Is there a perfect way to start the first financial planning meeting and how important is it?

To quote Bruce Lee, “absorb what is useful, discard what is not and add what is specifically your own.”

Do not take at face value what I am about to say, nor that of the “guru” that offers a paid subscription service.

My truth is based on my thousands of meetings and counting in the first quarter of this century, and your truth is the evidence you gather after testing a “guru’s” musings with your gloves on in the meeting ring.

I get my gloves on every working day, enter the ring and get live meeting practice. If you have read my posts before, you will note I am not here to sell you a subscription and an allegedly easy way of operating that produces great results every time.

The startling stats behind the lack of young planners are partly due to a lack of genuine, conflict-free pro bono support that helps FFPs build genuine ring craft that leads to meaningful action in meetings with other humans.

My problem with the guru subscription types is that potentially they don’t get in the ring very often, usually not at all and in many cases, have not laced up their gloves for a very long time!

Pay special attention to people who still share the battles you face, but pay even more attention to your testing results in your meeting environments!

Ensure you get the right balance between listening to glove wearers versus microphone holders!

So, what is the perfect way to start a financial planning meeting?

The answer, of course, is it depends 🤫

Putting things into context

It depends on the context of your communication with your prospective client before the opening bell of the meeting engagement sounds!

Yes, there is a perfect way, but perfection comes in multiple forms, and context determines the form!

It also depends to some extent on the communication/behavioural style of the person or persons you meet!

The FFP will aim to have a skill set that helps meet a tricky juxtaposition. This is to control the process of a meeting that simultaneously allows the client to control the vast majority of the content!

Please don't believe everything you read. It is possible, and this is what truly puts your client first and will create more depth and meaningful action outcomes in your meetings. This is based on my meeting evidence, which, of course, is less pertinent than the evidence your testing will gather!

Many of your predecessors either simultaneously control the process and content (lead the client to deliver their only offering) or control neither, which is a lose-lose outcome for the planner and client.

The FFP will have the skill set to find balance in their meeting environments, which will help them ascend higher up the ROT to offer more meaningful value and impact in the future.

My evidence tells me it’s good to ask a staple question, but we need to determine whether it's a hard staple or a soft staple and the timing of it. A staple question is a go-to question that consistently proves helpful when starting a conversation.

Risk warning: pre-meeting context may mean it is not appropriate to start with  traditional staple questions, but based on my experience, most of the time, it is!

You will likely have some context that has led to the first meeting being arranged. A hard staple question such as “What would you like to get out of today's discussion?” has the potential to ignore this context and look like you have not paid attention to previous communication.

Your staple question must acknowledge this context, Mrs client; in our previous comms, you said ABC (make sure you use their words, not yours). If this discussion produces good outcomes for you, what will have happened (soft staple)?

Personalised context

The pre-meeting context determines your lead into the staple question. Hence, it is personalised and doesn't look like it has been lifted out of a training manual, but more importantly, it hands over content control to your client, which is essential to climbing the ROT.

To be even more compelling in our communication, our staple question must account for a client's dominant communication and behavioural style. I define compelling communication as seeing the planner saying very little (the client controlling most of the content). If it’s their content, they will own “their action”.

I would encourage all young planners to learn about communication styles to make themselves more compelling in their meeting engagements. I will refer to iMA definitions here.

High Greens (detailed people) and High Reds (dominant direct types) welcome what I call being asked a hard staple question early (bear in mind leading with the context above).  The greens will have prepped for the meeting, and high reds love being handed control of the content baton. For these types, the hard direct staple question of “What would you like to get out of today's discussion?” will be a good way to kick off in my experience.

With a high blue (nurturing team players) or high yellows (fast-paced, enthusiastic and friendly), my truth tells me that it’s good to lead with a soft staple question (example above). Critically, with blues and yellows, the soft staple should only be asked after having a more prolonged, non-invasive, friendly warm-up beforehand (controlling the meeting process).

Leading with the hard staple example above could prove invasive to a blue and a yellow, and you have to earn the right to staple in your opening pleasantries with them, and even then, it must be delivered softly!

Do you send out money focused financial questionnaires and attitude to risk questionnaire’s before meetings🫣? I am confident the FFP will lead with a personality profiler instead.

The staple question often produces answers linked to fear-based and soulless money thinking. I also subscribe to the notion that many people do not know what they really want until they know what’s on the table following a meeting environment that elevates their thinking!

I think it is essential that your meeting environment gives your client's brain centre stage to allow them to dump any money nonsense so we can then use what I call permission to pivot questions so their brain can gravitate to what matters.

In life, we often have to throw up violently to feel better so we can refocus. Your staple question allows your client to throw up violently. They need that stuff cleared out so their brain can gravitate to thinking content that matters.  This is not losing control. It is controlling a meeting process that will allow your client to think well and eventually not vomit.

The second advantage of the staple question is it allows you to gain an understanding of your client's literacy levels. This is not money literacy because, as we know, great financial planning is not about the money 😉.

It is about literacy levels of what constitutes a fulfilled life and money's role in that context. Having this context gives you greater armoury to control the process without robbing the hero (your client) of content control.

These are the two core advantages of staple questions (the above warnings apply). Still, the core benefit is it truly puts your client's thoughts above your agenda, the vital pre requisite to climb high up the ROT that genuinely earns the right to ask permission to give an opinion (advise) that is likely to be acted on to the benefit of your client!

The staple question may make your client vomit soulless money stuff, which has the above benefits, but you will never lose control if you are conscious of a permission to pivot question.

Mrs client, just so I understand you (reflect ABC soulless money stuff), we will address all of these points in time, but do you mind if I ask you some questions about you, your life and your future beforehand?

There are three critical bits to this permission to pivot question with one great outcome. Your client feels heard and valued at an unconscious level.

You don't just pivot. You must ask permission to pivot to get up the ramp of trust.

The question does not smell of money vomit but gets to the essence of what matters (THE LIFE THEY HAVE LEFT).

The great outcome is that the permission to pivot questions will never see you lose control of the meeting process, even if your client’s initial content smells of sick.

With the permission to pivot questions, you have broken out of the safe house of fear-driven money thoughts and hopped the fence into the lush, big open meadow laden with the possibilities for the life they have left!

You have done it without controlling content that inhibits your ability to climb high up the ROT, which, in the end, increases the probability your client will act in tandem with you as an action partnership.

I will leave what you do to control the process and not the content in the lush, big, open meadow for another day, but we must get the start right to find the entrance to the meadow.

You have to pay the toll to get in, and the toll is being high up the ROT depends critically on the approach you take to the start of the first meeting.

Facilitating thinking, feelings and actions that connect people to their human nature, that connect their money to their human nature, requires expertise and meeting environment habits grounded in human nature. We need to be experts in people first before our financial expertise has relevance.

FFP, please spend as much time immersed in that as your technical competence and bring that competence to facilitate perfect meeting starts in different forms.

Paul, how can I run a business without a set top-down meeting process and start?

Excellent financial planning is uniquely personal. It can only be personal if the content is not yours.

If you want to be a 6 out of 10 FFP (granted better than 4), you can have a set top-down meeting process, but if you want to be 8 out of 10 plus, how can you not?🤔

It's time to get your gloves on to test and practice. It's only time in the ring and an analysis of it that will allow you to convert complexity to empowering simplicity!

Future financial planners, so-called gurus, are potentially the past. You are the future, and gathering your own evidence will shape it! Do not lead your clients down the same path, and do not be led yourselves. Just be like Bruce, and in the end, be your unique self. 👍