Asking appropriate, intelligent financial planning questions is a core element of the financial planning process.
Yet an easy mistake to make is trying to memorise questions to ask clients.
Why is this?
Because effective, heartfelt, and powerful communication is intuitive, natural, and conversational rather than memory based.
So, what can you do? This article explores a simpler and easier approach to asking financial planning questions.
The problem with trying to memorise questions
The primary reason I stopped trying to memorise questions to ask clients was that it often caused me to over-think.
If this happened then instead of being present and fully responsive to my client I was thinking too much about the questions I wanted to ask. For example:
*What should I ask?
*When should I ask it?
*What is the next question?
*Am I doing this in the right way?
And so on…
One of the problems with speaking from memory, like trying to remember specific questions, is that there is little feeling behind the words. This creates a barrier to human connection and tends to be disengaging for a client.
I found it is far better to know the direction I wanted to go in, but without trying to remember specific questions.
In this way you can have an extremely high quality of attention on your client and allow your questions to be intuitive rather than memorised.
This makes the process of gathering soft facts conversational and highly engaging for a client rather than like an interrogation.
A simple yet highly effective financial planning questions formula
Imagine you meet with a potential new client or even an existing one and your aim is to understand them and gather all the information you need to create a highly compelling financial plan.
A simple question formula that works well is this:
*Why are you here?
*Where are you now?
*What do you want?
*What is the goal behind the goal?
*What could stop you?
‘Why are you here?’ is an important and respectful question to ask because otherwise you are going to be making assumptions. Also, you want to allow a client to clear their mind and unburden themselves. You would probably want to soften this question. For instance, by asking ‘What’s on your mind?’
‘What do you want?’ explores the future and helps your client clarify what they want and set meaningful goals.
‘Where are you now?’ is not only a picture of the current situation but also explores how they got there (including attitudes, beliefs, and relationship with money).
‘What is the goal behind the goal?’ is an exploration of the emotional values behind a goal or destination. Ultimately, this is always what someone ultimately wants. (read ‘What two things are clients REALLY buying).
‘What could stop you?’ provides the opportunity to anticipate and deal with potential obstacles before they become a problem.
Making it simple
The intellectual mind loves to make things more complex. It likes to chunk things down into more and more parts. But complexity does not make things easier.
I have seen many financial planners create a long list of questions they want to ask client. Yet whilst the intention is good, it can easily lower the tone of meetings.
Albert Einstein said, ‘Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.’
By using the simple financial planning questions formula you can gather the information you need without trying to remember lots of questions.
Ultimately, having less on your mind allows you to be fully present and responsive to your client. It brings communication to life and creates better client outcomes.
P.S. Do you want to become a master of asking great questions? If so, check out the exciting new resource, ‘Financial Planning Power Questions’.
