Financial planning can be hard to describe, but people love it when they experience it. Unfortunately, it requires time-consuming data gathering before an advisor can really show their planning expertise. So how can you speed things up and give fast, knowledgeable answers that solve a prospective client’s financial concerns—plus illustrate your know-how—at the very start of the advisor/client relationship?
On this Elementality, Reese and Carl explain how using Elements as an assessment tool allows you to swiftly gauge a person’s financial status. People come to an advisor with financial questions. By using the Elements scorecard, you can provide quick, insightful answers to their financial worries.
Podcast Transcript
Carl Richards:
This is the confusion we have. Like, we think people want financial plans. Nobody does. I’ve never… I’ve actually never, and I went back and sort of thought carefully about this, ’cause I made this claim and somebody challenged me on it and I was like, “I’ll go back and look and sort of think carefully.” Nobody’s ever asked me for a financial plan. In 25 years, I’ve never been asked for a financial plan. Certainly I’ve never been asked for a wealth management plan or “Can you build me a family office?” Like none of those things, we think, matter. What I have been asked over and over is financial questions. They don’t need a financial plan, they need answers. They need a financial answer, and we get confused by that.
Abby Morton:
Hey, it’s Abby. Looking for a way to demonstrate your full value and get more clients, Elements is here to help. In fact, we’re so confident we can help, we’ll guarantee it. That’s right starting today, if you sign up with Elements and don’t get a new client in the first 90 days, we’ll refund your money. Don’t wait. Act today. Go to getelements.com/demo. Can’t wait to hear from you. Welcome to Elementality. Each week, Reese and Carl, share their philosophy about financial planning as they explore the emotional and functional jobs that need to be done. With the focus on the Elements financial monitoring system, Elementality, will show you how to deliver a modern client-planning experience and help you revolutionize how to grow your business. Enjoy.
[music]
Reese Harper:
Hello everybody. Your host, Reese Harper, here with, Carl Richards. I think that’s who you are. You’re famous [laughter] Can’t believe you’re here in studio. Today’s topic is kind of a capstone event. We’ve covered almost all of the way.
Carl Richards:
Yep.
Reese Harper:
But our final question, our final topic is probably one that I know you have… You’re super passionate about. You’ve been covering for, more than a decade on this, this idea of what does… At the fundamental level, what does a client or a prospect really want from a financial professional? What are they looking for? What’s the thing that really we should be focused on? And I think we’ll call this segment “Engage at the Level of the Question” or “The Question”. It’s something like that. Why or talk to me about this.
Carl Richards:
The simple answer to your question is that they want answers. Right? I mean, we, nobody wakes up in the morning and this is the confusion we have. We think people want financial plans. Nobody does. I’ve never… I’ve actually never, and I went back and sort of thought carefully about this, ’cause I made this claim and somebody challenged me on it, and I was like, “I’ll go back and look and sort of think carefully.” Nobody’s ever asked me for a financial plan. In 25 years, I’ve never been asked for a financial plan. Certainly I’ve never been asked for a wealth management plan, or “Can you build me a family office?” Like none of those things, we think, matter. What I have been asked over and over is financial questions. They don’t need a financial plan, they need answers.
Carl Richards:
They need a financial answer, and we get confused by that. And so being able to engage at the level of the question has always been a challenge because to give them an answer normally requires like I just have a simple question, “Hey, should I refinance from a 15 year to… From a 30 year to a 15 year?” The answer always has been, it depends. I need 24 months of brokerage statements and two years of tax returns in your oldest child’s DNA to even start to give you an answer. So the ability to engage at the level of the questions is super powerful piece to me, and it’s built into the design of Elements.
Reese Harper:
Early in my RIA, I really struggled with this idea because when I would… I was speaking at the Yankee Dental Convention in Boston. You never heard of that?
Carl Richards:
No. [laughter] No.
Reese Harper:
It’s a great show.
Carl Richards:
It reminds me of the Librarian Convention in Vegas.
Reese Harper:
It’s at the Boston Convention Center. It’s a big event and I was speaking, but there’s like 200 people in the room and I had a Q&A session and it got a little hairy after a while, because these are some tough questions. Dentists are not high-financial IQ on average there, they tend to be more artists, least the ones I was really attracting. And I think the ones that typically hire financial services providers tend to be. But there was a bunch of oral surgeons and orthodontists who, in order to be in this class, like of dentists, you have to like grind out your education and kind of be smarter than everyone in the room. You think you’re at least smarter than… You’re like a 50 to one type of person. So they would start answering like really tough… Asking really tough questions about their own situation that they had been clearly struggling with. They’re very intelligent people and it takes them two or three minutes to get their question out.
Reese Harper:
And I left half the time for Q&A, I just remember getting done with that and I did a good job answering what I could, and I just couldn’t help but feel like… I’m like that “If I just could see their data and if I could just see some KPIs from Elements. And then… ” Because I had this… I was running Elements in my practice… Through early stage, Elements were just financial vital signs on a spreadsheet. But I could answer questions from these vital signs really easily, but it was hard to get… I couldn’t get an audience member to fill it out.
Reese Harper:
I had this dream like, “One day I’m gonna be able to just put a code up here on the screen and everyone’s gonna fill out their scorecards, while I’m in the presentation. Then I can answer the question at the Q&A at the end much more efficiently.” And I think that was kind of the genesis. It was like, “I’ve gotta be able to answer questions faster and more insightfully.” They think the answer… They think they should be asking this question, and really the the right question for them right now at the sequence that they’re in is this other question, and I only know that if I see their scorecard. I only know that if I see their data, I know they’re answering/asking the wrong question. If I can see their information, maybe they’re answering/asking the right question.
Reese Harper:
Of course, the right answer is usually the questions I’m gonna ask, you don’t want to answer a different question. But this kinda brings me to my point is that consumers in my mind have two questions, they think about. One question is a specific question, and the other one is the question of, “What should I be doing next” or “Am I okay?” Sometimes they’ll say, “Am I okay? Am I doing okay? Do you think I’m doing okay?” Really what they’re asking is, “What next thing should I be doing?” Because if they’re not doing something, they assume they should be, because no one assumes that they should be doing nothing. [laughter] So the question in their mind is always like, “Whatever I should be doing now, I see everyone else, they’re doing stuff and I don’t know, investing, they’re all buying houses and doing all this cool stuff. What should I be doing? Am I okay?”
Reese Harper:
They’re really asking, “What next thing should I do given my situation?” Even if their question sounds more like, “Am I okay?” It’s really actually, “What’s next?” The second question they’ll ask is a specific question like, “Should I do this?” And it’s because they’re being presented with an obvious thing that’s causing them some turmoil and grief. And that’s usually when you hear from people, they’ll call you in and go, “I have this question.” But even when they don’t have a specific question, they always have the what’s next question. And if you’re the person that can always bring just the next thing up, the what’s next, if you can just always bring the what’s next up…
Carl Richards:
You’re just servicing the next action.
Reese Harper:
And servicing like, hey, the next action, the next thing, the next thing that’s coming up. You’re just like… Now you’re like some kind of AI robot. Like, “How are you always knowing the next thing I should be working on?” It feels so supportive. I promise you the next thing that they wanna do is not a meeting.
Carl Richards:
You’re right. [chuckle]
Reese Harper:
0:08:04.8 S1: And the next thing they want… Don’t want… What they don’t want is, “Hey, I’m just checking in. I want you to… I want you to know we’re here and we… ”
Carl Richards:
If anything changes, let us know.
Reese Harper:
If anything changes, let us know.
Carl Richards:
Yep.
Reese Harper:
If you said, “Hey, I was just reviewing your stuff today and I wanted to check in and ask you what’s on your mind, is there anything I can help you with?” That’s a good question to help them stimulate either the, “No, I’m fine, but feel free to tell me what’s next.” Or, “Yeah, I have a specific question.” But it’s always gonna be one of those two. It’s gonna be one of those two. And I just think that that really affected the design of Elements in that I knew in one place I needed to be able to see everything and not just a net worth statement. I needed to see a net worth statement and a cash flow summary and a set of values and purpose and into one little visual that I could say, “Ask me anything and I can give you an answer.” I guess that’s why it… We ended up where we’re at. It all started with just lots of Q&A that I couldn’t answer efficiently or effectively. And like you pointed out, I think that’s what the consumer ultimately wants is quick answers to their specific question, what’s the top of mind or have you tell them what they should be doing next.
Carl Richards:
Have you either answer their question or surface the right question with the answer.
Reese Harper:
Yes.
Carl Richards:
And what’s interesting to me too is this idea that you can allow people to have that experience before they’re a client.
Reese Harper:
Ah, yes.
Carl Richards:
We don’t get a chance like, “Oh, come to yoga class for free. You get one class for free. Come, here’s your free trial. Here’s a taster at Ben and Jerry’s.” There’s no way to experience… And I think this is one of the challenges of real financial planners is like, “I don’t know how to tell you what I do. Trust me. I can be trusted. I’m confident. I’m a fiduciary.” But if instead, we can give them the experience of the process of planning by having a question and getting it answered.
Reese Harper:
Guys, I’m telling you that’s the way the world’s working now.
Carl Richards:
Yep.
Reese Harper:
I’m, for those of you who know me, occasionally I… There’s three things that kind of get me to relax. Watching a great TV show, exercising or skiing or doing something outdoors, mountain bike, whatever. Or playing a solid round of either Redhead Redemption, God of War PS Five. I’m a PS Five guy, Sony guy, not an Xbox guy. And PS 5 this year just switched their studio to a trial mode of almost all of their like…
Carl Richards:
Wow.
Reese Harper:
Console games. So you have now like an hour to two hours to play anything, even an $80 game, $120 game, you can play it for up to an hour or two. Some go up to five hours of game time before you have to make the transaction decision. I never thought I’d see the day where full-console games with, very, very large budgets are just going, let’s get five hours away and just see they’ll… We think more people will buy at the end of five hours of free than they will buy if we put a price at the beginning. I mean, it’s just like the, the whole world’s moving that direction. I wish mountain bikes and skis would, do they?
Carl Richards:
Well I was just thinking the last time I went to the Volvo dealership with my wife, they’re like, “Oh, take it home for the weekend. Take it.” I’m like, “Bro, I’m not taking this car home for the weekend, because I know exactly what’s gonna happen. It is never gonna come back.”
Reese Harper:
That’s it.
Carl Richards:
Take it home for the weekend. Like give me an… Give me the… Financial planning is really hard to describe. It’s really cool to experience.
Reese Harper:
Yes.
Carl Richards:
We’ve never had a way to allow people to experience.
Reese Harper:
Answer one of question, just answer a question. Let them ask a question. Fill out a scorecard and let me give you some thoughts. I promise your sales conversion rate is gonna improve. It’s not because I’ve somehow done something special. It’s just the way humans are wired. Let them have a taste of your empathy, of your care, of your experience, of your specialization. They don’t know how a cathartic it is to get an answer to a question that’s thorough, that’s personalized, that’s comprehensive.
Carl Richards:
Well, and end that turns out is good enough.
Reese Harper:
It’s close enough to what they wanted.
Carl Richards:
It doesn’t have to be the perfect answer with 24 months of statements and two years of tax return.
Reese Harper:
They actually appreciate it more if it’s just fast.
Carl Richards:
And it turns out it’s reality-based.
Reese Harper:
Nice.
Reese Harper:
I mean this idea that’s you could be more precise if you have a bunch of, Well, guess what, things change anyway, we all know that.” So an agile, good-enough response, you get to experience that as a perspective client. I don’t… I know of no better way to market the services of financial planner than to allow them to quickly engage at the level of the question.
Carl Richards:
Amen, brother.
Reese Harper:
Cheers.
Abby Morton:
Next time on Elementality.
Carl Richards:
An open loop is much bigger than the event itself. Right?
Reese Harper:
Exactly.
Carl Richards:
It’s just an open loop suddenly gives you lack of confidence in every other part of the system, because you know there’s one failure point.
Reese Harper:
Yes.
Carl Richards:
And it’s smaller than, “Oh, dude, that’s not a big thing, don’t worry about it.” Like, “Where’s your bank account? Who cares?”
Reese Harper:
Yes.
Carl Richards:
No, actually that little failure point now spreads to the whole system because I’m like, “Oh, no, the whole system’s not airtight. The loop’s not closed.”
Reese Harper:
Totally.
Carl Richards:
It’s incredibly important.
Reese Harper:
That’s philosophy number one.
Abby Morton:
To find out more about Elements, go to get Elements.com/demo. Elementality’s executive producers are Reese Harper and Carl Richards mentality is produced by Tad Henderson and directed by Abby Morton. Have a good one.