Client Values and Goals #4 – Transcript

Episode details

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

clients, goals, people, achieve, advisor, visual, important, conversation, values, fraser, terms, tool, numbers, achievable, talking, modeling, priority, episode, debt, part

SPEAKERS

Fraser Jack, Cate Americano, Michael Topper, Craig Buntain, Tim Henry, Naomi Rosenthal

 

Fraser Jack 

Welcome back to the x y advisor podcast I am Fraser Jack. And today we are up to episode four of our six part series on talking all things around the idea of client goals, values, values based financial planning, and looking at the concept of all the different moving parts to it. Again, I’m joined by Naomi, Naomi

 

Naomi Rosenthal 

and get a Fraser, how are you going?

 

Fraser Jack 

tremendous, thank you for asking. We’re talking all things today around the conversation of you know, looking at goals is prioritizing them working out which ones are achievable, putting some some numbers and some time horizons around them, and then having those conversations with clients. So let’s let’s kick this off. Sure. So tell us about what you do here in the space you’ve got, you know, obviously, once you start getting into the client goals and understanding what they are, obviously, there’s a lot of them that some of achievable some and we sort of mentioned that in the last episode, tell us about tell us about how you start then modeling and looking at goals and working out which ones are going to be the right thing to put the clients to focus on.

 

Naomi Rosenthal 

Yeah, I think once we’ve kind of defined those goals into objectives, then that allows you to really determine the priorities of those. So you’re going to have objectives that are very long term. So at the whole retirement position, you’re going to have the short term objectives, which you can then model out and say, you know, that’s going to be achieved in year X, X or Y, and then the medium term objectives that where you’re trying to set up and establish something that allows them to hit that target within that particular timeframe.

 

Fraser Jack 

So as you were saying that I was, I had this visual that in the last thing, we’re really talking about emotional coldness or real emotional conversation that you know, in that progress meeting where you’re talking about what the goals are. And this is the practical, this is the other side of the coin, right? So we had the emotional conversations. Now let’s look at the practical conversation,

 

Naomi Rosenthal 

exactly. Like we’ve gotten through the, you know, the feeling side of things. And we kind of know what’s important to that person. And we’ve determined where their headspace is at in terms of what they want to achieve. And now it’s like, right now we’re down to the nuts and bolts of it, I can’t work with airy fairy, I have to work with specific numbers. That’s my job. So now we’ve converted all that desire into practical objectives that we can measure on an ongoing basis. And so we can then start doing some real work in terms of putting those into particular scenarios and models.

 

Fraser Jack 

Yeah, so there’s, there’s, and there’s obviously, there’s two, there’s two parts of this is what you can do as the advisor. But then there’s also the practical conversations around what the clients need to do, right, with regard to you know, if I think of the old sets and reps conversation, it’s very nice to say I want to be fit. And that’d be amazing and wonderful and have, you know, have have big, big, big guns. But then the idea of going to the gym and actually doing the sets and reps is the is the practical side of it. So tell us about both that from an advisor point of view, and then how you sort of help your clients with what they need to do.

 

Naomi Rosenthal 

Thanks for that. Yeah, so look, you can lead the horse to water, but you can’t make the horse drink. So everything that we do in terms of putting a fantastic advice document together that’s got all the scenarios and the modeling and all our recommendations as to how they’re going to achieve something is only as good as the paper it’s printed on. From that perspective. It’s then up to the client to tap into and take on board what it is we’re recommending and believe that the path that we’re showing them is the way forward for them. And then you know, that they do want that help and that they’re prepared to put the effort into making that happen. And that’s, you know, this

 

Fraser Jack 

is I think it’s probably easier to show them the practical cycle. You can do the modeling and you can say If you did these things, and you did this, then that then these Gold’s gonna be achievable. And you got to be able to have these great outcomes. But then there’s the motivational side, as you just mentioned, the idea of how do you actually then turn that motivation into an ongoing habit? And I guess that’s a really hard part.

 

Naomi Rosenthal 

Yeah, look, I think when it comes to, you know, savings and budgeting and cash flow management, a lot of the people we work with tend to be reasonable with those things. Already, I have worked with clients with it really bad at it. And you have to really do a lot of hand holding to help them put in place really good habits. And the one thing I say to people is that it is easier to save first. And so that’s one of the strategies that we help clients implement is to really just set aside the things into the short, medium and longer term buckets that they require to to be able to then hit those goals.

 

Fraser Jack 

Yep. Now let’s talk about prioritization. Because sometimes this if we’ve got, you know, that I love that old saying, you can have anything you want, just can’t have everything, which I’m I suffer from, because I want everything from time to time. So tell us about how you help people with prioritization. Yeah, I think, look, I

 

Naomi Rosenthal 

think in some respects, this comes through the modeling. So if we’ve got competing goals, or conflicting goals, we can model out various scenarios and really show people, you know, if scenario a going to achieve everything you want to achieve, or is it going to be scenario B, or perhaps there might be a third scenario that we’re investigating to assist them to really help make that decision around how they’re going to get from point A to point B, and achieve as many of the goals as possible, and then having the conversation with the client to say, look, you know, if we do Model A, that’s going to get you 80% of the way there, if we do Model B, it will get you, you know, 50% of the way there, but model C, have a look at this, if we do these things, you’ll get 100% of the way there. But you might not be able to do every single thing that you that is on your list, what are you, you know, you may have to sacrifice something.

 

Fraser Jack 

And I think this is a really important part of the process, that visual concept of them, they’re then seeing the numbers seeing the modeling going on right now I get it.

 

Naomi Rosenthal 

Yeah, I look some people, most people appreciate something visual to help them understand those numbers, you know, you can put a spreadsheet in front of most people, and they won’t be able to interpret it. So if you can put graphs and you know, charts ahead of them, then they’re much more likely to see it and understand it and then also own it. And that’s really what we want them to do is to own their own stuff and go wow, you know, if we do A, B, C, and D, we’re going to get to where we want to be because the model is helping us to see that.

 

Fraser Jack 

Yeah, I think that’s a really very, very important point. If somebody owns it in their own head, then they’re gonna be much more likely to want to achieve it. Hi, Naomi. Thanks for catching up to us with us today. We’ll We look forward to chatting to you in the next episode, where we start talking about the idea of down the track and keeping clients motivated and on track to achieving their goals.

 

Naomi Rosenthal 

Thanks, Fraser. It’s my pleasure.

 

Fraser Jack 

Welcome back to the conversation. Craig Ballantyne. Again, I Fraser, how you doing today? Very well, very well. Now, we are sort of left off the last episode we were talking about, you know, your discovery meeting and getting let really, really rich and valuable information out of your clients head. And then of course, on to something onto paper you mentioned before that you you houses in a tool. And so tell us about that.

 

Craig Buntain 

Yeah. So I have in the past until a couple of years ago really been doing all this stuff on a whiteboard. That’s become more and more difficult with COVID, obviously. So what I’ve what I’ve turned to is a tool that we’ve been using for quite some time, the astute wheel. Now, they really upped the ante with a what they’ve got is a goals tool, within that piece of software that helps you that brings through the goals that the clients have written down in their initial kind of fact find and it allows you to go through rank the importance of those goals, have the discussions about which of the which are the most important, whether they’re short term, long term, medium term goals, whether any of them conflict with each other, and if so, which is the priority? And then also the staging of the advice we might need to do. So do we need to actually stay the advice we’re going to provide over a number of years?

 

Fraser Jack 

Yep. So sort of a foundation. Talk to me about prioritizing. Because I think this is one thing that, you know, everybody wants to have everything. But it doesn’t quite work that way, when you start introducing numbers, because it’s sort of in the, in the, in the discovery meeting, there’s a lot of emotion that comes out of it. Whereas this sort of this part of the processes is we start to put your, you know, your, your plan a brain over the laying it going, Well, that’s not going to happen. So there’s a little bit of managing expectations, it’s talking about the idea of, you know, those conflicting goals, because we, you know, we want money for everything, what and how do we have those prioritizing conversations with

 

Craig Buntain 

clients? Yeah, well, I tend to, depending on what those goals are, that are in conflict, if it’s stuff like I really want to pay down my house, but I also want to save for my retirement. So you want to pay down your debt? Or do you want to save for your retirement, which is the most important? Or what should you do from a financial point of view? So I quite often tell clients that, you know, there’s potentially two answers to this question once, which is going to help you sleep at night. And two is, which is numerically better, you know, which, if we actually look at it, we put you in the best financial position and, and there is a trade off there that you have to have a conversation with. So it’s really just for me, noting down the client’s thoughts as to what’s the priority with that. I tend to give them the information but let them lead when it comes to that sort of thing. Because I do think that sleep at night test is one of the most important ones if they’re not going to be comfortable with the strategy that you’re providing. It could be the best strategy in the world, but they’re not going to do it.

 

Fraser Jack 

Yep. Exactly. And in the past episode, you mentioned the the idea around compliance for this, because this is a really interesting part. You know, emotionally and obviously, compliance talks about things like best interest, but you know, like, what is in the best interests of somebody emotionally versus what’s in the best interest? Somebody financially? Yes, it’d be an interesting, interesting kind of winds to open up. Because sometimes what makes you rich may not make you happy. What makes you happy may not make you rich? Exactly. Yeah. It’ll be interesting to see how asset treats that one. Yeah, so it’s very easy to quantify in this, in this case, it comes back down to quantifying it, right? Because it’s easy to quantify if you’re financially better off, it’s easy to say that I pay you financially you are better off to do this one thing. But the only way to really work out if you’re happier in this scenario is to find out how happy you are now and then how happy you are after, right? That’s right, doctors, that’s our doctors do what they say how much pain you’re in Now, take this medication, how much pain Are you in?

 

Craig Buntain 

Yeah, that’s right. Yeah. So that’s exactly it. And I think that being able to have kind of a ranking system of the goals that, you know, you’ve got a general rule of thumb with as to how you would, how would you would rank them. And you know, so using a steering wheel, once again, there’s a few tools in there where you can show people the financial benefits of one strategy over another. Now, that gives them the ability to make that informed decision, and see the consequences in numerical terms of their of their actions, from our lifestyle perspective, or their preferences, I suppose for that lifestyle, point of view. And the great thing about using that type of very visual modeling, is they can really quickly see it, it’s not something that you have that conversation about the goals, and then they’re waiting until you present the soI to find out the consequences of, you know, what we could have done for them. You might be able to give them enough numbers to show them that, you know, maybe they have to have to be a little bit softer on some of their lifestyle goals.

 

Fraser Jack 

Yeah, sometimes it’s the the reality check that kicks in. And I do like the idea of using visuals to demonstrate I think image certainly helps with the client understanding point of view.

 

Craig Buntain 

That’s exactly right. Yeah, they and they understand then, what they’re what the consequences are of, of each of their answers to the goals and the prioritization of them.

 

Fraser Jack 

Yeah, and they don’t change. Yeah, exactly. And that probably brings us into the next episode, we’ll be looking at, you know, controlling who can control what and the fact that if you know, a client’s behaviors may affect a lot of this around when we come to tracking towards goals. So we might leave it there for this episode. Craig, thanks for joining us today. I will see you in the next episode. Okay, great. Thanks for Welcome back to our series on goals and values based advice. Kate Americana. Thanks, Fraser. Fantastic to catch up to you again. I really enjoyed the last chat regarding all the different things around the discovery meeting. In this one we’re really talking about you know, keeping that that emotion out with the goal keeping the keeping the goal front and center in in a place where clients can readily see it.

 

Cate Americano 

Yeah, so you can actually incorporate it as part of the you know, haven’t have their goals. So their top five Goals listed, they’ve got a, you can have a matrix, you can have them printed out on a little card so they can see them front and center. And so it’s up to the financial planning practice to decide how they want to incorporate that. I would certainly incorporate it, if you’re doing it. You know, if it’s a statement advice, I’d have it as part of the front of the pack, you know, how they’re writing. And you Yeah, later, you can review that. I know, we’ll chat about that a bit later on Fraser, but I’d be incorporating in that way. You know, you can have other affirmations and things around your goals and stuff like that, but that’s how I really want to kind of go about that process. Yeah, I

 

Fraser Jack 

think it’s thinking back to some of the episodes that we’ve we’ve been on, you mentioned, showing you care quite a lot in those in those conversations we’ve had. And, you know, again, in this situation, now that you’ve got that information, you’ve got that really valuable insight into who this human being is that that that, you know, the deep insight into who they are, it seems to me like it’s a bit of a no brainer, that that should be front and center of the beginning of all of the stuff that you send to them, whether it’s whether you create a visual around it, or whether whether you create something around it, so it’s not just the client can see that, you know, that but all of your staff can can also see that that is what the clients, you know, feeling underneath them.

 

Cate Americano 

Yeah, absolutely. And, and that allows the, the financial planner and all the staff to know, if you they have that in a really great whether it’s a part of their CRM, or in their, you know, their visual, so they can easily see when a client calls in. So that, you know, there’ll be times when clients are going to be in conflict with their values, you know, they, they may be trading it often thinking I need to buy that, or I’m out of alignment. And like, that’s when you can have those really great conversations and link it back into the actual value. So you know, if it was financial freedom or freedom, and suddenly clients want to go and buy their latest car, and you’re like, Oh, I really have a trade off guy here. So let’s talk that through. Let’s see how you’re actually going to feel about that. Why you wanting to do it, you know, just being able to? Yeah, so absolutely, I would say for the business, for the financial planning practice for all the staff, to know those values of the clients and to be able to weave that into their daily conversations when they’re having, you know, or know when when a client’s in and out of alignment with that.

 

Fraser Jack 

Yeah. In the last episode, you spoke a lot about the trade off conversation and prioritization. And I think that’s probably a very easy one to come back to. If somebody says, You know, I want to do this thing, you can sort of think well, is that now, the new priority? Are we getting rid of this other priority? Yeah,

 

Cate Americano 

yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. It’s completely the case. And it works for any age group, you’d like it. I use it on my sons. I think they had a family value and a friend value and I’m like, Whoa, you’re trading up the family for the friends here. It’s ageless.

 

 

Yeah,

 

Fraser Jack 

I love it. You’re using it to get your son your kids into spending more time with him. Love it. So yeah, I guess I guess the the big thing here is, is making sure that that stays front of mind. Yeah, so

 

Cate Americano 

the way I would Well, the way I do it in my coaching is it’s always it’s like they have the pack and they have the scorecard. So, for financial planners, it’s about whether they use the same scorecard more than welcome to use my scorecard and adapted for themselves but I would definitely be including it into the packs that they have and as part of the CRM you’re just going to need to be able to define it a bit more like or I mean yeah you can have maybe it is just having the you know the user defined field with the photog five values an equal sign and tracking Yeah, I know we’ll chat about that later but even having as that changes and moves forward it’s really interesting to see so definitely incorporated into your any of your you know, review preview parks annual progress meeting parks as the absolute heart and centerpiece of you know, whether it’s part of the executive summary that lovely little visual on it. Yeah, is worthwhile

 

Fraser Jack 

fantastic. Now I know we talked about you know, messaging and branding in a much earlier episode but once people then go through this process and now know understand themselves a little bit better why understand their value is do you think that also becomes part of the conversation that they have with you never their friends and family?

 

Cate Americano 

Yeah, absolutely. Just even just from my own experience, Faiza is the amount of people that what I was referred from just doing it once like, yeah, like there was honestly after one Facebook Live. There was Probably about 50 people that rang up to do values based conversation. Because people want that, you know why? Because people want to know about themselves. And if a financial planner know, like, it’s such a point of differentiation, I just say it’s so valuable. And the fun. Yeah, yeah, exactly

 

Fraser Jack 

right. I mean, from my own personal experience, it was actually quite difficult to work out what my values are the first time we did that did the exercises. And I was like, Oh, I think they’re this and that, and the other. And then when you did the exercise, and those other things were important, but they were lower down the priority list. And then and then so it’s quite a difficult process, from a human being point of view, you had to have a lot of emotional flexibility around it. And then but then after you’ve done it, once or even twice, it becomes a little bit like riding a bike, it’s a lot easier the next few times, Yeah, it is. And as you get in alignment with the values actually can evolve, there’s some that will just stay and be part of your DNA and a non negotiable.

 

Cate Americano 

But as you actually achieve them, or you feel that I’m more in alignment, it doesn’t mean that that value is not important to you anymore, it just means that there’s another one that is sort of further up the scale that you want to focus on. And if you’re kind of looking at in terms of that whole muscle is hierarchy of veins, and reaching that, you know, True Potential self actualization, then what you’re wanting to be able to do is get more in alignment with the things that are, you know, that are important to you. And so that it does mean that you can potentially be shifting on on your values on, you know, on an annual basis

 

Fraser Jack 

as you get more in alignment with them. Fantastic. Thank you, Kate, for sharing, we look forward to catching you in the next episode. Welcome back, Tim, to this episode, where we’re talking about all things around looking after housing, the goals and having those metrics and conversations with your client.

 

Tim Henry 

Thank you, Fraser,

 

Fraser Jack 

fantastic to have you along. Now, tell us about your process, when it comes to you know, these goals, we sort of mentioned before that you got some really great stuff when it comes to the clients, you know, underlying or over overarching values towards their health and family and well being and that you’ve collected some goals along the way. But how are you actually keeping those goals front of mind and housing?

 

Tim Henry 

Yeah, I think it’s really important to because at the end of the day, it all comes back to that. So I really feel like, if we stand back from the advice that we give, and we think people are going to engage in this, it’s going to come back to Mr. Really knocking over these big things in life, and feel like I’m building momentum there. So I think we’ve, we always have these at the front of all of our documents. So we, we use a system that can store it pretty well. In fact, it just keeps that list that tally in there. And we’re able to send that link out to the clients to alter, here’s what we’ve got on for our viewers your goals, want to change that they can change that really easily it’s comes back into our system, we can update it, and we can then elaborate on that. And we would include it in the documents that we give them. So if we give them a statement of a virus, we’re gonna have the goals at the front. If we give them a record of advice or topic, I’ll actually not have them in there. But um, because they just want the record of advice to be compliance driven. But we would have it sitting behind because we do a we call it a game changer report, which is our review report that sits in behind that has the goals on the front. So in all our discussions, that’s the starting point,

 

Fraser Jack 

when you say all your discussions, I’m thinking this is not just you, right, this is your staff as well. Yeah, them having access to that understanding what the client deals.

 

Tim Henry 

Yeah, so interestingly, when we or any of our staff go in there, all of this is contained in the document that they send back to us or it’s contained in the system itself, like in their little portal section of it. They don’t have access to it but we do and the way we build all our documents anyway is we build a bit like a production line in a word just in a Word document and everyone in the team puts different parts in so we’re all engaging in the different elements and building the report so that they get to see everything the client is trying to achieve and and how they’re tracking to that

 

Fraser Jack 

Yeah, fantastic and and when you talk about what will sort of get into the the idea of tracking in the next episode, but you mentioned that the housing then then the clients little portal, does it mean their clients can go in and visualize it

 

Tim Henry 

in the the version that we’ve got. So we we use the street wheel for interaction and those reports, we would have to push that out to them. That we’ve also got, we give our clients my prosperity and they can Also articulate their goals in their in pretty neat and cool ways as well. So they definitely can do that in there. And then it’s more that that portal is now it’s it’s something that we have access to. We were in in engage with them in a meeting, but now they don’t have ongoing access to it.

 

Fraser Jack 

Yeah. How important is visuals or in this in this scenario, I

 

Tim Henry 

just think it’s massive. You know, I think what we’ve learned from, and I can probably go on and say when we do the dream catcher program in our business, that’s something that we offer our annual clients. And the whole strength of that is the visualization. So if they can, I think if it again, going back to the emotional side of things, you know, we we’ve talked Fraser about the fact that we both are emotional beings. To be able to really feel something got to be able to visualize it, don’t you? And I think so often, that just having those great visuals coming through, in what we’re putting together for clients, before we get into the numbers. It’s helping just them frame up because they’re busy. Yeah, they might have had a bad few weeks of work, or they’ve got a sick child at home or something. They’ve got other worries on their mind and not seeing they’re walking and going. Yeah, now I perfectly remember how we’ve got all my goals structured one on one I told him I’m setting out to achieve, it’s their opportunity, always think it’s your opportunity to block the world out for an hour or 90 minutes and come into our office. And it’s just about you. And rien gauging with what you were trying to do things change, maybe that’s not as important anymore, maybe you can substitute something else in. So it’s really just their opportunity to add to their blank canvas if you if you like,

 

Fraser Jack 

yeah, and you mentioned the dream catcher program for those people who don’t know what that is want to give a quick explanation of how that works. And

 

Tim Henry 

yeah, so we, we designed something a few years ago, that we would offer it to our existing client base, an invitation to come every year, and ultimately goes through things like your values, what’s important to you? What gives you happiness. And ultimately, the clients produces a six page, small booklet, which just outlines those, those key things, nothing more than articulating that with a few pictures that relate to that, you know, so if they say they want to dream of living in Italy for six months, the booklet just has few pictures of Italy in that that statement, and for them to articulate it and stand by it and have that delivered back to them. You would think also what I’ve had someone, an advisor, say this to somebody, they said, why would someone be interested in doing getting their back because they already know that, but it’s the power of the visual. And that’s the power of the fact that they put it in writing.

 

Fraser Jack 

Yep. And it’s I think it’s also the power that they can show their friend if you get them to their first episode. Yeah, branding. Yeah.

 

Tim Henry 

Well, that’s right. Because again, it just reinforces back to their branding. What do we want people to think of when they think of us? We’re helping people do the things that are going to make them happy? Because at the end of the day, we remember these big things. We don’t remember the small little hurdles that we had to clear to get there.

 

Fraser Jack 

Yep. Fantastic. I love helping people do the things that make them happy. Let’s leave it there on this episode. In the next episode, we’ll come back episode number five. And we’ll have a chat about a year modifying and tracking those goals along the way. Cool. Welcome back, Michael. Thanks very much. How you doing? Fraser? I’m very good. Thank you. Thank you for asking. Um, in this episode, we are getting stuck into the idea of keeping goals front and center for clients. What are you saying?

 

Michael Topper 

Yes, I think if you’re going to be serious about providing God’s best advice, then that needs to be your approach. They’re really important. Financial Planning can be quite complex. And they can be quite a lot of strategies that a client just can’t get their head around. But what they can understand is, I’ve got a list of 10 goals, these are the things I want to achieve this is when I want to achieve them. And this is how I’m tracking. And, and I’ll believe you because I had three last year that we’ve achieved already. And so I’ve ticked those off. And so now I’m pretty sure that you as my advisor can help me achieve those other goals. So very, very important. And an easy way to show the value that you provide to clients by helping them with the goals and helping them achieve them, helping them tick them off. And I think if you do that you’re going to have a pretty happy client that’s not going anywhere.

 

Fraser Jack 

Absolutely. Now, you mentioned the idea of having some goals that are achievable. I think this is a really important part. Let’s Let’s dig into this. When you’re talking to your client about In the setting a few goals, it’s actually quite, it’s great to have a few, that, let’s use the term low hanging fruit. But it’s the conversation around saying, well, that actually a few that we can get a few early runs on the board. Exactly, yeah. And it could be something as simple as debt restructuring.

 

Michael Topper 

So let’s look at your debt looks like it’s an a mess, you’ve got some pretty expensive debt, like personal loans and credit cards, you’ve got quite a lot of equity, let’s wrap that up, get you into new debt, that’s a lot cheaper, and let’s free up some money we can do something else with. And so one, you’ve knocked over debt pretty quickly, you’ve restructured the debt, hopefully, they don’t run the credit card up again. So they might need some help around that. And, you know, let’s take that money that you saving, all that cash flow that you have improved, and let’s go and do something else, like buy cars go overseas, put money into super, and so on.

 

Fraser Jack 

Yep. So So having having a few things that you can tick off the list, I think is really important. And bringing that back to some sort of an emotional thing is decluttering feeling better, you know, like knowing where you’re up to understanding rather than, rather than the the restructuring term or the the technical term trying to get trying to get that into their their gold around the idea of some sort of an emotional aspect, that that takes place, when you do tidy stuff up.

 

Michael Topper 

Exactly, and then they can see the value that you provide pretty quickly. Now, you know, in, in, I guess, financial planning terms, there’s stuff that they can do themselves. But there’s plenty that they can’t do, and they need help with. And so it’s to make sure that you can help him achieve those goals. Yet,

 

Fraser Jack 

he mentioned the idea of 10. Now, I love this number, because it’s one, that’s a nice round number, but two, it also gives people you know, goals throughout time, you know, obviously short term, you know, getting a few done now focus on some short term stuff, as well as, as well as understanding that, you know, you can spend some time doing creating these habits that are going to benefit you for the longer term goal as well, just understanding. But I also think it’s something that as you mentioned, if you’re hitting short term goals, your trust in the, in the concept of being able to hit the long term goals increases.

 

Michael Topper 

Exactly. And the research shows that the more emotionally you connected to clients, and the more goals that they can help you kick, the better it is. And the deeper the relationship and the longer the relationship is. And as those levels of trust have built, they are more likely to refer you. So you know, we’re going back to episode one on how do you get new clients? Well, if you’ve got a bunch of good clients, and you’ve got some goals that are achievable, and some that are, you know, almost that they thought were out of reach, but you show them that they’re actually possible and you help them achieve them, the level of trust goes up exponentially. And their loyalty to you as an advisor goes up, and you become more referral, because they’re happy to refer doesn’t mean they’re going to go out there shaking trees for you. But it’s when people get asked questions, they’ll then be more likely to refer

 

Fraser Jack 

and, and talk to me about the concept of visually being able to, you know, see the goal. You know, how’s from the on the, from the advisors point of view that they can be focused on the goal, because they can see it, the clock, the advisor can also be focused on the guard because they can see it as well.

 

Michael Topper 

Yes, I think there’s two aspects to that. The first one is having a tool that you can open up on a screen with the client and say, here are the goals that you articulated. Let’s go through each one now and turn it into a SMART goal. Let’s see where we are, what kind of data we want to aim for, how much money is required, and how you’re going to achieve those and make each goal really robust. And then have it very visual where you’ve got the goal on the one side, whether it’s high, medium or low priority, and when it’s going to happen in a priority order. And then having a little timeline or a almost like traffic lights in red is we haven’t started on this yet, to Amber, we kind of getting going to green, we’re on our way to you know dark green, we’ve achieved it or we’re really on track to get there. And having that as a visual tool that you’re going to work on with the client. And then being able to press a button that generates a report that you give to the client. And here’s here’s a one pager of all your goals and what they are and the order of priority. And they can take them away with them. So that’s a valuable document for you as the advisor it’s really valuable to the client as well. And you know, one of the things we try and do in our software is enable the adviser to do everything once. So once you’ve got the goals sorted out, that information can flow into the scoping tool, it can go into the soI, you can go into the letter of engagement, and as you do each step and you only do it once and the informations there and it’s captured, and it can go into those other tools and on an annual basis. So you can call it up again. And it’s live where you lifted last year, and have a discussion with a client and update things and give them a new report. So very, very valuable tool and make it visual. Now, some clients might want to go beyond that and do like a dream board and do that kind of stuff. So I don’t know if some advisors get into that or not. But certainly having a list and making it a nice visual tool is really valuable.

 

Fraser Jack 

Yeah, I also think it’s really valuable for not just the advisors, but everybody in the office. So you know, obviously support staff play a big part in the conversations with clients, especially if they’re calling in or they’re having interactions with them. I think it’s also really important that you staff understand what are the motivations and goals and dreams and hopes and aspirations of the clients and be able to visually see them?

 

Michael Topper 

Yeah, wouldn’t that be cool that I don’t know if it’s politically correct to have Friday night drinks, but it’d be nice if you didn’t let you have your whole team together Friday night drinks, and have a number of people in the group say, you know, I met this week with these three clients. And these are the seven goals that kick between them, and make it a bit of a celebration as well.

 

Fraser Jack 

Yeah, absolutely. And I also want, it also brings into another concept that’s been I’ve seen a lot lately, which is, you know, advisors, not siloing their clients just as an individual client, but also saying, okay, we’re going to host we’re going to host an event and invite all these clients that have a similar goal. In fact, in my debate, as you mentioned, that says travel overseas or something, we might, we might put something on where we’ve got somebody who’s talking about the 10 Best Places to travel or visit in the world and have an event like that and actually bring clients together.

 

Michael Topper 

Yeah, so I know an advisor that used to do that quite often. And he had in the same office blocked that he was had a really good travel agent, and the travel agent used to come and do those kinds of presentations for them, because it resulted in business for them. But they could also have some case studies of of that as well. And you know, something like a five minute financial health check as well, if you’re going to run, say, a event for 50 of the accountants clients. If you get all 50 of those clients to fit in a five minute health check, you then find common issues and you can put that up on the screen and go, we surveyed 50 of you, these are the things that you’re concerned about. And these are the three things that you’re most concerned about. let’s delve into that. Let’s look at some goals that some people have set to achieve what was highlighted in those five minute health checks. And here’s some actual real people that that achieve those think it is really, really helpful.

 

Fraser Jack 

Fantastic. Some great ideas. Thank you, Michael for coming along to this episode. We’ll catch you in the next episode when we’re talking about tracking towards and progressing golf. Fantastic. See you then.