In this episode of Elementality Jordan Haines, CFP® is joined by Abby Morton, CFP®, Director of Advisor Success at Elements. They discuss an important aspect of a new client’s and a prospect’s initial journey with a financial advisor: time to value.
Listening to this conversation you’ll learn that while taking a long time (i.e. 45 days) to deliver a comprehensive financial plan may be necessary, there are other value points before this that advisors can lean into. You’ll learn from Abby and Jordan the types of activities you can focus on, how to identify the right activities, and the importance of getting feedback to make sure you’re focusing on the right things.
Transcript
Abby Morton: I think that’s similar to a client coming to you. I’m motivated to get this financial help that I need, right? I have this financial challenge or maybe it’s on the positive side, this inheritance I’ve come into and I’m motivated to get the help that I need. And then we make them wait for 45 days before they get the help that they need.
Jordan Haines: Welcome to Ella mentality. I’m Jordan Hanes, financial vitals expert here at elements and your host for today’s show today, I invited Abby Morton on many of Abby and have heard her voice for the last few years. If you’re a longtime listener. Abby and I worked together and we’re good friends and we wanted to talk about something that’s really important to us. Time to value.
Now, what is time to value? We’ll talk about that in our conversation, what that actually means and how advisors can apply that to their business. But the focus of this conversation is all around the initial interaction advisors have with their clients and the prospects. Historically, we focus solely on the quote unquote comprehensive financial plan. That being the first [00:01:00] valuable experience, the delivery of that being the first valuable experience our clients receive.
Abby and I spent some time today to talk about alternate things, not necessarily saying that we should scrap the financial plan altogether, but introducing certain valuable activities or exercises with clients and prospects before we deliver the full, comprehensive financial plan, we talk about the downstream effects of that and how it can truly affect your business.
So if you’re interested in improving your prospecting and your new client onboarding, this is a great conversation for you. Welcome to elementality everyone. I have Abby Morton here. The, the one and the only Abby Morton.
It’s been a while since the people have heard your voice, Abby, say hi to everyone.
Abby Morton: Yeah. It’s good to be back. I’m excited to, uh, make a guest appearance now. I guess I’m a guest now a little more than I was before, but excited to be back. Hopefully I’ll be around here and there. I’ll pop in and out. Let’s keep things interesting. That’s what we do
over here at elementality, right?
Jordan Haines: Yeah. Yeah. I have [00:02:00] something in particular I want to talk about today. But Abby and I talk a lot. We actually talked before this for a long time about random things like backpacking in the mountains and new cars and lots of fun things. Abby has lots of really awesome insights. And over the next few months, as you hear Abby and I talk, you’ll know that.
We’re very different in how we look at things and how we view things. So it’d be really fun to get different insights around topics that are important to financial advisors today, though, Abby, I want to talk about time to value. Now, time to value is something that in my experience, no advisors have ever heard about.
I’m curious if you could, in your own words, what do you think about when you hear time to value?
Abby Morton: I actually think I heard the phrase originally from you, right? We were talking about elements customers, right? And what is their time to value, right? When does an elements customer. Have the aha moment or like first realize Hey, this is going to be great. And the [00:03:00] more I’ve looked into it and the more I’ve studied, I’ve realized it’s actually a very common term in the tech world. Companies talk about it often about measuring time to value so that you can understand, at what point in your kind of maybe onboarding process is somebody, receiving the value that they basically paid for. And so I love, I love thinking about the concept and I think we talk about it often as to. When are we providing value to our customers? But I love this idea that you can flip it around on how can advisors think about when are they providing values to their clients, right? When is that big aha moment for their clients? When did they like first see the true value that they’re like able to provide, and, and the shorter. The person, the quicker you can do that for someone, I think the happier they are going to be with you ultimately, right?
Jordan Haines: Yeah, recognizing value. I think it’s super important. A couple examples come to mind for me. One that I find helpful for advisors, uh, learning about this for the first time is to think, think about the last software that you purchased or that you signed up for. [00:04:00] You subscribe to, you got on that software, you played around with it.
At what point. Did you feel like, Oh, that was cool. Or that aha moment that Abby’s talking about. That was really valuable to me. I can give an example of one for me. Those of you who listened to this frequently, a couple of weeks ago, Jeff Morgan and I talked about AI tools and one of the tools that he referenced was perplexity.
ai now he has mentioned to me many times to use perplexity. And I, most of the time ignore him. And this conversation, I said, Oh, yeah. That sounds really interesting. I want to try it out. So I went and signed up for perplexity and I had it for maybe 20 minutes and 20 minutes. And I was like, what can I search for here?
And I searched for some random, I have young kids. So I have three kids under the age of six, which means we’re basically a cesspool of disease in my house. So everyone is always sick. And at that time, I think our son was sick and I searched some home remedy for something. And perplexity AI gave me a very detailed list with references.
And I remember that experience thinking, Oh, that was really cool. Like [00:05:00] I really liked that. And that, that time. So I signed the dotted line and then about 10, 15 minutes later, I received value from perplexity. So that time to value is about 10 to 15 minutes. It’s the time after which I sign up for a service that I receive some sort of value.
And I think what we can do as advisors is completely forget about that. So I, I want to share, I want to get kind of, you’ve worked with clients. I’ve worked with clients. We’ve worked with clients in the same firm, Abby. So let me share a few stats and I want to get your reaction to this. So a couple of years ago, Michael Kitsis did a research.
I think it’s the title of it is how advisors spend their time. Those of you who haven’t read this, it’s, it’s a long one, but it’s really meaningful if you go to his website and we’ll reference it in the show notes.
Abby Morton: Which one’s not long?
Jordan Haines: Yeah,
Abby Morton: they all long?
Jordan Haines: long? Yes. This one though, I really, really love and I reference it a lot.
And there’s a couple of things that I think are really valuable here. Number one, a lot of advisors that do are in the business of giving financial advice will do a financial plan. The average [00:06:00] time that he references in that document is it takes about 10 hours to create a financial plan for a client.
So that’s stat number one stat number two for new clients. The median, right? So the median, uh, number of days to deliver a financial plan, which often is that first value that many advisors adhere to is about 42 days. Right. So it takes 42 days over a month for a client by which they sign their client agreement and then receive their financial plan to receive value.
Now, I, I know, a lot of advisors and how they onboard clients. I know that in that space of time, not much is happening besides give me, give me, give me, give me, give me. And so 42 days is the average time to value or the median time to value for advisors. What do you think about that, Abby?
Abby Morton: mean, I think it’s, it’s funny because have you told me that three years ago, four years ago when I was still [00:07:00] working at Dentist Advisors, I think it would have been like, maybe that’s a little high, like we probably do it at Dentist Advisors, in 20 days, 30 days, like maybe if someone is really responsive and really gives us all the stuff as soon as we ask for it, but you’re right, give, give, give.
Like I need all of these things before I can like really move forward and set up a plan. Maybe the best was like 20 days, right? But maybe there definitely is a lot. So I guess I understand that. And I think. It makes a lot of sense that it is that long. And now fast forward to today, when we talk a lot about the vital signs and the scorecard and how elements can help you give advice quickly, within five minutes, you can read the scorecard and start instantly providing value. 42 days just feels like an eternity. I mean, think of like I go into the doc. I did last week. I went into the eye doctor because I’m like, I really want to try contacts again. I’m sick of wearing glasses. I want to try contacts. I’ve tried them in the past though. And they really bug my eyes. And so I, I just, I’m [00:08:00] excited and I’m motivated and I’m going to like work through the pain of trying the contacts because I’m not motivated now.
Right. And I think that’s similar to a client coming to you. I’m motivated to get this financial help that I need, right? I have this financial challenge or maybe it’s on the positive side, this inheritance I’ve come into and I’m motivated to get the help that I need. And then we make them wait for 45 days before they get the help that they need.
If the eye doctor would have been like, okay, come back in two weeks and we’ll do another evaluation, I would have been really mad. But like I walked out that day with some trial contacts and I’m going right now. Right. And I am excited that I’m already getting to try this thing that I wanted. I think put that in the place of a client, like I’m motivated and I’m excited about financial health and like getting this problem figured out. I know he needs a lot of my information, but I just want to know if I’m on the right path or if I’m going down the right direction. Like maybe I don’t need every. penny, right? Maybe I don’t need every detail down, but can I just know that we at least have something [00:09:00] like that? We’re going down the right path, right?
Like I just need something like, and I think that’s what you’re referring to Jordan is this time to value, right? Is that a good example? Does that resonate with you?
Jordan Haines: I think so, yeah. I take 45 days and you apply it to any other industries, right? No, it’s not like it’s apples to oranges, tech to financial services. But let’s take law, for example, or eye care or the doctor. A lot of these service industry jobs, right? If it took 45 days for me to receive value, that would be a really hard thing for me to want to go back to.
Right. Like that’s a, that’s a slow turnaround. And I think for me, when I say, okay, I, we define time to value. I think most advisors look at that and they say, okay, 45 days. Well, how do I solve that? I make the process by which I create the financial plan more efficient. And so I can deliver the financial plans sooner.
think what’s interesting about the example you gave with the eye care is you walked out with trial contacts, not a, not the perfect solution, right? You don’t know if this is what you’re [00:10:00] going to do or not. You don’t know what the actual. Prescription plan is going to be, but you have some sort of value that you can walk away from so that when you go back to that, I, I doctor, you have a little bit more and that is, I think, really valuable.
So rather than think, okay, how do I shorten the time by which I deliver a quote unquote, comprehensive financial plan, maybe advisors can take this and say, What is the first valuable experience that my clients experience? And I, I would challenge most advisors listening to this, that it is not the financial plan.
It’s not that full comprehensive prescription plan that you’re going to offer people. I think there’s a lot of value in things along the way. So maybe we can talk a little bit about that, Abby.
Abby Morton: Before we go into this, I, I would definitely want to go there and I think it’s important. But let’s just take a second to defend why it takes 45 days, because
I remember having this conversation with my boss at Dennis Advisors. And he’s we cannot move forward. You cannot pass go.
You cannot do anything else [00:11:00] until we have all of these things, right? I need the two years tax returns. I need all of the investment statements, right? I need all the insurance policies. We want to connect with their CPA and make for sure that we have that connection. We like, we want We wanted to do all of these things, right?
We were asking for powers of attorney signed by the client so we could send them to the insurance agent, to the CPA, to all these people. And, and the reason we did that, so let’s just validate that the reason we did that. And I think it’s a good idea in a sense that if you don’t do it now, it’s really hard to get it after the fact. Right. And we wanted to have every detail because we wanted to be able to, uh, dentist advisors, we were really being delegated to, and take over this for me, right? We were getting paid such that the client could just delegate everything to us. So we needed to provide it all. or get it all right at the beginning.
So I think that is probably why, right? It’s taking 45 days and we all understand how hard it is to get all those documents and to get everything in every little piece of [00:12:00] data. And so I think there’s validation in that and there’s maybe even a little bit of wisdom in that. And we understand, and I think
Jordan and I would agree, There is a time and a place where you do need to get all of that information. And, and we’re not saying to not, right? We’re not saying that that’s not important. But maybe there’s a step before all of that that you could provide, like you said, which is exactly where you’re going. So let’s go that direction now. But I’m just thinking, how can you give them the trial contacts? How can you help them know?
Like another thing I didn’t mention is I asked if I could get LASIK, right? They told me, no, you’re not allowed to get LASIK because of whatever reason. Right. And, and so that helped me know okay, that’s off the table. This is off the table, but these other things are on the table. And so I walked away. Still feeling okay, I’m moving down the right direction. I have some prescriptions. I have some ideas of where to go. I don’t know the full plan yet, but I have some direction, right? Like I’m walking down
the right path. And I think that’s kind of what we are describing here with [00:13:00] time to value is, how can you, put a bandaid on the pain or help them know like you have a plan in place.
And these are the things you’re going to kind of do going forward.
Is that helpful?
Jordan Haines: that’s very helpful. And I’m glad you brought that up. One of the things that I want to double click on that I think is really meaningful is like you mentioned, Hey, we need these things because if we don’t get them now, it’s going to be hard to get it later, right? What, what is one of the valuable parts of this process that exists with most advisors is it’s kind of the motivating factor to get everything up front.
So that down the road, I mean, we know how hard it is to get information from existing clients, like pulling teeth half the time. So if we get it all up front, we don’t have to do it later. And, and I don’t think what we’re proposing here is. We say median time is 45 days to create the comprehensive plan.
I don’t even know if I’m saying reduce that time, right? Because that comprehensive plan comes with tax returns, investment statements, insurance, policy documents, powers of attorney, all the things that we often need from people that are incredibly important. But is there value that we can accentuate along the way that makes it [00:14:00] number one easier because clients stay motivated, they receive value along the way and makes you more referable as an advisor.
And frankly, it feels a little bit more organic rather than I’ll often say binary. It’s 45 days is a space of time where we haven’t done anything for you in return. We just ask and ask and ask, and then we give everything to you all on one day, rather, can we, can we do little things along the way to make it feel more
Abby Morton: drip them like drip content, like drip showing, which
that leads me to the first thing I know you’re really big on. I think we’ve even done a podcast on this in the past is just getting organized, right? The concept of understanding where your whole financial life is now I agree. Some clients will already be organized and we’ll already get all of this and that won’t be a big deal for them.
But for other clients, they are not organized. They don’t know where everything is at. They are, they’re really confused about everything. And so I love this idea of like just taking a moment in that meeting. I think a lot of advisors have it like the get organized meeting or the data gathering [00:15:00] meeting, right?
Whatever it may be called, but just like taking a moment in that meeting to just say, Hey, like everything’s represented here now. Like how does that feel? Right. And maybe it’s again, you haven’t gathered all the texts, like you’re still gathering policies, but at least you
have all the balanced numbers for everything that they own in one place. And just seeing that in one page, I think can be really eyeopening for a client who’s never had that done before.
Jordan Haines: And I think this is an easy win for advisors, like whether you use elements or not. Abby and I love elements. We’re super biased. We think everyone should do it. So if you’re listening, go sign up for a demo, use elements. It’s a fantastic process. Even if you’re not using a tool like elements and you have some data gathering process, I actually think that most advisors naturally do this get organized work, right?
We get everything in one place. We package it up and we get it so that we Can review it. I think the step that is often miss is reflecting that back on the client,
because I’ve been, I’ve been in a lot of advisor meet advisor client meetings where the advisor says Hey, just confirming this is actually what’s going on.
And then they just move [00:16:00] right into the advice. I think what you’re articulating here, Abby is yes, do that thing, but then also turn it back on them. How does that feel? Do you understand, does this all make sense to you? And I think the whole point here is we work with a lot of different types of clients.
We work with people that have no where everything is at. Right. And then we work with people that have no idea where anything’s at. And I actually think that for both of them, it’s helpful for them to just see their financial life in one view or in one place so that you can articulate and say, this is what’s going on here.
This is what’s going on here. I, I prefer elements for that because I think it does a really good job at saying, Hey, here’s what, uh, your liquidity looks like in relation to your dad. And this is, I’m going to help educate you. I think separating that out as a very specific activity from the delivery of the financial plan is really valuable because then advise the clients walk away with a valuable opportunity of saying, I now know where everything’s at.
Anything to add, do you feel like that I’m capturing what you’re, you were
Abby Morton: Yeah. No, I, I a hundred percent agree. I was just going to add that. And [00:17:00] as you said, this is elementality. We love elements and we think it’s great. And so here’s my little quick elements plug, right? So as you’re doing your get organized meeting, as you’re understanding where everything is in their balance sheet and understanding the purposes of the different accounts that they have and why they have them. You can also use that time with elements to start giving them the glimpse of this is like the trial contacts, right? This is going to work. Like your LT seems a little low. Your savings rate seems a little low, right? Like these are the things I’m thinking that we’re going to start doing. This is kind of what I’m mulling over in my mind.
Giving them this, these bits and tastes of what the financial plan is going to be. Now I’m not setting up right in that moment okay, we’re going to save 500 to this account and a thousand dollars a month to that account. Like I’m not delivering that. I don’t think just yet because I do want to get, continue to gather
data, continue to make, like putting together the full financial plan. But in this data gathering phase, at least with elements, you’re explaining what the scorecard means to them. You’re explaining why this is [00:18:00] important. You’re helping them understand just how financially healthy they are or they are not. And that’s what Elements is able to help you do really quickly, uh, is quickly assess their financial life in one quick snapshot, right?
Like it takes less than five minutes to be able to do that. And, and so you’re able to, I think, help that data gathering meeting or get organized meeting. Maybe you mean just a tiny bit more, like you can start to answer their question. Now, am I a hundred percent implementing the plan? Probably not, but again, I’m giving them that taste of what we’re going to do as we continue to work together.
Jordan Haines: Yeah. I love that. So I think the principle at play here is I think what we’re advocating for when it comes to time to value, right? Having a short time to value is really, really important. I think another implication to this that we can talk about later is in prospecting, right? Because if value, if value is the big comprehensive financial plan that we offer, right.
Then it’s really difficult to prospect because it takes a lot of work to get there. But if we have a smaller, more bite sized type of [00:19:00] initial value, That’s a little bit easier for us to deliver on when it comes to prospecting. I think what we’re, the principle here that we’re, we’re preaching is rather than just focusing on time and efficiencies, maybe focus on being more specific and descriptive in what your value is.
Right. Is it the comprehensive financial plan or is it the data review session or is it a get organized session or is it a short conversation you have with them on day one of here’s what you can expect.
Abby Morton: you’re saying ors. I think it’s ands, right? It’s you’re
doing the value conversation and then a week later you’re doing the get organized and then the week later you’re talking about their values and their goals and their purpose and their why, right? And at the 45 day mark, that’s when you’re delivering the full financial plan.
But they didn’t have to wait 45 days to see what a great advisor
you are. They got to see it all along the way.
Jordan Haines: Love that. Love that. Now let’s give a real life example of this. Both you and I, Abby worked in a dentist [00:20:00] advisors as associate advisors and as lead financial advisors. And one of the things I remember that, uh, I learned really on that we did Was I don’t remember what we called the meeting. But I, in my mind, I’m calling it data review meeting, where as an associate advisor, not the, not the full financial advisor, we would send out an intake.
And then we would sit down like for, I think it was a 15 or 20 minute phone call with them and we would just go through the data and say, here’s, am I missing anything? Is this what, what else? And I found early on, I would, I would ask like, how do you feel about that? And I would say these field words.
And I remember Early on someone saying at the end of that Oh, this was super valuable. I’ve never really seen this all in one place before. And we didn’t have the elements app back then. It was just like, A dashboard, or I think it was a spreadsheet. Like it wasn’t the most beautiful thing ever, but it was everything in one screen.
They could see that. I think as a real life example of this, we were still giving the financial plan with the full, like the financial advisor, 30 days out, 45 days out, however long it took maybe a week in. I as the associate advisor could sit down and offer a lot of value to [00:21:00] them as a get organized session.
So I don’t think, I don’t think this is very disruptive to a lot of what a lot of advisors are doing, whether they’re using elements or not, I think take the time to just be very intentional that that is actually a valuable experience. It’s not a necessary evil to get to the financial plan. It can be really valuable to clients.
Anything you want to add there?
Abby Morton: Well, I like, I think you brought up a valid point that if you do have a larger team, that those other associate advisors, para planners, whatever you call them on your team, your, your staff, your, I don’t, number of different titles for whoever’s doing that check in meeting. But I think it gives them a chance to connect with the client as well and develop a relationship.
It’s a great first step as they are moving into that advisor role. It was nice to have a hundred of those meetings a year, all these at bats. Okay. I didn’t probably keep. We as a firm probably had a hundred meetings. I personally probably didn’t have a hundred of those. But yeah, you get a lot of at bats and, and I love to hear that.
You just pause what is this? How is this looking to you? Like, how does this make you feel? We often hear, from, from [00:22:00] one of the spouses, it’s nice having this all here because if I was to pass away, like I know my spouse, it was, it’s just all right here. It’s easy for them to know where our whole financial life is because I’m organized. And And so I love that. I think that’s, and how can you take that a step further, right? I think a lot of times the information is organized, any money or red capital or elements, right? But then how can you take that a step further and help them know okay, now go put a folder, maybe on your desktop computer.
And in that folder is always where you save all of your financial stuff, right? How can you help them, take the next step to get, continue to keep themselves organized. Because every year, year after year, you’re going to continue to need those tax returns and those, all of the policies and other things, right?
There’s things that just continue to come to them. So
Jordan Haines: Yeah.
Abby Morton: I would agree.
Jordan Haines: So I think one final thing that we can talk about here and that I do actually, when, when I present this to advisors, I get questions about this is how, how do I find a value point is what I’ll call it, right? Because a comprehensive financial plan [00:23:00] is a value point. A data review session could be a value point, but I think, uh, that it’s, it’s, it’s an interesting question.
How do I know what’s actually valuable to people that I can deliver on? Curious if you have any thoughts about that. I do, but I want to know what your thoughts are first.
Abby Morton: Yeah. I think the easy first step is number one, like listening to the client and you’re going to have to listen to more than one because as I said earlier, some clients will have already been organized by themselves and the get organized meeting is not going to be that aha moment. I would love for every client to have that aha moment there, but it doesn’t happen, right? Other clients will love like the values exercise and the goals and financial purpose and kind of all of that. Right. But others won’t. Right. And so I think it’s important. That instead of you having this one thing that you’re delivering, that you find like the points all along the way. And every customer is going to probably resonate with a different thing.
So in my mind, it’s, a getting organized. It’s, uh, like I said, the financial purpose goals, what, [00:24:00] what does money mean to you? It’s that conversation. Probably delivering the final financial plan, but I probably also add in there the little bits and pieces of financial plan along the way, right?
Like what are I’m thinking, or this is what I think might be a good idea to do here. Ways that you’re helping them know that you’re going to achieve the financial plan. So I think kind of what I would say to that.
Jordan Haines: Yeah, I, I think what the, the most important thing that you said is listen to your clients and, and I want to double click on that and say, don’t assume to listen to your clients. I think so. Let’s give an example here. One that you kind of presented there is, what if I have a client that already had everything together?
Maybe they had their own spreadsheet where they put everything in and we did a get organized session. And then I have another client. They had nothing and I helped them get organized and we put it all in, right? The end state was the same for both. And I might assume that that was more valuable for the one that didn’t have everything.
And it was less valuable for the one that did have everything. But I think it’s not safe to assume that, right? Because that person, it actually might’ve been a [00:25:00] really, really helpful practice to see it presented differently, to hear your insights around it. And so I think oftentimes as advisors, we kind of, we say, we listen to clients, we know what they want.
And it’s really just us assuming that we know what they want. I think listening to clients is actually asking them. Right? Do you go through onboarding and deliver a financial plan and say, what was the most valuable parts of this process? Like bullet points, what were the most valuable things to you along the way?
What I also think that means as well is you advisors, I think, prematurely scale, they prematurely audit automate, right? They say, I know what this is going to, the service is going to look like. So I’m just going to create this journey before I ever put someone through it. I think there’s value in not doing scalable things.
Right. Doing things that you’re like, you know what? I’m going to try something with this client. I’m going to do that same thing with three or four other new, new clients that I bring on, and then I’m going to ask them what was the most valuable part of this, and if you find with all three or four of those that, Hey, you know, that, that conversation we had at the very beginning, just helping me get organized.
Well, then I think that tells [00:26:00] you that’s a value point, right? Okay. Then how do we just replicate that? So there’s, I think there’s some searching, but the, I think the core principle with this is how do I find it? It’s asking clients, whether that’s a survey you ask of them. That’s a really easy way to do it.
Whether you just have a short interview with them, whether it’s you or someone on your staff, I think people want to give us feedback and whatever we can get to get, that is really, really valuable. And that’s going to be the thing that tells us, Hey, this thing, This is the value point. And then the awesome thing about this though, is if you find the consistent thing, that’s really valuable to your people, you can automate and you can scale that so well, where you, you can then focus on shortening that, right?
So let’s say when you tried this out, it was seven days before you did their data review and you find that that data review is super important. Well, then you can say, what can we do to get that to 24 hours? Or what can we do to get that to 72 hours? Cause the shorter, the time to receive value, the better.
And I think that the only way you find out what that is, is by testing it and asking clients and having conversations with them. So that, that would be thoughts on that.
Abby Morton: I love it. I think that’s so important to [00:27:00] feel, feel like it’s okay to test and try different things out. I think that’s actually what you’re really powerful at really, really good at is I’m just going to go. Try this thing out and, and do something completely different. And I’m much more I’m very rigid and I got to stick to the schedule and
the
Jordan Haines: let’s let, well, let’s blend it because I tend to be like one off. Like I’ll try it with one person and then I’ll decide what that means for everyone else. You’re like, no, Jordan, stick to it with three or four people. Try it more than once.
And I actually think a mix of those is really valuable because if you just try something and you don’t do it consistently, how are you supposed to know that it’s.
Going to like predictably give results. Whereas if you try something and try it with a test case of 10 people or five people, that will give you, I think, a good sample size to say this actually works. So there’s, I think there’s balance in all things,
Abby Morton: But I think I also like what you said of, but also follow up and ask the client, get the feedback, whether through a survey or through an interview. I don’t know that it matters which way, but I often remember. feeling in my client meetings well, this was the aha [00:28:00] moment for that last guy. But like this person doesn’t feeling like that’s an aha moment and make their emotions are just different.
They just express themselves differently. Maybe they did have an aha moment. I just didn’t realize that they had the aha moment. And so I think that’s important to like constantly be getting feedback from your clients, especially in your early days of your practice. But I mean, even if you’ve been around for a while and you’re trying something new, like it’s, it’s important to get that feedback and ask them like, did this work or did this not? A hundred percent. I love that. I think it’s so great.
Jordan Haines: go in with curiosity, have conversations with clients, don’t do the scalable thing at first,
try and test and you’ll find what your value is. So I guess to recap here advisors. Should do what they can to shorten time to value. But in order to do that, we need a number one, understand what that value point is.
Number two, we need to know what actually works to get them there. And I think as advisors do that, we’re going to see a lot more people that are served and actually receive valuable experiences from advisors in their first interactions or their second interaction doesn’t [00:29:00] matter. I think you’ll see prospecting a whole lot easier.
And I think you’ll see your practices scale a whole lot more. So that’s, that’s kind of my
Abby Morton: So I love that you wrapped up with that. Like I agree. Those are the reasons why you do it. Your practice is going to scale more. You’re going to be more referable early on. The, the, the client’s going to be happy they signed up with. I know in the early days of the relationship, they’re really scared that they made a wrong decision.
Did I trust the right person? Did I think there’s, Probably some hesitation of Ugh,
can I really tell this person everything? And, and all of these time to value points are just going to help them be reaffirmed in the decision that you were the right person to hire, right? That you
have their best interest in mind.
Jordan Haines: Yeah. And momentum. I think momentum is totally undervalued in at least an onboarding and prospecting, right? Like it’s hard, like inertia is a real challenge with people asking for financial advice because we need to get them moving. And sometimes we say, okay, well, it’s really hard to get them moving.
So I’m going to give myself a longer period of time to get that information. [00:30:00] And I think what this allows us to do is get momentum going so that honestly, after they received that first value. Their willingness to provide more information and be receptive to my guidance is even higher so that that will naturally shrink the amount of time and frankly, the client’s going to be more engaged.
You’re going to save more time in your process. Revenue is going to go up because you can onboard more people. There’s a lot of really down a lot of downstream effects to this that are are super undervalued.
Abby Morton: totally. I love that point. Final point. I think that’s where we end
Jordan Haines: it. Let’s do it. Well, if any of you have questions or if you don’t agree with anything we’ve said. Uh, we don’t, uh, think that we’re the, uh, only people that know what’s going on in the world of financial advice. So if you disagree with us, please, please message us. You can send us an email or just find us on LinkedIn and, and ask us that way.
Abby, anything else you want to end with?
Abby Morton: I think that’s great. Thanks for having me. It’s good to, good to talk to you all again. Hope to be back soon.
Jordan Haines: See y’all next week.[00:31:00]