Brad Johnson: So, it’s the late ‘90s. A commercial comes on TV. There’s an overweight guy on the couch. He’s miserable, cheese puffs by his side. Jump cut. Same guy, six weeks later, shredded, confident, smiling at the camera with his shirt off. Attractive female by his side, of course. You did not need a single word of explanation. The before and after told the whole story in three seconds, and it sold one of the most successful home fitness products in American history, the BowFlex.
Now, do something for me. Think about your last meeting with a prospect and ask yourself an honest question. At any point in that meeting, did your prospect see in a simple visual where they are today versus where they could be in retirement? For almost every advisor I’ve ever asked, the answer is no, and that’s the gap we’re closing today. Welcome to part two of our three-part series on the visuals missing from almost every financial advisor presentation. Today’s visual is, in my opinion, the one that does the most heavy lifting in any appointment process, no pun intended. So, what is it? And more importantly, how do you do it? Well, the simple framework we’re focusing on today is the before and after.
Hey, so as we dive in today, I want to remind you to stick around until the end, where I explain the trap that most advisors fall into who try this for the first time and how to avoid it. But first, here’s why this framework matters. At Triad, we talk a lot about simplifying the complex. We covered that in part one of this series with the physical financial plan, and today’s visual is the next layer of that same idea, and it borrows a move from one of the most successful marketing playbooks in modern history.
Think about every breakout consumer brand you can name: Bowflex, Peloton, Weight Watchers, Invisalign, Proactiv. Almost every one of them has done this one thing extremely well. They simplified the complex. They showed you where you are and they helped you envision where you wanted to go, and they made the contrast between these two worlds undeniable. So, in case you haven’t figured out the framework we’re discussing today, it’s the concept of the before and after, or as I like to explain, a snapshot of where you are versus where you want to be.
Back to the BowFlex commercial, there is no complicated slide deck. There is no product spec sheet. There is no 10-minute explanation of the pulleys and the resistance. There is a fat, sad guy. There is a fit, happy guy. The path to get from one to the other is their product. That’s it. That’s the entire pitch, and it sold billions.
So, how does this apply to the world of financial advising? Well, look at how we typically sell financial advice in our industry. Most advisors lead with complicated. They lead with multiple decision points, their spreadsheets, their complicated software, their jargon and acronyms. They lead with everything except the one thing that would actually simplify the path forward, a simple way to get where they want to go. The transformation, the bridge between before and after, I’ll be honest, this is something we coach advisors on now at Triad because for years, our industry missed this. We’d send advisors into a first meeting with brochures and stacks of information, and we’d watch the close rates plummet because nobody hires a financial advisor who creates more complexity. Nobody.
They hire a financial advisor because they want to get them from where they are today to where they actually want to be in retirement. And when you can show a prospect visually what their life looks like today versus what it could look like with your help, you stop being a salesperson, and you start being a solution that bridges those two pictures. You become the answer to a question they’ve been asking themselves for years. That’s the why.
Okay, let’s get to how you incorporate the before and after into your appointments. Okay, so how do you start to apply this? Let’s make this tangible so you can build a version 1.0 of this ideally by the end of the week. Remember, left side before, right side after. A big bold header at the top of each example. Don’t be subtle. The whole point is contrast. In the before example, let’s list the prospect’s current situation, things like retirement income plan, unknown; tax exposure, unmanaged; legacy plan, outdated or nonexistent. The current snapshots need to be fact-based and objective versus opinions. That’s the before column. That’s where most of your prospects walk in. Honest, concrete, a little uncomfortable to look at. That’s the point. The discomfort is the reality.
Now to the afters. Same categories, new answers. Retirement income plan, preview of being mapped to the dollar. Tax exposure, potential strategy sequenced over 20 years. Legacy, current and aligned with family needs. Same list, two completely different worlds. And a quick coaching note. At Triad, we coach our advisor members to map their before and after categories to the five worlds of a CFP standard financial plan: income, investments, taxes, healthcare, legacy estate. That way, the snapshot is doing double duty as a preview of how comprehensive your planning actually is.
And here’s the power of the before and after. You don’t have to say a word. The page does the work. Now, a couple of practical notes on presenting this. Ideally, you want this to be as simple as possible, and financial planning software does not always make this easy. I’m going to go through a few examples of e-money on the screen here, both here and here, and it’s going to hit the concept. But actually, I think there’s still room for improvement on these visuals.
Okay, example number one. So, over here, we’ve got the before, and this is a concept of the probability of success in e-money, which is essentially showing them will their money last as long as they do. So, it’s showing their retirement account, it’s showing longevity, and essentially, we’re trying to make sure their money lasts as long as they do. You can see on this one up here, there’s only a 30% probability of success on that.
And I would say most retirees are not going to feel super confident. This is kind of like the guy sitting on the couch with the cheese puffs, you’re not feeling really good about that scenario. But now, we start to look at, hey, the team put together a rough draft of a strategy that we’ve used, and over here, we’re at 86%. And as we look at this, the concept of probability of success is will we get there with no changes or adjustments along the way, feel much more confident about 86%, and then you can have the conversation with the prospect in that meeting. Are you okay with that? Or do we want to get that a little higher? Do we want to get that in the 95% range? And so, now you’re already starting to have an interactive way to co-create the plan and the strategies to get them where they want to go. But it’s really easy to see 30%, 86%. Give me that one.
Okay, let’s get to example number two. In this one, the before, essentially, it’s just paying taxes as they hit without really any sort of a tax strategy. One of the things we talk about a lot, do you have a tax planner or do you have a tax preparation person? And tax prep is you drop the docs off at the end of the year, they tell you how much you owe. Tax planning is looking at proactive strategies to get ahead of this problem. So, as we think about it here and we look at the numbers, we are paying over $1.7 million in taxes with this planning or, quite honestly, this lack of a plan.
So, as we look at the after, there’s a couple of things I want you to focus on. Number one, you’re strategically building out a plan to bump up to the top of the tax brackets, but also, you’re saving them over their projected lifespan, $367,000 in taxes. And so, the question would be, if I was working through this before and after in an actual meeting, would you prefer lack of a plan and $367,000 going to Uncle Sam? Or if possible, with proper tax planning, would you prefer that goes back into your retirement or back to your heirs?
And obviously, if you ask somebody that in a meeting, that’s a really easy answer. I don’t think anybody’s going to say Uncle Sam on that one. But now because of the visuals, you can show them the before, their current lack of strategy, and the after. And here’s the thing, “But how do you do it?” “I don’t know. You haven’t asked me to build out the plan.” These are just a couple strategies in a rough draft my team has put together, and this is the range of reality of what we feel very comfortable we can start to accomplish if you were to choose us and our team to start to strategically put this plan together for you.
The other thing I would make sure to hit on is the after. Look at the after-tax, what’s left in the portfolio? Over $8 million. Over here, 7.2. So, that’s a dramatic difference with proper tax planning, not only in the tax savings, but in the growth that occurs along the way if those are put back into the portfolio versus going to paying taxes.
Okay, and in this last example, it’s actually a before and after all on one page. And the biggest one, this is really around legacy and with proper strategy, being able to leave an additional $2 million to their heirs. And so, I want you to see these aren’t honestly the most simple visuals, but see how much simpler you can make just with the before and after examples here and being able to talk through them high-level strategy without getting down into the weeds, and that’s the key.
I want to go back to that BowFlex. How much, like the unhappy, overweight guy versus the shredded, fit guy, how much can we replicate that same scenario when we talk to planning opportunities or moving from a lack of a plan to a strategic plan when it comes to the things that matter in retirement? Also, it’s really key in the second meetings to frame these as a rough draft of some of the planning that’s possible as, at this point, the client hasn’t committed to working with you.
Also, it’s great to reference the physical binder of your financial plan we talked about in part one of this series, as these are great examples of some of the concepts you could have in the binder for the problems you help solve in your planning process. And it’s key to reference these throughout the meeting. These are the types of solutions that will be built right into your plan. Now the binder isn’t just information. The binder has their transformation built right into it.
Okay, let’s get to the trap to avoid when presenting this, and this is the one that wrecks the before and after for most advisors who try it the first time. The most common way advisors blow this is they make the before column feel like an attack on the prospect. Don’t do that. The before column is not, “Here’s everything you did wrong.” The before column is, “Here’s what nobody ever told you to think about.” Big difference. Don’t make your prospects feel like they are in the before column because they’re stupid or the advisor they chose to work with is. They’re in the before column because nobody ever sat them down and walked them through a better way.
Most of your prospects and clients are smart, successful, accomplished people. They built a business. They raised a family. They diligently saved. The reason their retirement plan isn’t dialed in isn’t a character flaw. It’s that nobody helped them build with a proper blueprint. So, when you walk them through the before column, the tone is empathy, not judgment. You sit next to them. You say things like, “Congratulations, you’re normal. This is a problem we see often.” That is collaborative language. The minute it shifts to, “Well, you really should have done this 15 years ago,” the momentum dies. You’re no longer a guide. You’re a critic. And nobody hires a critic.
Here’s the other trap. Don’t oversell the after. The after should be presented in confident, specific, real language. You do not promise outcomes you can’t deliver. The after is not a “you’ll be rich.” The after is not “you’ll never worry about money again.” The after is “here’s the clarity, here’s the structure, here’s the decision-making framework. Here’s the team you’ll have in your corner.” Also, it’s okay to help them be excited and inspire them towards what’s possible. Oftentimes, how they’ve accumulated the money was to save. Now, you can inspire them to spend and enjoy what they’ve earned. And remember, the last T-shirt, it doesn’t have a pocket on it. You can’t take it with you. That’s the honest after to help not only serve them but inspire them.
And one more thing, and this one ties this whole framework together. Back to the BowFlex commercial, the fit guy in the after picture, in reality, he never gets there by just buying the BowFlex. He actually has to use it. The BowFlex, no different than a great financial plan, is just a tool. Do you know how many BowFlexes were purchased and then simply became an eyesore or a handy place to dry some laundry? That’s no different than a financial plan that isn’t implemented.
Now, imagine that same BowFlex came with a personal trainer who served as an accountability partner to help you show up, who had a simple workout strategy to follow and was a motivator to keep you on track along the way. That is your job as a financial advisor. Yes, you must simplify, hence the power of the before and after. It’s also the partnership of being the guide along the way to help keep them on track. You’re not just selling them the after picture, you’re selling them the relationship that gets them there. That is what every great financial advisor presentation should do. Show them the before, show them the after, show them you and your approach bridge the gap. The minute they can see themselves in the after, that is the path to a new client.
Okay, let’s recap. Here’s what we covered in part two of our three-part series. Number one, the why, why before and after is the most persuasive visual format ever invented. Number two, the before and after snapshot, how visuals can simplify the complex. And number three, the communication trap. Empathy for current situation, excitement for the future, you and your process in the middle as the bridge.
So, hopefully, this one hit home for you and opened your eyes to how you can use visuals to better communicate the value you can provide. And hey, one favor to ask before I go, if you’re watching on YouTube, click share, send this to a financial advisor friend this can help. Not only will it help them, but it’s going to help our channel get found by other advisors it can serve. Thanks for watching, and we’ll catch you on the next one.
