we’re engaging over (everything else is promises) is unintelligible to anyone other than Stephen Hawking. 

    “Starting with the Risk,” can’t factor in the fact that clients have feelings. “Starting with the Risk,” also can’t factor in that clients are lazy and probably not going to take Legal Counsel to interrogate the T&C’s that we subject them to, simply for being a client! Don’t get me wrong … no one wants angry clients. But throwing a whole bunch of words at a person doesn’t a happy person make

    I’m jumping out my skin here with excitement. Please people … Please can we start viewing the Client as the centerpiece of this relationship. Not the mitigation of our risk. If we can do that, we’ll also find that everything else, even our exposure to risk, will just come together in a rock solid relationship with the client. 

     

     

  • Financial Advisors: It’s Time to Go Overweight HEART

    Rock solid relationships between Financial Planners and their clients hinge on the planner’s ability to meet a client’s needs of the Heart, Head and Hand. Meeting the needs of Head and Hand, for most planners is a piece of old tekkie. We’ve spent our time since the dawn of the industrial era perfecting these processes. What am I talking about, you may ask? At the flick of a button, we can fire off a statement to a single client, a segment of clients, or sommer everyone; we can administer a product by sending off a single instruction; we can calculate the rate of return required to send a space-shuttle to the moon; we can maybe even do electronic signatures. 

    In other words, we’ve spent a lot of time in our businesses building processes, setting up systems and ensuring streamlined activities around the client’s Head and Hand. None of that came for free, it’s been hard work and we’re at a point where we’re probably making improvements (and receiving benefits!!) only at the margin. Every unit of additional improvement can now only be met with a proportionally miniscule improvement in utility for the client or savings for the planner.

    In the plight for increased value for the client and growth for the practice, where can we focus our efforts for a better return on every unit spent? The HEART. What am I talking about, again, you may ask? We’re getting a shitty return for effort poured into driving efficiencies and cost-savings, so let’s quit that. Let’s focus on raising the revenue line by focusing effort on activities related to the client’s HEART. Let’s do a better job of managing our delivery of advice in a way that is empathetic and takes clients forward.

    If that sounds a bit esoteric, let’s do a better job of inviting clients into the conversation. Not that our clients are all currently mute, but rather, whatever small improvements we can make in this space, we can expect disproportionately larger returns. Success in the HEART means actively engaged clients – clients that are actively engaged in how their lives relate to their financial stuff. These guys stay the course, grow their share of wallet with you, bring the whole household on board and talk about you at the dinner table. They open up your emails, bring their spouses to your meetings, and call you out when you get stuff wrong. It also means that they never fall back into the thousand-yard stare or switch into screensaver mode. They don’t defer their decisions to you, neither do they feel too insecure or overwhelmed to challenge a solution or ask a question. They pay fees happily and become a constant source of referrals. Actively engaged clients are dream clients.

    There’s work to be done though. Having had an unfortunate personal medical procedure recently, I noticed in my engagements with the surgeon that the medical fraternity has picked up on this too. The surgeon’s office was what I expected, a regal, throne-like, executive-highchair perched at the head of a rugby-field-sized, ebony table. What was surprising though, was the way the “prop” was used … the surgeon came to join me on the southern end of the endless table-top, peer-to-peer, discussing the procedure as if he were my best buddy. Somehow, he climbed off his pedestal to meet me with my issues of the HEART. Financial Planners need to find their equivalent – the meeting setup, conversation props, digital tools and relevant information to guide a HEART-focused engagement. It’s not “in place” of all the other stuff that drives scale, but “as well” as all that. If not, we’ll be endlessly grinding away, doing the same old stuff, expecting different results. It’s time to do new stuff to get awesome results. 

     

  • How Comprehensive is Your Client Portfolio Summary?

    In this new digital age, it feels a bit like we, as Financial Advisors, think we’re valuable to clients if we can get all of their stuff into a single document. Like a summary of all the things they’ve got. And then we’re awesome. A small thing to keep in mind though … the client already has all that stuff. Given, there’s a bit of admin in searching for the emails, but really, the client owns the source documents already. They get the product supplier’s updated information regularly. They could, one might suppose, print all of this out and staple it all together in a single summary document if they so desired. That’s surely not the value we’re trying to add? Even if we were to put a Total at the bottom of the page, maybe even a few, I don’t think that’s value we want to add to their lives either.

    My take … the role of the Financial Advisor is to “un-gobbledy-gook” all of these documents for the client. That means there’s a job for the advisor, one which AI, “integration” or “data aggregation” cannot perform. There’s a job for the advisor to take the “Policy Summary / Schedule” and turn it into something that is meaningful for the client. 

    Clients don’t speak in policy numbers. They don’t remember wrapper names, product brands and rarely even, the big brand product suppliers. What they do try to remember, are the benefits. But that gets lost fairly quickly and all they’re left with is the bones of the advice carcass from which to build a picture of the future. The bones we tend to leave also give little reminder as to the reasons they should keep course – after all a “sinking fund policy” may just as well be a “raspberry coddiwomple”. If we’re speaking to clients, in  their monthly reports, plans, reviews and feedback sessions, using the names of the “products,” “the suppliers”, and “underlying assets,” etc we’re talking in Slovakian. 

    The real job of the Financial Advisor is to connect the client’s life to the financial stuff that they own – make those threads of understanding clear and obvious. We need to be coming back to clients to make explicit that they have “stuff”  in place (products and their features) to: “send their kids to school”, “make the career change possible”,”get to a point when they can lay off on working a seven day week”, or “know that things are ok if bad things happen”. The emphasis is not a “Universal Whole Life Policy XYZ,” not  the financial product … those are merely the means to an end, the tools Planners use to help clients fulfill their goals.

    Let’s stop focusing on the laundry list of parts that make up the strategy. It’s not an “Allan Gray, Unit Trust, policy number 3764462389” … it’s “Paiges Education Fund.” Let’s, every time we speak, refer to Paige’s Education Fund, the rest is for the Service Center. Clients never need know a policy number. You do. Stop speaking in industry lingo. Speak to your clients in their language. Help turn their Policy Summaries into stories of their lives.