Brad Johnson: If your prospects can’t remember what it is you actually do for them, you’ve got a problem, and it’s probably not the problem that you think it is. One of the biggest keys to being a great financial advisor comes down to simplifying the complex, and that’s hard to do when it comes to building a complete and holistic financial plan.
You remember the saying, a picture’s worth a thousand words? Well, that means that a physical example is even more valuable. And when most advisors explain what it is they do, that’s all it is. It’s an explanation. It’s words that require an imagination. Nothing you put in front of them was real. Think about who you’re sitting across the table from. Typically, an older retiree, maybe a pre-retiree client. They grew up with newspapers, not iPhones; books, not Kindles; photo albums, not camera rolls. And what does our industry typically show up with? A laptop, a screen share, a bunch of charts and graphs to go along with a whole lot of talking. So, they leave, they get in the car a bit confused, a bit more overwhelmed, a bit more not sure where to start.
Welcome to part one of a three-part series on the three visuals missing from almost every financial advisor presentation. So, let’s get to what it is. Today’s visual is the cheapest to build, the easiest to start tomorrow, and by far, the most overlooked. So, let’s get to what it is. It’s this simple, right here.
Before I show you the solution, let’s get to lesson one, why it matters. And by the way, make sure you watch until lesson two where I show you the actual sample. When it comes to sales, which we define as a transfer of belief at Triad, your prospect has to understand what they are believing in. So, without a clear, easy way to understand this, you are creating your own objections without even knowing it.
Let’s use the example of probably the most famous show on the planet that sells stuff. I’m guessing by now, you’ve already seen at least a few episodes of the TV show, Shark Tank. By the way, put in some B-roll right here as I talk through this. Most importantly, let’s break down what happens. The entrepreneur comes out. They do their pitch on their product and how it’s life changing.
But then what happens after every pitch? What do they present the sharks with? That’s right. The physical sample. They hand one out to each shark, the product they can touch, feel, turn over, look at, ask questions about. They bring the idea into the real physical world. So, how does this apply to the world of financial advising? Well, really, the same concept of showing the client a sample of your product applies.
So, what is that? Well, it’s your financial plan, of course. Ideally, it’s trademarked with your individual name that is specific to your firm, but then actually referencing it during your seminars, educational events, and appointments. It’s a physical, tangible representation of your actual plan, a binder, a printed document, a folder with weight to it, something the prospect can hold in their hands, flip through, and start to understand how your firm would create a road map to get them from where they are today to where they actually want to be in retirement.
I know, sounds almost too simple. Stay with me, because the reason this works isn’t the binder itself. It’s what the binder represents to the person on the other side of the table. Let me back this up. Go visit a car dealership this weekend. They don’t talk to you for an hour and then say you’ll get the keys in the mail. They walk you over to the car. They ask you if you want to get in and take a test drive. There’s a reason they do that. Hire a general contractor for your house. He shows up with a rolled-up blueprint. He unrolls them on your kitchen table. You’re leaning over the table talking through the plans. And the great home builders, they ask you if you want to walk through a spec house to see how it lays out in person.
Okay, back to our industry, what’s the equivalent? What do most advisors physically hand a prospect during a meeting? For most advisors, the honest answer is nothing. Maybe a follow-up email with a calendar link to schedule the next appointment. That’s about it. And we wonder why so many prospects ghost us between meeting one and two. If we’re honest with ourselves as an industry, we do a horrible job of showing them how we help.
And here’s one thing I’ve learned coaching advisors over the years, your product is essentially invisible. A financial plan is a strategy. It’s a set of recommendations. It’s hours of your thinking. But the client can’t see any of that. They just have to take your word for it. And a physical representation of that plan changes the game entirely. And I’m not even talking about the information inside the plan. I’m talking about the experience of receiving it, and more importantly, comprehending the value of it.
When you physically hand someone something, the energy in the room shifts. You can feel it. The client straightens up a little, the spouse leans in. You stop being a person making a pitch, and you start being a person delivering a solution. And that thing has weight, literally. There’s a reason luxury brands put their products in heavy boxes with magnetic closures. It’s not the box, it’s what the box says about what’s inside. So, if you take nothing else from this one, take this. A conversation during an appointment lives for an hour. A physical financial plan lives forever. And your prospect seeing and feeling the difference is what leads to clarity.
Okay, let’s get to lesson number two. Okay, now the next question, what do you actually put in their hands? Let’s make this easy and show you a quick sample. It’s simply a physical representation of the financial plan that you would build on their behalf. Here’s a real-life sample of one of our Triad members and their proprietary planning process. You can see it’s got a cover page. It’s got a table of contents similar to a book with five chapters, an overview of some of the biggest gaps and concerns, and then the rest of it is really tabs dedicated to each of those five chapters, essentially, how you would custom build out a CFP standard plan. Not rocket science by any means.
Okay, so the next question, what do you actually put in their hands? Let’s make this easy and show you a quick sample. And this is where I see advisors get stuck. For version 1.0, they over-complicate it. They start with a 200-page binder with custom embossed foil across the title and they never ship it because they never complete it. Don’t do that. Start simple. A nice leather-bound binder, your company’s logo on the front, then think of it like a book. You have a title and cover page naming your proprietary process. You have a table of contents sharing each of the worlds you help with.
At Triad, we coach to a CFP standard financial plan that includes five worlds. So, with this example, your table of contents would include five chapters, one for each world you help with in the financial plan. And in each chapter, you may have a sample of some of the more common issues you see with clients and high-level strategies you commonly use to fix these problems. That is enough to start.
Added bonus, visuals are great to help simplify. So, if you have common frameworks, we coach and teach a number of them at our sales lab here at Triad. Make sure to include those as well. Also, make sure the sample plan has the investible asset levels of those you want to serve and are most equipped to serve. It goes without saying that if your ideal prospect is 1 million plus of investible assets, you wouldn’t use 250k examples in your binder.
Now, I know some of you are sitting there thinking, Brad, we live in a digital world. Everything’s a PDF now. Why would I print anything when I can just screen share my financial planning software on the TV in my conference room? Because it’s not for you, it’s for them. Your client demographic grew up in an analog world. My mom and dad still read a physical newspaper because when you physically hand someone something, you create a moment a screen can’t create. You’re saying, this is real. We can build this for you.
When we started coaching around the use of a physical financial plan, allowing prospects to see a sample during the seminar, then being able to flip through it during a first meeting, the close rates jumped exponentially. Same financial plan, same financial advisor, same meeting process, simply incorporating the physical example of what you can build for them. Different results.
Okay, let’s get to number three, and this is the one most advisors mess up. Let’s get to how you present the binder in the actual meeting. You can have the most beautiful financial plan in the country, and if you present it wrong, it doesn’t matter. Here’s what most advisors do. Into the first meeting, they slide the folder across the table. They say something like, here’s some strategies to consider. Take a look at it when you get a chance.
Oftentimes they let them leave with it, and that folder is going in the passenger seat. From the passenger seat, it’s going to the kitchen counter. From the kitchen counter, it’s getting buried under tomorrow’s stack of mail. That’s the mistake. This is a sample plan. This isn’t their plan. Never forget the age old saying, you get what you pay for, and this prospect hasn’t committed to anything, let alone becoming a client and you building a plan on their behalf. That binder doesn’t leave your office because it isn’t their plan. It’s an example of some of the concepts that could apply to them and showing them what you are willing to custom build on their behalf.
What good would it do to walk out of an architect’s office with the blueprints to someone else’s dream home? It wouldn’t. So, here’s the move. Here’s the moment that earns the next step and the commitment. At the end of the first meeting, after you’ve identified the issues and concerns they have with their current plan or maybe lack of one, you recap some of the issues you uncovered and reference this sample plan. You hold it up, you slide it across the table. You let them know that the next time you get together, you and your team are going to put together a rough draft of some of the strategies that could apply to help them get from where they are today to where they want to go in retirement. You do this while you’re referencing the binder, even grabbing it, flipping through it, letting them know the next meeting, that once they feel good about that, they’ll be able to decide if building out a custom version of your X, Y, Z financial plan will make sense for them.
One more thing worth repeating, don’t overthink the binder. I’ve seen advisors spend months designing and redesigning something and then never getting it printed because it wasn’t perfect. Get version 1.0 live and in use. Treat it like software. You can always roll out version 2.0, 3.0, and beyond. You won’t know what to improve until it’s in use in the real world. After all, it’s just a rough draft. It’s not the real thing.
Okay, so let’s recap. Here’s what we covered in part one of our three-part series on the visuals that are missing from almost every financial advisor’s meetings. Number one, the why it matters in the first place. Number two, the physical example or sample, and number three, the presentation during the actual meeting.
Hopefully, this one hit home for you and opened your eyes to the power of providing a physical sample of your financial plan. I can tell you with confidence, it works. Also, if this resonated with you and you would prefer to see how this works in person, that’s why we created Triad Sales Lab, where we discuss exactly how this plays out in a real-world appointment setting, how to present this, how to slide it across the table and reference it.
And if you’d like to apply to see if this makes sense for you, we’ve pinned a link below to make it easy. And if you happen to be listening on your favorite podcast player, there will be a link in the show notes. Also, leave a comment if there are any other things you’ve seen resonate to help simplify how you help clients during your appointments. I’d love to see where everybody’s at on this one. And if you got value out of this, hit subscribe. It will make sure the next two parts of this series show up for you as soon as they drop. I promise the next two are just as powerful as this one. With that, thank you for watching, and we’ll see you on the next one.
