Jordan discusses a transformative shift in his sales approach, focusing on the power of the “desired future state” question in prospect conversations. He shares how asking prospects to envision their success three years into the future helps uncover both intangible long-term goals and specific tangible needs, allowing for more meaningful and client-centered financial planning discussions.

Transcript

Jordan Haines:

Hello friends, and welcome to another episode of Ality. My name is Jordan Haynes, financial vitals specialist here at Elements and your host for today’s show. I’m excited to share some really fun things coming up, but for this week, there’s something on my mind that I cannot get off and I have to share it with you all.

Um, as many of you know, I read the four conversations. Um, almost two or three months ago, and it has been incredibly impactful. In fact, we are shifting and refocusing our sales process here at Dentist Advisors so that rather than me being the expert, the person that ultimately closes the sale, I’m more of a facilitator, someone who qualifies and helps people get in because as many of you’re well aware, um, I might consider myself an expert on creating relevant and modern client journeys, but I am no expert on dental specific financial guidance.

That’s. Reserved for our financial advisors. So bringing them into the process has been a very interesting and very fun thing to explore. I’ve had quite a few opportunities recently that have been fantastic. Let me go through the qualifying framework, ’cause I, I know I’ve talked about this in the past, but there’s one in particular that has been really impactful to me.

So I wanna share a few examples of people that I’ve asked this to even just this week and, um, we’ll go through it. So the qualifying framework on the four conversations is this. Um, number one is context. You wanna understand what the client’s situation is right now. Number two, you wanna understand the desired future state.

What is the client’s desired future outcome? I’ll talk more about that. That’s what I wanna focus on today. Who are the decision makers and what is their decision making process is the third one? Timeframe is the fourth, and I have had some shaping around this recently in the four conversations.

Framework. Time timeframe basically is just when do you wanna make a decision by. And then finally budget, uh, what’s allocated, how have you thought about pricing and things like that? Lemme spend a little bit talking about timeframe because that’s something more interesting recently that I’ve had a little bit more mature of a thought process around.

And that is this, um, I. Most often when people are ready to hire a financial advisor, if it’s not something that is incredibly acute, meaning that there is a time constraint that needs to, that something needs to happen by, and usually those happen to be with functional things, whether it’s investing something, saving on taxes before the end of the year, setting up a retirement plan for the business, whatever it is, those tend to come with their own.

Attached timeframes. But for most people that are looking for a holistic or a comprehensive financial planner or advisor, there’s not necessarily a timeframe attached to that. But what’s been really helpful is for me to reformat that question a little bit and focus less on the timeframe when they want to make a decision by and focus more on how acute is the problem or the presenting situation that they have.

So, lemme tell you how I’ve shaped this recently, and I’m gonna go back to desired future state. This has been the biggest game changer for me in our sales process here at Dentist Advisors. So let me walk through this just a little bit. So, the desired future state is a way to get an understanding for where your clients are going to be or where this prospect is going to be.

Three years from now. So the exact question that he poses in this book is this. Imagine we are having this conversation three years from today. You are happy. What’s happened to make you so happy? I’ve adjusted that slightly. I. And it’s been helpful for me. You can take this how you want, but I say something along the lines of, Hey, hey.

Imagine, um, we go grab a cup of coffee in three years and we never work together, but you’re very happy about the progress that you’ve made. What’s happened to make you so happy about your progress? And what I’m trying to get at is what are the things that they want to see? Now, this three year timeframe kind of, um, lives in two worlds.

It allows you to pull out the more long term, durable, consistent chronic things. I. That are on their mind, the things like, I want to feel better about money, or I want to have goals or make progress towards retirement, whatever that is. But then it’s also short enough that it allows ’em to find things that are most important to them right now.

So let me walk through, I actually had a prospect call with someone yesterday. I’m, I’m recording this the day before. It’s released on Wednesday. So this would’ve been Tuesday this week for those of you listening. Um, I had a prospect call with a woman. She had been referred to us by Center of Influence, um, who we have a really good relationship with.

And, um, her husband was not there. She’s the dentist. He’s not, but he planned on being there and had a meeting. And so we went through this question. Um, I got a lot of context, learned a lot about her, you know, she bought her practice about a year ago. Um, finally feeling a little bit like she’s got her feet underneath her feeling good about things.

And we got to this question and I asked her that, you know, imagine I come out, um, to Minnesota where she lived and we went and grabbed a cup of coffee. Uh, we never worked together. But you’re very happy about the progress you made over the last three years. What has to happen to make you so happy? And here’s what she said immediately.

Um, and, and she didn’t use these words exactly, but she knew exactly what she meant, uh, with this, which was this. Um, I want to know what my goals are. Like I don’t necessarily know what to work towards right now. And so I’m, I’m hoping that I can get some clarity and, and if it’s in a perfect world in three years, I would know.

What my goals are, what I’m actually working towards, and then I would actually know if I’m making progress towards those things. Those are kinda the big things. And I said, okay. Are there any more like tangible things, things that are like very specific in your mind? She said, yeah. You know, there’s three things I actually wrote them down.

Number one is that, um, we want to build a bigger house. We live in, I think it was like 1200 square feet. Our family’s growing. We make enough money to afford a bigger house. We want to live in a bigger house. We also want to have a plan to pay down student loans. If I could wave a magic wand in three years, I would love to have my student loans paid off.

I think she had about 150,000. And then. Number three was I would like to have our estate plan in place. We have our two young kids. We want to have those done. So she gave me essentially an intangible, more long-term, um, hard to articulate type of goal. I want to have my objectives in place and I want to be making progress towards those.

And then she gave me very tangible, very specific, um, jobs to be done, like buying a house. Paying down student loans, creating an estate plan. For every person that I’ve asked this question to, this three year question, I’ve gotten some variation of this, where I’m getting a set of intangible, more long-term, durable, chronic things that need to be done.

And I. The more specific things. And what’s been really fun for me recently is I have been able to take this and because I am just qualifying, I’m facilitating the conversation and getting them in front of one of our finance planning experts, our advisors. I can now take this set and go to the advisor and say, look, these are the two things or the three things that they mentioned to me from this desired future state.

And. A number. I think a number of months ago we went through the four Ps of, of client perceived value, and in there I was a huge advocate for naming specific problems. I’ve moved a little bit away from that because. I want to reflect this back to them in their own words. What are the words that they are using to define their problem and define the outcome that they’re working towards.

And rather than say, you know, this is random acts of finance, or this is financial puberty, or, or, um, this is, uh, disorganization, whatever, uh, specific symptoms or, uh, diseases or things that I had come up with in the past, this allows me to put it in their words. So that we can respond to that and say, this is exactly how we’re going to get to where you want to be in three years.

Now let me add one variation to this question, and I’ve actually found this really helpful. I like how Blair ends, poses this question. You know, we’re having this conversation in three years. I’m, I’m essentially trying to separate the solution out from the problem to be done or the job to be done, right?

So I’m not the solution. We’re not even talking about what you did. We’re just talking about how you feel or what outcomes have happened. Another way I’ve, uh, frame this to people, I said, if you could wave a magic wand and in three years we’re having this question, you’ve waved your magic wand and you’re feeling really good about where you’re at, what would you do with that magic wand?

What would you fix or what would you change? Um, and that, that is another way of separating the solution out because the solution is the magic wand, right? It’s just the perfect thing is in place right away. I found that, um, separating the solution from the problem allows us to get a little bit more clear on what the actual problem, where job we done is.

So take that with a grain of salt. Hopefully that’s helpful for some of you. Um, we’re gonna get into a couple of these ideas here next in the coming weeks. Um, I’ll record a few solo episodes, but I am gonna have quite a few people on. I just finished an interview last week. I have another one this week.

And we’re gonna have some really fun conversations that I think you all like both that friends. Hope to see you next week. Lemme know if you have any questions.