Brad Johnson: Most financial advisors open a first appointment talking about what it is they do, and most financial advisors keep losing prospects who should have converted. Those two things are not a coincidence. Welcome back to Do Business. Do Life. I’m Brad Johnson, and today, we’re going to talk about why that keeps happening and more importantly, how to fix it.
But before we get into it, I want to tell you a quick story. You see, a few weeks ago, I got a call from a Triad member right after a first appointment. Great guy, solid team, incredible planning process, but he kept losing prospects after the first meeting. They would come in, sit through the first, give him the old, we’ll think about it, and never call back. So, he calls me that afternoon, a little frustrated, a lot frustrated, and starts walking me through how that appointment went. And within about 30 seconds, we had identified the problem.
Most of the meeting was centered around a spreadsheet and the technical aspects of what they do. All solid stuff, but by the time he got to anything that actually mattered to the prospect, he had already lost them. That conversation stuck with me, because the more I looked around the industry, the more I kept seeing the same pattern. Great advisors, great plans, losing the room before they ever got to the good stuff. That’s when I shared a concept from the book Conversations That Win the Complex Sale. It’s a classic from back in 2011, and in it, they lay out a framework called “Is, Does, Means.”
Most advisors run their appointments in exactly that order, “Is, Does, Means.” And what I want to show you today is how to flip it. We’re going to break down, number one, why leading with “is” is quietly turning you into a commodity before you ever show your value. Number two, why most advisors cannot actually articulate what makes them different and why that gap is bigger than they think. And number three, the “means” flip, a simple reframe you can take into your very next appointment that changes the whole energy of the room. And this simple framework allowed that same advisor to connect on a human level and bring on a two-and-a-half-million-dollar prospect and the largest of his 20-year career. Okay, let’s dive in.
Okay, so let’s take this concept and apply it to something we’re all familiar with, a financial plan. So, let’s start with “Is.” What is a financial plan? For many of you, that can be something different. It could be an Excel spreadsheet. It could be financial planning software like eMoney, MoneyGuidePro. But the concept is, what is it? Think about a spreadsheet. It’s rows, rows, columns, and basically, it’s the framework of how do you mathematically solve the acquit. And basically, it’s the framework of how do you mathematically solve the math problems that client needs to solve. So, what it is? It’s a spreadsheet. It’s a financial tool. It’s a software.
Okay, now let’s move to “does.” So, is spreadsheet does its formulas. It’s mathematical equations that essentially get them from where they are to where they want to be in retirement. So, snapshot of today, future cast where they want to be. So, what it does, that spreadsheet gets them from where they are to where they want to go in retirement. That’s what it does.
Now, let’s make the leap to “means.” What does that actually mean to them? This is where you get into the emotions, the psychology of the people sitting across from you, because for them, it means something different for every individual you meet with. For one potential client, it might mean their kids moved a few states away, maybe a decade ago. Maybe they’ve got a couple grandchildren. And what that financial plan actually means for them, it is the insurance policy that allows them to have the money to buy a plane ticket once a quarter to go visit their grandkids, create those memories, stay connected. And what it means is something much deeper than any spreadsheet, any pile of money could ever is or does, right? “Is, does,” we’re getting to the “means” part.
For another prospect that comes in, it might mean they’ve slaved away, them and their spouse, and they love to travel, but they’ve never had the time. They’ve been diligently saving, being good stewards, and it might mean for them, we now have the opportunity where this financial plan is going to allow us to check off those bucket list trips. It’s going to allow us to create those memories, going to allow us to have that big map where we put the pens in it and we’re checking off all the countries that we’ve wanted to visit. Never had the time, never had the strategy to where they could spend with confidence in retirement.
And so, you see really quickly, just even me explaining it, I’m starting to think about my wife and I’s future retirement, all of the things we’re going to get to do. But as you think about the emotional means, that is the psychology, that is the emotional aspirational stuff that gets people to decision points that create change and say, I want that, not this lack of clarity that I currently have from where I’m at. And so, just a quick, I want to create just a framework there that we can now go back to as we start to unpack this. So, “Is, Does, Means,” we just walked through a spreadsheet to “does.” Gets me from point A to point B where I’m at to where I want to be. But most importantly, what does that mean?
Okay, so as we dive into number one, “is,” we’re going to unpack this “Is, Does, Means” for each of these three steps. So, let’s pretend we’re living in the “Is” world right now, and there’s two ways I want you to think about this. Number one, how you as a financial advisor communicate your value, how you serve your clients, but also how you extract from the other side of the table, because if you think about it, every prospect is a different human with different needs, and these two are like a dance that you need to have in every meeting. So, let’s go to their side of the table first.
And I’m going to go back to the story I opened with, this advisor and why he was so frustrated. As we started to dive in, I said, what was it that actually brought them into your office? And it took him a second. And quite honestly, he wasn’t sure. And so, what that told us immediately was he had stayed kind of surface level. And the analogy I’ll make is it’s kind of like peeling back an onion. If you stay surface level, you’re going to get surface-level responses. And where it went to with this individual, he was kind of a do it yourselfer. He was a spreadsheet guy, and it immediately went to, we want you to review this annuity that we bought years back from an advisor.
So, if you think about that onion, we’re staying on the outside level, because it’s an “is.” It’s a product. It’s a tool. We’re living in “Is” world here. And so, he stayed in that world. And I’ll fast forward what happened because that was how the first appointment played out. And then it became this email exchange where it’s like, hey, take this annuity tool living in “Is” world, compare it to this other tool, compare it to that tool. And he became what I would say is an unpaid consultant for a do it yourself or where they were just living in “Is” world comparing the tools.
And part of that, if I look at how you truly serve somebody that comes in to see you, think about all the work that that takes. And I want you to put on a private investigator hat. This is the analogy I like to use. So, this gentleman, that prospect had come in, they had gotten a mailer. They had called a phone number. They had registered for a live dinner experience. They had gone to dinner experience. They had booked an appointment, sat through an hour presentation, booked an appointment, showed up for appointment with spouse. So, they had to put that on the calendar. They had to drive across town.
So, look at all of the effort that is created just to get to that very first appointment, let alone the marketing spend for you as an advisor. And so, what I really challenge this Triad member to do is I said, “Hey, you’re now a private investigator. It’s your job to figure out why they came in. What was the human need? What was the fear? What was the concern? What was the aspiration, the thing that they want their financial planner and advisor to do to get them where they want to go?”
And the truth is, he hadn’t figured it out. And so, now if you go in with that mindset, a few episodes back, we talked about a doctor, the symptoms that brought in, and being able to prescribe the proper solution. You have to ask a lot of questions. So, a lot of people, the first time they come in, what was it that brought you in? What was it that concerned you? What was it from our live experience the other night that just made you want to sit down and chat about your situation?
Well, you know, we’ve got this old annuity that our advisor sold us five years ago. We wanted you to really take a look at that. We’re living in “Is” world. Oh, interesting. Well, what was it about that product that concerned you? Well, we just want to see if there’s better payouts. Oh, interesting. Well, what is it about better payouts that you really are looking for? And so, what you do is you’re starting to peel back that onion, and we’re going to get to world two and world three here in a second.
But you start to peel back that onion and it’s really easy to see. If you’re living in world one, you stay surface level, you stay “Is” world, which is products and tools world. And we want to start to go deeper into unpacking the real reason they came in to see it, because I promise it wasn’t an annuity, it wasn’t an asset manager. There’s a deeper human need that brought them in. And now, it’s your job to get out of “Is” world to start to truly understand what it is that you need to do to help serve them.
So, we’re focusing on their side of the desk, now, just bringing that back to your side of the desk. So, we just talked about a financial plan. If you now play that game where you’re living in “Is” world, spreadsheet world on your side of the desk, now they’re staying surface level. Analyze this product, what it led to with that advisor. He became an unpaid consultant where he’s just spreadsheet jockey. And I will tell you from hundreds and hundreds of conversations over the years, no advisor wants to live there, where it’s trading emails, trading phone calls, trading texts on, compare this versus that.
And by the way, at the end of the day, I kind of call it the hamster wheel salesperson, where you’re just running full effort, but not actually getting anywhere. That’s one of the symptoms we often see here. If you have a three-appointment process that stretches to a four-appointment process, a five-appointment process, a six-appointment process, and I’ve seen some that have gone crazy, way longer than that, or you have a one-hour appointment that stretches to two, three, four hours. That is a symptom that you’re falling into “Is” world and kind of letting the prospect lead the show there.
So, a couple phrases, and then we’ll transition to point number two, the “does” gap. But a few ways to start to peel back that onion, when they give you surface-level short questions, just like you’re interviewing somebody, back to private detective, hey, I’m curious, what is it that concerns you about that? Hey, I’m curious about what is it that really matters there? Hey, can you paint me a picture of what that could look like? So, you’ll notice this sort of questioning allows for that prospect to really open up. They’re not yes/no questions. We want to stay out of yes/no question world. We want to get into open flowing. And so, that’s just one word that I would write down. Curiosity. That is the key where you start to open up and start to understand and go down “Is, Does, Means” where you get to why this stuff actually matters, what brought them into your office.
And lastly, if you go to “Is” world, that is the quickest way to turn yourself into a commodity, because if you look at product comparisons, tool comparisons, especially with AI, they can plug a prompt into AI and do that without you. And so, we want to get to out of “Is” world, that’s commodity world. We want to start to go deeper and we’ll talk about why it matters to flip the order here.
Here’s an action you can take if you find yourself living in “Is” world. Go ahead and script out. What we coach too is we have a bulleted agenda for every first visit, the seven key bullets that we cover in every sales lab. So, by the way, if that’s you and you’re not sure where to go, connect with us. Click the link below to see if a sales lab is a fit for you. Or if you’re a Triad member, you already have access.
But as we think about an action that you can do on your own, take your typical first meeting agenda, especially those first five minutes, and any piece of it that’s about you, your process, kind of living in that “Is” world, delete it. And now, we want to flip the script and start to focus on the prospect across the table and what it was that actually brought them in. And once again, back to the question stacking, the layering that I walked through, we want to start to go down that so we can get deeper to the root cause of what actually motivated them to come into your office in the first place.
Okay, so number two, the “does” gap and how most advisors have a great process, but they can’t explain it in normal language. As we think about it, what the book we’re referencing explains is most advisors drop the ball here. They don’t have easy to understand language and they talk a lot more like a spreadsheet. So, if you think about the acronyms, all of the lingo in financial services, oftentimes it’s flying right over your prospect’s head. And so, when you get into the “does” part, think about it this way, people don’t buy the ingredients. They buy the Big Mac.
Or if we use it this way, think about the engineer mindset. You’re not popping the hood of the car explaining in detail and intricately how the engine works. Most people that walk through the doors just want to know what this does is get me from point A to point B in a super efficient and comfortable way that I don’t have to do a lot of work to get there. I just hop in the car and ride along. And so, when you start to break down the language of what your financial plan actually does, this is a beautiful opportunity for analogies, stories.
If you even look at this episode, one of the things I’ve found that helps a lot of advisors as I’ve tried to get better at becoming a coach over the years is use analogies that people just get, because sometimes, we have the curse of knowledge in our space and things that seem kind of common sense to us. It’s because you’ve solved the same problem hundreds and hundreds of times before. Guess what that prospect, this might be the very first time that they’ve ever actually thought about it or have the guts to come in and say, we need help here. And oh, we might have procrastinated a bit. We feel like we’re a little bit behind.
So, the more you can speak in real world language and help people feel comfortable, the more they get it. Here’s a common theme you’re going to see if you do this well. Oh, the shoulders drop. They lean in. They smile. They’re like, thank you, you actually made this much simpler than any other advisor ever has. This really helps. And so, a lot of what we do there, one of the things that is common from Simon Bowen, one of my favorite early episodes, he has a saying, when you draw, you draw people in.
So, oftentimes, a picture’s worth a thousand words. So, instead of describing and having them imagine, oftentimes you can use a whiteboard with simple frameworks. We have a few different ones we coach on here, safety, income, growth, the five worlds that are ways that start to show what it is you do in a simple fashion. Not necessarily what that means yet. We’re going to get to that in a second. But here’s a simple way to connect the dots, simplify the complex when it comes to a world class financial plan that is custom built, one of one for you.
A real-world example of this, I remember this is probably 10 years ago. I asked a firm, at the time, they’d gone from zero to a billion dollars under management in less than 10 years. Most advisors would say, “Wow, that’s impressive growth,” even by today’s standards. And I ask what it was they did for their clients, why they chose them. We build financial plans and they were serious. Well, an answer like that is an easy way to sound like 40,000 other financial advisors all across the US.
And so, if you think back and if you think back to people don’t buy ingredients, they buy the Big Mac, we talk about it a lot on this show, that is the power of a proprietary process. The X, Y, Z retirement blueprint, that’s packaging. So, we don’t want to sell the ingredients, we want to sell the packaging, and so you can do that with your financial planning process. That’s one of the things we coach on and teach here at Triad.
The other thing is think about the journey, the first, the second, the third visit. You can actually name that client journey. So, the first time that comes in, hey, that’s a session that we call it a curiosity session. I’m just making things up on the fly, because we want to understand what it is you need help with and how we can help you get there. Number two is the build. Number three is the implementation.
So, if you think about those words, they’re easy to understand, kind of like you’re talking to a fifth grader, but now you started to lay out the journey of here’s what we do the first time. We understand. Do you have problems? Can we help? Here’s the second time. We start to show you a snapshot, a rough draft of how we might be able to fix those problems, just like we have for dozens, hundreds of other retirees just like you with similar problems. And lastly is the build where we put it all together. We help you understand your options, and we co-create this thing together.
So, if you think about just even that messaging, it’s not hard to understand and people can just get it. So, when we’re in that “does” section, we want to simplify the language, we want to use a lot of visuals, and we want to start to package things better so we get out a commoditized world and start to get into one of one world, how your firm delivers on those plans versus one of many, back to the commoditized world that we just talked about.
All right, so quick action item on number two. So, if you’re not sure, I actually got this idea from Pat Quinn. What you do is you pretend like you’re calling a brother, a sister, a mom, a dad, and if we’re saying, hey, here’s what we do for our clients, here’s how we deliver these ideal outcomes, start to test that. Just call your mom, call your dad, call your brother, call your sister, and just talk to them and say, give me feedback. Did that make sense? Did that go over your head? Did I say words that just confused you? And now, you can start to test some of these naming mechanisms.
If you’re a Triad member, disclaimer, not a sales pitch, just being real with y’all. This is one of the things we do for every member that onboards is we extract this, we help with messaging, we help with packaging. We call that our launch plan. Maybe we can get into that in a future episode, but this is one of the biggest missing gaps we see in finance. So, we help our advisors actually create it on their behalf.
Okay, let’s get to number three. Okay, number three, the “means” flip. I would say the most important of this entire episode, the “means” flip, lead with the outcome and watch the whole environment change. Number three, the “means” flip, lead with the outcome and watch the whole energy change. Number three, the “means” flip, lead with the outcome and watch the whole room change.
Okay, so let’s go back to example one where it’s kind of the onion we talked about. Where do we stay surface level in “is”? Or do we start to climb it down into “does” and most importantly, into “means”? So, now, if we’re able to start to pull that out of them, hey, what was it that brought you in? You responded to the mailer. You showed up at our live experience. And now, here we are. What was it that really hit home? By the way, those of you that have forms at your live experiences where they can check off their biggest concerns, those are super helpful. The more context you have going into this, always going to help you get where you want to go faster.
So, now, as we start to climb down, let’s just play this out. Let’s say, well, that annuity, bought it a few years back. The interest rates weren’t great. Well, quite honestly, we’re just– I’m not really sure. We’ve got some tools. We’ve got kind of the junk drawer of financial things we’ve picked up over the years. I’m not really sure how it all works together, and do we have the income that allows us to live comfortably in retirement? Okay, so now let’s unpack that a little bit more.
Well, what would that mean to you? Having income you could depend on in retirement, what would you do with it? Well, glances at wife, there’s a few trips we’ve been putting off and honey, what was at the top of the list? Well, we love it. We had a chance to go to Italy for a honeymoon. We haven’t been back since. And it was just one of the best trips we ever take. Well, where would you go in Italy? Well, we’re history buffs. I don’t know, Pompeii, that’s kind of a cool, it’s literally going back in time to the times of Jesus.
So, you see where I’m going here. We’re now getting out of “is” spreadsheet annuity “does” income stream. What does that income stream actually mean? Private investigator, right? Now, you’re starting to understand what was the psychology that kept them going down the rabbit trail. Look at all the effort that has been put forth to be sitting across your desk in your office, and I think oftentimes, as an advisor, we forget that. I mean, it’s appointment, appointment, appointment. These are humans. Oftentimes, that’s 40 years of work to build that nest egg. What’s it all for?
Now, you’re starting to understand what that’s about. What motivators do they have? Whether fear, hey, we’ve got a million dollars. This stuff’s going on, this war overseas in the Middle East, we’re concerned, like we don’t have to go back to work another five years if there’s a market correction. Now, you’re starting to get to the psychology or the aspirational, hey, there’s this trip we’ve been putting off for 30 years. If we had a plan that gave us confidence to go from here to here, we’d love that. That would be the reason we’d work with you.
So, we’re living in means world, and what I often find is if you can’t say what it was that brought them in that really drove that, you’re not going deep enough. Your questioning is not curious enough to get there. And by the way, just about every financial advisor I’ve ever talked with, it’s not a heart thing. It’s not that they don’t want to get there. It’s kind of a going through the reps, going through the motions thing where they kind of forgot the stuff that works and they need to be reminded sometimes.
So, if this episode can be that reminder for you, please drop it in the comments like the aha here, because I’ve just seen sometimes it’s the little reminder of, ah, I used to do that so well and I just got in some bad habits. So, as we start to unpack that, there’s actually some proven science behind this. And in the book, they talk about old brain. And they call it the hammock effect, and it’s kind of primacy/recency, the first thing, the last thing, think about a hammock, it kind of sags in the middle. That’s where people check out.
So, if you live in “Is, Does” world, people are checking out in that middle. If we get to “means,” that’s the context that stays them engaged in that conversation. This is also the decision-making part of the brain. So, old brain only responds to a handful of things – personal relevance, contrast, motion, and simplicity. Basically, what you’re saying is in features categories, the brain completely ignores that. So, there’s number one. I think you can understand how people feel heard. What I hear you saying is if we could allow you to be confident to where we could get you and your wife back to Italy and you don’t have to worry about the next market downturn, regardless the income plan, the plan, the bucket list trip plan, whatever we want to call it, it’s there regardless, it sounds like that would be a reason we might want to work together. Does that sound fair? Yes.
But now, if we stay in products, features world, we never allow ourselves to even get there in the conversation. So, that’s a little bit of the science behind it, but most importantly, how much better does that feel human to human to be able to serve someone and truly like get them where they want to go with that, all of those hard-earned dollars that they saved and scrimped and we’re a steward to for all those years.
Okay, so let’s put this into action. Think about what it is they would get, what would be the reward of working with you? And that can come from two places. It can come from eliminating fear, or it can come from checking off those aspirational wants. And so, if you think about it, put that in your world. Here is the experience, the memories you could create on that trip to Italy. Not here’s the agenda and the plane tickets to get you there. So, we want to focus on the outcome that what that means to them, what that creates, not the is of what it does and the is and does of the plan to get them there.
So, a couple things you could start to do and some language you can insert during this section to know you’re actually getting there. It’s not what you do, it’s what they get. So, some phrases might be, what if you could or imagine if, and now we’re starting to go down that path for what that means. So, little phrases like that, or what would that look like if, where would you stay? So, we’re now starting to paint that picture into what that could actually mean to them. Once again, you have to do the financial planning. So, disclaimer, we’re not just selling empty promises here that we can’t deliver on. We actually have a solid financial plan that includes income planning, investments that complement, a tax strategy, legacy, estate, healthcare, all of the standard CFP way to build a financial plan.
But now, we start to help them imagine. I heard it said once, it’s your job. Great financial advisors, they don’t build financial plans. They actually lead them in their financial lives to help them attain what it is they could actually go get. Oftentimes, you have to train retirees how to start spending again. How they got that nest egg is they kind of scrimp and save. Now, you have to give them the freedom and the permission to spend with confidence in their retirement. Almost push them a little bit. You don’t want to die with 10 million bucks in the bank. Let’s go use some of this hard-earned money for its purpose. You deserve it.
And lastly, once you make this shift, I’ve heard this from a number of advisors. I heard it from the advisor I told you the story about. I can think of another advisor just the other day. He is like, man, going back to the basics, I started having fun again. I was getting caught up in the details of the financial plan and feeling like I’m a financial analyst analyzing a stock. Now, I get to just be a human and I get to help unlock all of these dreams and aspirations. I get to help deliver on them. And so, I think what you’ll find as an advisor, this will help you start having fun again, connecting with the humans you’re serving across the table. And by the way, you’re going to be able to work with a lot more of them because this framework will help them understand how you can serve them at a higher level.
Okay, so in summary, so number one, we hit the “is” trap, how leading and staying in that world turns you into a commodity unintentionally. Number two, we hit the “does” gap and how if you don’t clearly explain and differentiate and package what it is your value proposition is, how you serve your clients, you’re going to lose them. And number three, we hit the “means” flip and how if we get all the way down “Is, Does, Means” and we flip that on top, how if we get to the emotional, the cause, the need, the want that brought them into your office in the first place, and then more importantly, how we deliver on that and make it easy and simple and pain free, how that makes all the difference in the world.
So, if this episode hit home with you, number one, I would love if you would leave a comment below. What specific piece of this is going to change how you run your future appointments? Or what did I miss so we can use that for a future episode and expand on what we covered today? Also, if you’ve listened to an episode, maybe one or two of the Do Business. Do Life podcast, I would love if you would subscribe, hit the little bell on YouTube so that you’re notified the next time an episode drops.
And do me one last favor. Send this episode to an advisor that you care about, a buddy you met at a conference and say, hey, I think this one, this little section will make a difference for you so you can serve one more person at a higher level. So, with that, thanks for listening in. I love these episodes. It’s a way for me to have a conversation and share some of the learnings over the last 20-ish years in finance that hopefully can serve you all out there. Thanks, and I’ll catch you on the next episode.
