Are you ready for the financial planning "value" conversation

One of the most transformational conversations we believe you can have with a client is the "so what" conversation.

In that very first interview, the first engagement with a client when they are about to lay down all their financial paperwork and you are tempted to start copying and documenting the information into your client fact find.....STOP.

Why is any of this important? Why does it matter?

And yes, you actually need to ask the client these questions.

What do you mean they ask, I'm here to consolidate some superannuation.....


Yes, but why does that matter. So what? How is that going to change your life and which aspects of your life will that impact on? And what are the positives and negatives that you can think of for a good outcome and a bad outcome respectively.

And in that dialogue that follows you have engaged the client on what matters most to them. What is important to them and why.

We have had the fortunate pleasure of hearing Simon Wallace from AXA speak over the last two days and he posed the question that "are advisers ready for the value conversation?" When they get the call from the client "you've charged me $x thousand for your service over the last year....I can't see the value"......are advisers ready for that conversation?

If they have engaged the client on what it is that truly matters, if they have sat back from the financial fact find, sat back from the strategy and simply asked...so what? And then they have had the dialogue with the client to deep dive into the answer. And if they have documented that in the advice document and refer back to it, remind them and further they have systemised and industrialised the positive engagement that resonates with the client .......then yes they'll be ready....but they won't have to be, because the clients will not be questioning the value in the first place.