Host of Elementality, Jordan Haines, CFP®, reveals 6 secrets to create amazing client deliverables, and how the best deliverables can be used to prospect new clients. Ranging from making data gathering easier for clients to enabling more “A-HA!” moments, killer client deliverables can be a game changer in your business.
Transcript
Jordan Haines:
About two months ago. We had some family friends come visit us up here in the outskirts of Boise, Idaho. In our house for three days, we had seven kids under the age of seven years old. [00:01:00] And we don’t have a gnarly sized house, but it was packed and it was loud and it was chaotic. And we had such a fun time. And when it came time for them to go, we were excited and ready for them to leave. They packed up in their minivan. And they departed on a Sunday afternoon to drive home.
About 10 minutes after they left.
I got a phone call from my cousin. And he said, Hey Jordan, our car stopped working as we were accelerating to get onto the freeway. Can you come pick up our girls and we’re going to get a tow truck and go from there. So I drive down, we pick them up. While we’re on the side of the on-ramp to the freeway. Uh, I was talking to him about what they were going to do.
Where are they going to stay? Where are they going to go? Where are we going to have to keep them at our house one more night? It was a Sunday. So not many mechanics were open and essentially what we, what needed to happen very first was we needed to find a tow truck. We need to find someone that was willing to tow the car. To a mechanic of our choice. In that [00:02:00] situation, we didn’t much care for Google reviews, Yelp reviews.
Um, we didn’t reach out to our family members, friends, colleagues, neighbors. We didn’t do really much research besides who can get to us soon. And who is willing to tell us today for an affordable price. That’s all we look for. Our pain was so acute. We did not seek to increase certainty at all. Or to do find someone that we trusted the most. We just needed someone to solve our pain in that moment. That store number one, I want to share another story about a car. I have this really old 2003 Toyota Corolla.
We’ve had it since we got married. My wife, uh, got this, I think when she first entered college. And we’ve just had it forever. It’s reliable, it’s old. It does the work that we need to, and I work from home, so I don’t leave the house very often. But when I do and drive, uh, a couple of hours to Utah to meet with friends and family and colleagues, Um, I’ll take this car with me once about every three [00:03:00] months, we’ll do a big trip. Now. About three months ago, I noticed that the AC was not working on my car, which is kind of a downside when you’re driving through the desert at a hundred degree degree weather. But you can put the windows down and just sweat it out for a couple hours.
Drink a lot of water. We’ll be okay. Now. You would think that I would have replaced my AC or got it fixed by this point, but you would be mistaken. I have not. I’ve not replaced my AC. Do you know why the pain is not acute enough? I don’t drive the car enough. And when I do drive, it might be to the gym, which is five to 10 minutes away.
And I’m fine. Sweating, sweating in that situation. Um, so what have I done for the last couple of months? Well, we moved to this area about two years ago. Um, and I haven’t had the need to find a mechanic that I trust yet. So. I’m talking to neighbors, I’m talking to friends, talking to family, I’m doing research on Google, trying to find who is the most reliable, because when I’m searching for someone that I can go to again and again and again, that I know I can trust. And until I find that person, I probably won’t take my [00:04:00] car in to get the AC fixed because it’s not an acute pain. So, what is the difference between these two situations? I think the primary difference is that in situation, number one, the pain was so strong.
We did not need to have level of trust or certainty in that person. We were hiring. Whereas in situation number two, I was really needing to have a lot of certainty before I made the decision to hire a mechanic. I think many financial advisors operate under a situation. Number one, if you go to most financial advisors and you say what motivates people to take action?
What motivates someone to hire you as a financial advisor? The answers you will normally get that. I get frequently when I ask this question is, oh, well, there’s an acute pain. There’s something that’s happening in their life. There’s a transition. They got an inheritance. Maybe it’s emotional. Maybe it’s functional.
Maybe it’s social, whatever it is, it tends to be some. Outside external stimulus. That’s pushing them to work with a financial advisor. Well, what does that mean to the financial advisor? Well, they kind of just need to be there. They don’t need to sell. They don’t need [00:05:00] to increase certainty or trust and what they do now.
Obviously there’s some level of this for many of you and I’m not discounting. What many advisors, financial advisors do. But I think that many of us are used to working in this environment where the car is broken down. It’s not turning on. We just need someone to solve our pain. I don’t think most people are like that.
I actually think most clients are like, those who are driving around and their AC is not working, but the car works fine. And they have a couple of months to spare to figure this out and they really want to understand they want to trust. They want to have certainty in what that person is selling.
Now, what does that mean for us?
Financial advisors who sell the business of giving financial advice to people? It means that we need to help people. Become certain that we are trustful, that our firm is trustful and that our service, what we actually do for them is going to solve the problem that they actually have in their life. And when they are buying that, when they are making a [00:06:00] decision to purchase that or to hire us as their financial advisor. We need to do everything that we can. To increase their certainty, that they will achieve the outcome that they want. And one of the best ways that we can do this. Is through awesome, simple. Easy to access deliverables that we can put in their hands.
Now, I don’t love the word deliverables, but it explains something really important. Can I give the client something that they can walk away from that is valuable to them. To help them understand what I do. I think that’s the point of this. So what I want to do is spend the rest of this time going through what I will call the six elements. Have a good deliverable. So let’s do it. Number one. The first element of a good deliverable. Is that it as easy for clients to provide information? Let me repeat that. Number one. It’s easy for clients to provide information, to then receive that deliverable.
If it’s hard for clients [00:07:00] to give you information, especially when you are prospecting, it is going to be really difficult for them to want to take any action. So the webinar we had was with list of planets, many of, you know, to make a list of plan work. You need a tax return. On one hand, I can say client, um, on your latest tax return. I want you to go to line 32.
I want you to give me the value that’s in that line. I’m going to take that information. I’m going to plug it into the software so that you can have a report. That’s difficult. I’m asking the client to open their tax return. To scroll down to line 32 to make note of that information I needed to figure out is this actually the right line that I need to give to them.
And you’ve double checked my notes. That is not an easy experience for them to provide information. But what holistic plan has done that I think has really made them very successful in the marketplace is all they want is a tax return. That’s it. Is that easy for clients? Provide information. Sure. I know where my 20, 24 or 2023 tax return is.
I’ll go grab that. I’ll give it to you adviser. There you go. It’s easy to, to do another example of this. I’m going to be a little bit bias here, but elements. [00:08:00] We’re not requesting original source documentation, but we just need basic round hypothetical numbers sometimes. Right. We just need the basic information.
Give me three zeros at the end of that number. I’m okay with that because we need just enough. Good enough. That we can provide meaningful value to you. So that is number one. Step number one is it needs to be easy for clients to provide information. I don’t remember to element number two is it needs to be easy for advisors to create the deliverable.
So on one hand, we need to have it really easy for clients to give us the information we need. And on the other hand, it needs to be easy for me, the financial advisor to create. So even if you are creating in-house deliverables in. Uh, Google or wherever it is, or if you’re going to go outside to a different source and get it there. It needs to be easy for you to create, especially when you’re prospecting. I have worked with enough. Uh, financial advisors to know that if it’s not easy, it’s going to be very difficult for us to be consistent. Unless you’re like me.
It’s probably not your, uh, greatest desire [00:09:00] to sell and prospect all the time. You probably would like to do it when it’s needed and make it as easy as possible for you to do that. Frankly, if you have to create, let’s take a one-page plan. For example, if you would like to create a one-page plan that you can deliver to someone in the prospecting environment.
Well, traditionally to create a one page plan, I need all the data that I would need for a traditional financial plan. And according to Michael Kitsis, it takes. Four hours, 10 hours to create a financial plan. Well, I’m gonna go through all that time as a financial advisor to then summarize, synthesize, distill and say, this is the most important thing to you. That’s too much work.
It’s going to be very difficult for me to want to do that. So the second element of a good deliverable is that it’s easy for you. The financial advisor to create. And the third element, let’s transition to that. The third element and probably one of my most favorite in addition to the next one. Is the deliverable needs to generate good conversations. With people. This one’s overlooked a lot.
I think many financial advisors, at least in my experience, working with elements, granted as a tech company and people put their advisors or their clients on here, I can see where they’re coming [00:10:00] from with this. But when it comes to a deliverable, what I want it to do is to generate. A really awesome conversation with a client or a prospect.
You name it. What that means then is I’m not looking for something that I can just give to them. And I don’t have to be involved. I think too many financial advisors look at technology and they say, oh, especially client facing technology. They say, Man. I’m so excited. I don’t have to be involved in this relationship.
I don’t have to push sin. I don’t have to do these things. I don’t even have to touch it. It’s all on the client. I think that’s a worthy aspiration. The problem with that though, is your financial or your, your clients are here to hire a human. Financial advisor, not a robot. Not a PDF. They want to work with a human financial advisor. The aha moment, which I’ll mention in a second, that they are going to get from looking at a deliverable is going to come directly as a result of your observations around a deliverable.
So. Element number three is that it needs to generate good conversations with people. Number four. [00:11:00] Increase aha moments. Your deliverable needs to increase aha moments. What do I mean by that? Just think when was the last time you had a revelation? That’s something finally clicked that it made sense. It’s like all the pieces fell into place and you’re like, oh, that’s it. That’s what we want to produce when we have these.
So what does that mean with deliverables? I think elements is a really good example. Many of you have heard me talk about this in the past, but financial orientation as its own standalone value, I think is incredibly useful in a situation like this. What do I mean by financial orientation? Being oriented to your situation is understanding and having an organized situation, but also understanding how it all works.
So. You might say that like, step one is getting organized. It’s getting all the data in one place. It’s presenting it in an interesting way. But then step two is actually understanding what impact that has on your life. So, for example, in elements we have this liquid term element is my favorite one LT.
I talk about it with so many people. Sometimes I call it my emotional element. When someone is not feeling well, they’re having [00:12:00] anxiety or stress. It is most often due to that element.
Well liquid term. Is really simple ratio. It’s their total liquid assets divided by how much they spend. And that’s going to include after tax investments, brokerage, because I know a lot of your people are going to ask me after this. So. When I present to the, to the client, I could say, this is how much you have in liquid assets.
Here’s the total value. You have a hundred thousand dollars in liquid assets. Now, all I have to do is take their spending and make that the denominator. And what does that tell me? Well, it tells a story. Let’s say the client has a hundred thousand dollars in liquid assets and the client also spends $50,000 a year. What does that mean?
That means they have a two liquid term score. Let’s change that. What if they spend 150,000 a year and they have a hundred liquid term or liquid assets? What that means. Is that their liquid term is less than one. That means they have less than a year of living on their liquid assets. So what I did there is I effectively. Um, oriented that person to what liquid assets means to them.
That’s an aha moment for a lot of people. Oh, that’s what that [00:13:00] means. That’s why I feel so concerned. If your deliverables do not increase the number of aha moments you can have with clients and prospects, more importantly with prospects. It’s going to be very difficult for these to be valuable to people.
If they’re not supporting that idea, that’s going to be tough. And that ties directly into our last element. Number three, which is to generate good conversations. If I can’t in that conversation, reliably increase the number of aha moments. It’s not worth it for me. I’m not gonna be able to use this thing and prospecting.
Other than that, it’s just a paperweight. It’s not doing anything for people. So that’s why it’s so important that these deliverables increase the number of aha moments that you are reliably. Orienting someone of their financial situation. Let me give you one more example of this, I think is valuable. Um, let’s take holistic plan.
For example, one of the things I like the most about their tool is one of the main products. I think our first thing was they have this summary report that you upload a tax return. You get the summary document out and it just gives you a high level summary of your tax information. And then they provide some observations below [00:14:00] where basically the observations are, Hey, this is what this might mean.
Here’s other things that you might want to think about. This is a perfect opportunity specifically with someone taxes to increase an aha moment for a client to walk away and say, oh, that makes sense. So when you think about. The deliverables that you’re creating or that you want to use, think how does this increase my aha moments? All right.
Element number five. Second to last. Is the deliverable easy for clients to access? What do I mean there? I mean that when the client walks away, do they have ready access for it? Or am I going to require them to log into something, click three buttons and finally get there. In the world of technology. The amount of clicks or scrolls that someone has to take is. Analyzed so much.
We want to reduce the energy that someone has to take to get access to something that’s valuable. Think about. Time to value, right? I want to shorten the time to value. So [00:15:00] if I’m not available to talk to them and they want to access the thing, I want to make it as easy as possible. Now this one’s pretty obvious.
Sometimes it says it has nothing to do with the deliverable itself and more to do with the, how you give this to them. Is it in a conversation? Is that an email? Do you send it in the mail? Right. And I think this one is highly dependent on the type of people that you work with. I’ve had clients in the past that if I send them an email, it will get lost.
If I give them a phone call, they will not answer. If I send it in the mail, they have a spot on their desk, specifically for financial stuff from me. They will be able to answer that and do a good job there. And so understanding how your clients can access to things is going to be probably the most important thing. When you’re thinking about this, a fifth element. And the last and final element of a good deliverable is going to be that it’s easy for clients to talk about. This is what you want.
This is the outcome at the end of it. You want them to have an ah-ha moment to be oriented to their situation, but you also want them to be able to walk away. We’ll be able to talk to their spouse, their partner. A family member, a friend, a neighbor, a [00:16:00] coworker, and say, Hey, I got this thing. This is what it means to me. Is it easy for them to talk about now? I think sometimes we look at this and say, well, there’s a foreign definition on this thing. There’s a word that my clients, I just don’t think they’ll fully understand.
That’s fine. Frankly, if you look at the elements, scorecard, which many of you have, um, who aren’t super familiar with this system might have seen something like LT or QT or TT or something like that, where it says total term. I don’t know what that means. I don’t think most rational human beings would understand what that means and remember what that means.
But let me tell you what, what they will understand is how you oriented them. To their situation. I’ve had so many clients in the past. Again, I’m going to use helmets as an example. That’s obvious because. It’s an elements podcast. I’ve had a client in the past that has had his liquid term measured for years. We’ve had so many conversations about this.
He’s a very financially astute person. He has a high financial IQ. And when we had a conversation a few years ago, I remember he called me and he said, Hey, can we schedule a time? I want to talk [00:17:00] to you about that, that, that orange, that orange square, the one where we talk about, uh, All the CA like the checking and the, in the, in the savings.
That’s exactly how he said it, but he had no idea what it meant, but he knew that like, We were going to have that conversation and it was going to relate to how he makes purchasing decisions. And that was gonna be valuable to him. I can imagine him going to a spouse or a coworker at the dental office and say, Hey, I, you know, I met with my advisor this weekend and they looked at this little orange score and that tells me like how many years I can live off my liquid assets or my cash in my checking account in their words.
Right. Is it easy for clients to talk about if it’s not easy for a client to talk about, it’s not worth giving to them. I think that should be the final standard that what you create. Good deliverable. So to summarize, let’s go through them real quickly. Rapid fire. The six elements of a good deliverable.
Number one, is it easy for clients to provide data? Number two, is it easy for advisors to create number three? Does it generate good conversation? Number four, does it increase? [00:18:00] Aha. Moments number five. Is it easy for clients to access and number six, is it easy for clients to talk about? These are the elements of a good deliverable, and if you have the right deliverables, I’m not just saying elements is the only place or holistic plan is the only place where you can create good deliverables.
I’m not saying that you can’t create deliverables yourself, but when you do create them or when you are researching what deliverables you are going to give to clients, And maybe even more importantly, to prospects to increase certainty, to provide value, to help them take action. You need to make sure that they are meeting these six standards. So, let me know what you think about this.
Please tell me if you disagree. I would love to have a conversation with you. Um, feel free to DM me on LinkedIn or comment because I’m sure I’ll see a post this there. Otherwise, I look forward to talk to you guys next week.