Jordan explores “The Four Conversations” by Blair Enns, focusing on the qualifying and value conversations in the sales process. He talks about transforming sales from presentations to meaningful dialogues, examining how to qualify prospects and understand what truly constitutes value for clients.
Transcript
Jordan Haines:
Hello friends, and welcome to another episode of Elementality. My name is Jordan Haines, financial vital specialist here at Elements and your host For today’s show, we’re gonna talk about a book, A book that has been very transformational for me. Um, this might be a two-parter. I. So I’ll probably review the first part today, and then in another episode, whether it’s next week or in a future episode, we will review.
Um, the second part, which I will articulate here in a, in a moment, the name of the book is The Four Conversations, A New Model For Selling Expertise. It’s written by Blair Enns. I read a book by Blair Enns. It’s his first book. Um. Titled, the Win Without Pitching Manifesto. I read it about six, nine months ago, and it was a fantastic read.
Um, but it didn’t pass my, uh, book criteria to, um, make it really impactful for me and for context, that criteria looks like this. I, I listen to a lot of books, probably one to two a week, and I always start by listening to a book. If the book is really good and I’m left with outstanding questions or things that I want to dive in more, then I will download.
That book, that digital version on my Kindle so I can highlight and read it. Um, and I have a specific note taking process that I go through for that. Um, after I’ve gone through it on the digital version, if it is still having outstanding questions or things that I really wanna, like with a physical highlighter, go through the book, then I will buy the hardback version.
The reason I share that, um, personal process with you is because this book in particular is turning out to be one of those hardback versions for me. So lemme give you a brief synopsis of the book and then the two parts of this book that have been really impactful for me recently that I’m going to test out.
Now, if you’ve listened to last few episodes, you know that last week we talked about prototyping. This is a prototype, my friends, this is something that I’m going to be testing and trying and if you are interested and you download this book and you have tested or tried some of the things there, I would love to get your feedback.
So let’s talk about the four conversations. This book goes through for a model called the Four Conversations, and they don’t, they aren’t necessarily actual one-to-one conversations that you’re having with prospects, but it’s a way that we can follow specific things, specific guidelines in order to sell advice.
I really actually like that word conversation. And one of the distinctions that Blair Enns makes throughout the book is that when you are selling expertise, you are not presenting information, you’re having a conversation. It’s two-way you want to listen and be curious and understand what’s most important to those people, which we’ll talk about here in a moment.
And that’s why he uses that word conversation. And I. Tend to like that, and I’ve been guilty of treating my sales process as a presentation. I have a slide deck that sometimes I will show people and I’ll go through, here’s the services that we offer and here’s the things that we do. In the book. At the very beginning, he very specifically draws the distinction between conversations and presenting, and then also being an expert and being a vendor.
And I think that that’s a really interesting distinction that we’ll probably visit here in a future episode. But today I want to pick apart two of the que the conversations. So the first conversation is the probative conversation. This is really marketing, right? This is establishing your brand in the marketplace.
It’s positioning yourself in the minds of your consumers. And we’ve talked a little bit about this in the past, but I think he has really interesting insights. We’re not going to talk about that today. I want to dedicate a specific episode to that, whether it’s next week or in the future. But that is the very first conversation, the probative conversation.
And the objective there is to get what he calls the flip. The moment at which, um, clients or prospects become somewhat advocates, become very diligent followers of you. They’ve flipped and they understand what you’re all about. The second conversation he calls the qualifying conversation and the purpose of the qualifying conversation is exactly as it sounds.
It’s to qualify the right people for your service. Um, it’s very much two-way, right? It’s not just for them to qualify you, but it’s for you to qualify them and for them to know that you are qualifying them. We’ll pick apart that framework here in a moment. I wanna talk about that today. The third conversation is the value conversation, and this is where you are articulating value in the mind of your client.
Now, this isn’t necessarily demonstrating value in all cases as much as it is trying to capture and understand what is valuable to them. What are the things that you’re going to measure and understand there? And then the final conversation is the closing conversation. We’re not gonna talk about that today.
That one’s pretty straightforward. It’s to close the sell. So let’s pick apart conversation two and conversation three. The qualifying conversation and the value conversation. The qualifying conversation in his mind is, um, this is where you are trying to understand and, uh, really qualify if someone is a good fit for you.
Right. So he starts with a few ideal client profile questions. I’m actually just gonna read these word for word, and frankly, you can go to the website and just look up the four conversations, um, resources, and you’ll find a framework here. And a lot of the things that I talk about here, you’ll find there.
But one of the questions that he wants you to identify is who is your ideal client profile? And here are a few questions that he poses, prompts that he poses, uh, to people to understand who their ideal client profile is. The question number one is, what are I, are the variables that describe our target client?
Number two, are there any requirements that a client absolutely must meet for us to consider doing business with them? Number three, what red flags can we identify? That sign signify a client might be a poor fit, and that further more direct qualification might be required? And number four, are there any variables or conditions that would constitute an absolute no?
A client we would never work with under any conditions? I think these are really great, and I actually started going through these. Obviously I work for dentist advisors and so there’s automatically a qualifier. If they’re not a dentist, they won’t work with us. But there is a little bit more to that, right?
Like what is the type of dentist that we wanna work with? And so I’m actually going through those right now. I don’t have clear answers to those. That’s something I’m working with on our team right now. His qualifying framework goes through, uh, six elements. The first is context you wanna understand and you don’t have to do it in this order.
Um, and I’ve tested this with a few and it’s gone really well. So the first is context. You wanna understand what is that client situation. This is where, if you go back in our episodes and try to get to problem diagnosis, right? This is actually understanding what’s on their mind. Why did they reach out to you?
Why now? Tell us about them. All the things about them. Number two is the desired future state. This is something I have not been as good at and something that I’m trying to get better at after reading this book. And the objective of desired future state is to understand what is the client’s desired future state.
And one of the questions that he poses here, and I actually really like, and I, I did this actually today when I recorded this. I did this today. I had, uh, two consultations I met with, then I asked this question and it went really well. Um, the question is this. Imagine we are having this conversation three years from today.
You are happy, you feel like you were successful. What’s happened? To make you so happy. I love that. And the other question that he has as a follow up is like, what are the obstacles that are in the way of this vision? The reason I like that is, um, I think this is a different. Whereas like the problem diagnosis that we talked about a few weeks ago is very much on like, what’s happening right now?
What’s your diagnosis? What’s the core issue? I think this one more speaks to what are you going to look at to determine if you are successful. Um, this is something actually here at Elements. When I bring on a new advisor, I almost, almost always will ask them. And, you know, obviously I forget sometimes, but I almost always will ask, you know, in 90 days, if you were to look back at your time with elements, what are you going to look to, to determine if you were successful?
And, and I have not been good at asking that of clients or prospects. I really like that. So that’s number two in the qualifying framework. Number three is who are the decision makers, right? So who are the people that are going to be making this decision and what is their process? I’ve, I’ve asked this. Um, I started asking this probably about six weeks ago before this book, but.
When I get a single, uh, like an individual that calls me in a consultation, I’ll always follow that up and say, who else? How do you make financial decisions in your family? Who else is going to need to be involved in making this decision? Basically, my intention there is I need to talk to them, right? Like, I don’t, I can’t, I cannot tell you if we’re gonna work with you, um, unless I have them here as well.
Number four is timeframe. When do you make need to make this decision? Buy and when? Number five is budget. And I have not landed on this one all that much. I think it’s important. Um, his question is like, do you have funds allocated? And if so, how much? This is very much a business to business type of sale that he’s going through.
But I think it’s an interesting question. Um, I think. Sometimes this goes down to like, if you have an asset minimum, that’s a budget. I mean, honestly, sometimes as if like you already have a retainer fee set, do they have enough to afford it? But for me, the way that I’ve taken this question is just asking them, have you guys thought about fees and what you’re willing to pay or how you wanna pay a professional?
It’s just trying to get that on the table. And then finally, the sixth one is determining next steps. So that’s a qualification conversation. Let me, let me just pick that apart really quickly. One more time or, or not pick it apart, but. Represent it. Um, number one context. You wanna understand what the client situation is.
Number two, what’s their desired future state? Number three, who are the decision makers and what’s their decision making process? Number four, when do they need to make a decision by and why? Number five, budget. And I would maybe take my, my swing on this is, have they thought about fees? Do they know how much and how they want to pay you?
And then number six is determining the next step. That’s a qualifying, uh, conversation. Um, I’m trying a few things on here and I’m gonna have more to share on that. The value conversation I think is really, really fascinating and this is where they talk a lot about the desired future state. I really like this step-by-step.
There’s five steps that, uh, he presents here in the value conversation. And when I first heard the value conversation, I immediately went to, okay, well I need to demonstrate the value. This is where I need to show them all the things that I do. And he immediately dispels that and says, when you do that, you, you take the place of a vendor, right?
Like if you get on a call with a vendor or a tech provider, they tend to go through features. That’s not what we’re doing. If you are in a consultative relationship where you are selling your expertise, your first objective is to understand what value means to the person sitting in front of you. And so that’s going to start by step one again, reviewing the desired future state, which is what do you want, right?
What do you want out of this relationship? And that’s where we ask those questions. Again, imagine we’re having this conversation three years from today. You and I are having coffee, and you’re really happy with your progress. What happened to make you so happy? I. Ask about obstacles, ask about other things.
You’re just trying to understand how are they going to determine success? And step two, this is something I do not do, but the actually, I I, I’ve done this more naturally through elements, and this is for you elements users listening to this, this is where it’s gonna make a lot of sense. Step two is, when you establish measurements of success or KPIs, what will we look to to determine if we are successful?
Now, this is where I think elements can come in handy. Um, I had a person, an individual reach out to us last week, um, and this was not a right fit for us, but as I was talking to him, we got to this point where we were trying to, to basically decide like, what are, what are the things that you’re going to look to determine if this is successful?
How are we gonna measure success? He immediately went to two things, number one, and many of you have gotten this question, uh, what’s your return? How much can you get me from investing my money? And then the second question was, um, what’s your average tax savings for clients? And for both of those, at least for how we structure our service, those are just not things that we track or are willing to track.
And so that was not a right fit customer, but, but that’s an example of a measurement of success. And that might work and be well for, I, I mean, I was talking to an advisor recently who, uh, leans really heavily into tax savings. And that’s an important part, and I actually think that that’s a really valuable part if that’s how you structure your service offering or your client journey.
But in the case of the people that I work with, actually using elements as measurements of success is really important. So if I’m working with someone and I know, like if I’ve done an initial discovery with them and I can see that they have a savings rate of 8% or a liquid term of 0.5 or a debt rate of 43, um, I might go to them and say, the things that we are going to look to, to determine if we are successful is if we can get your savings rate higher.
If we can get your liquid term higher, and if we can get your total term or your debt rate, uh, lower, right, those are the things that we are going to look to as objective measurements of success. Now, the tricky thing is there’s going to be other things. This is where we’re, where we’re looking at like other jobs to be done.
What are the emotional signals of success and how do we review that with you? Um. The, one of the questions that he asks as well during this step is, how will you know or prove that you’ve been successful? And this is one I never ask. This is one where I really want to get good at asking. This is one where I can use something like elements to say, we’re gonna use this tool to prove and show you that you’ve been successful, and here’s how often we’re gonna check in on that.
I think that’s valuable to people. They don’t want to just. Know their desired future state and, and trust that you’re gonna get them there, right? They want to be able to look objectively and say, is this person delivering on the expertise that they’re promising me? And I think that’s super undervalued and something that I wanna do.
Um, the step three is value. You want to ask the question, what is value to you? Right? Is it time savings? Is it focus? Is it peace of mind? This is where it’s gonna be pretty subjective to the person. The fourth is pricing guidance. What will you pay? And, and I think the fascinating, this is the one where I have lots of outstanding questions on, but I think the fascinating thing to me is, um, thinking through how we talk about pricing, but I like his, the, the way that he talks about it, it’s very much focused on, Hey, if I could deliver this value, this desired future state, right?
If I could deliver that to you, what would you be willing to pay? Right. If we could guarantee these, what would you be willing to pay on the low end? What’s the number you want us to hit, right? Like, that’s more of a consultative, um, pricing, but I think this works fine. I mean, at dentist advisors right now, we just have standard pricing and that works great for them.
The final one, step five, is to break and create the proposal, right? So the, the big thing here is he never, he’s very clear that in this value conversation, you’re not necessarily giving them a proposal. That doesn’t come until step four. You’re not telling them what you do. You’re not showing them your process necessarily.
You’re just trying to understand and rally around what does value mean to them so that you can come back to them and show them one page that says, look, here are the two or three things that we could do based on your price range or whatever that is. I don’t know. There are some disagreements I have with him on that, but I think.
Having a space of time to create a proposal and come back to them and say, look, this is the thing that I came intentionally to you to say, this is how we are going to achieve success for you. Now, for many of you, it’s gonna look very similar, right? We’re gonna do our onboarding, we’re gonna create the financial plan.
We’re gonna talk about these 5, 6, 7 areas. We’re gonna create a very comprehensive plan in those areas, holistic, whatever words you want to use. And here’s the step-by-step process we’re gonna do to do that. Here’s the proposal. I think it shows that you have been more intentional to show them what’s a straight line between that proposal, that service and their job to be done, or what’s value to them?
How are they gonna judge success? So that’s. Conversation, uh, two and three. I hope that you all have listened to this or read this book. This is a fantastic book and I’m learning a lot from it. It’s another way to think about a lot of the things that we’ve talked about previously, and I think the one thing for me that was really beneficial is to have that measurement of success in here.
That’s kind of the new big novel thing for me reading this is how can I bring in, um, setting shared measurements of success with these people. To help them see what are the things that we’re going to track as a financial advisor to determine if we’re actually 📍 delivering on the promise that we have for you.
So hope y’all get the book. Let me know what you think. Find me on LinkedIn, Jordan Haynes, H-A-I-N-E-S, or you can email us at podcast@getelements.com without everyone, though. I will see you next week.