#FASuccess Ep 088: Learning A More Genuine Sales Conversation Approach To Better Turn Prospects Into Clients with Nancy Bleeke

What You’ll Learn In This Podcast Episode

• How to frame sales to get comfortable with selling. [09:34]
• The most valuable sales tool we have. [16:45]
• How Nancy helps advisors get better at sales conversations. [31:17]
• The difference between good prep and preparation that is not effective. [43:22]
• What makes a major difference with someone’s comfort level and how much they trust you. [1:02:12]
• Your primary competition as an advisor. [1:04:52]
• Key questions to ask a prospect throughout the meeting process. [1:14:18]
• How advisors tend to oversell—and how to avoid this mistake. [1:22:52]
• What Nancy does to help advisors learn an effective conversation framework [1:30:20]
• The common mistakes financial advisors make when trying to sell comprehensive plans. [1:35:35]
• Nancy’s three-step finish for closing a meeting to sign on new clients. [1:41:19]

Resources Featured In This Episode:

• Nancy Bleeke
• Sales Pro Insider
• Genuine Sales
• Conversations That Sell, by Nancy Bleeke
• Pocket Guide to Sales for Financial Advisors
• To Sell Is Human
• Book a Strategy Conversation with Nancy

Full Transcript:

Michael: Welcome, everyone. Welcome to the 88th episode of the "Financial Advisor Success" podcast. My guest on today's podcast is Nancy Bleeke. Nancy is the founder of Sales Pro Insider, a sales training platform for financial advisors that teaches how to better turn prospects into actual clients. What's unique about Nancy, though, is her somewhat non-traditional sales training approach, which isn't about pushing features and benefits and going for the hard close, but simply about having a structure to the conversation that occurs in an approach talk with the prospect to ultimately help them make a decision or take an action at the end. Because the reality is, even if you're in the business to get paid for your advice and not to sell your company's products, you still have to sell someone on the reason why they should hire you and pay your fee in the first place.

In this episode, we talk in depth about Nancy's WIIFT structure to the sales conversation, which is both focusing on the "what's in it for them" of the WIIFT acronym, but also a five-step conversation process of wait and prepare, initiate, investigate, facilitate, then consolidate. The importance of asking more questions to really understand a prospect's context so that you can refine and right-size the information that you give them, and the dangers of giving prospects more information than they actually need in a manner that can just put them into analysis paralysis instead of helping to motivate them to take an action or make a decision.

We also talk about the actual key questions to ask a prospect throughout the meeting process. From setting an agenda with them in advance of every meeting to ensure you're really discussing what they want to discuss, asking what it is that brought them to the meeting to begin understanding what their real problems, opportunities, wants, and needs are, asking prospects for feedback about how your services and proposal sound to them as you describe it to them, and being certain at the end of a meeting to actually ask for their business and making it crystal clear what the next step would be in order for them to proceed.

And be certain to listen to the end, where Nancy explains why the biggest and most common problem that financial advisors make in trying to get new clients is our tendency to try to convince clients that they need a financial plan in the first place, instead of listening to what they actually want and need and relating the benefits of financial planning to their problems and concerns.

And so with that introduction, I hope you enjoy this episode of the "Financial Advisor Success" podcast with Nancy Bleeke.

Welcome, Nancy Bleeke, to the "Financial Advisor Success" podcast.

Nancy: I'm really excited to be here with you, Michael.

Michael: I'm looking forward to this discussion today because we are going to talk about a taboo topic, which is always fun in the podcasting room to talk about things that no one else talks about. We're going to talk about the bad word, "sales." And sales and selling to me... I have a very visceral experience with this myself. As many of our listeners know, I started in the industry straight out of college as a life insurance agent in a sales job. I was a terrible salesperson. Or I guess to be fair, I was a mediocre salesperson and a terrible prospector. So I couldn't even find anybody to get in front of to be a mediocre salesperson. And spent most of the first 10 years of my career doing whatever I could to find a job that would not require me to sell. I didn't mind being with clients and working with clients, as long as I didn't have to sell them and get them on board.

And yeah, I find that attitude has become prevailing in a lot of the industry, particularly for people that are coming in today. We're not coming in to be financial salespeople, we're coming in to be financial advisors and help people. And it took me a long time to have the revelation that, even if you don't want to sell products and you just want to give advice and get paid for advice, you still have to sell. You're just selling yourself and your expertise. You still have to get them to say yes to pay you. It's not actually that different from a product. You're just selling something a little more personal because you're selling yourself. Which means when they say no, it feels more personal, and in some ways, it's actually harder to sell. And so, I'm excited today just to have this conversation of tackling sales as an advisor head on.

Nancy: I'm really excited to talk about this topic too Michael because I was a reluctant salesperson just like you described. And when I was graduating with my bachelor's degree, I was really on high alert that I was not going to go to any job that looked like it could be a sales job. And in one of the interviews, I didn't know what the job was for. It was very mysterious how they positioned it. And I got a phone call right away from the manager who asked me to come to his office in downtown Kenosha, Wisconsin. And I went there, and the first thing you had to do was complete what I realized later was like a sales assessment. And many of the questions were about selling to friends and family. "And how many family members do you have? And are you comfortable talking to them about money?" And of course, I'm like, "No, and no, no."

And so when I went into his office and he was able and I think to quickly look at it and determine, not a chance was I going to be good in sales because it turned out to be life insurance products, I was out of that interview in about four and a half minutes I think.

Michael: I went through the same thing getting drawn in. One of the places I applied for "financial advisor" job, because I didn't understand at the time it was a life insurance sales job with one of the major life insurance firms. And they gave me their whole questionnaire that, in retrospect, was basically trying to suss out my sales skills and my comfort to go through their sales training, and I flunked their quiz because they basically said something… they found a nice way to say it, but it was essentially, "You're too analytical for us to train you, so you're not welcome here." Which at the time I didn't take well because I was all excited to be graduating from college and getting a job and didn't like failing anything.

In retrospect, boy, they were really right. I would not have been good in that sales training because it was what I now know is a very product-oriented company. They did their product sales training and then they sent you out there to sell their product. And I would analyze the heck out of the product and realize it wasn't actually that good of a product, and that would not have gone well. So to their credit, their sales assessment tools were very accurate, but the whole job was sales at the time. Again, I think it soured a lot of people to the industry, as it did you in running far and quickly from that interview and as it did for me that I was I guess stubborn enough or interested enough to stay in the industry but spent a decade trying to make sure I didn't have to be in jobs that would do that.

Only to discover this whole other realm after the first decade or so of my career, which is when you really are confident and proud of your knowledge and your abilities and your skill set to help people, you kind of want to help them. It doesn't feel like selling in the same way. Yes, eventually I need to understand someone's problems and convince them that I can help them and get them to sign a piece of paper to engage me. So it is, in the literal sense, a sales process, but for me now, it's much more of, "I've got this stuff that I do that I know is valuable, why would I not want to tell everybody that I meet about it?" Do it nicely, but, I'm proud I can help people. I want to tell them about it. It's such a different feeling and experience around sales than anything I knew or thought of or even was trained in early on, which was still very, sell the product features and benefits features and benefits.

Nancy: Instead of just having a conversation. And when we look at sales, I mean, and it's funny because I'm a reformed smoker. People that used to smoke and don't are the worst. And me being a reluctant salesperson for eight, nine years then discovering that there is an ethical and comfortable approach to selling that really works. And, like you said, if I really believe that what I'm offering is a value, helping somebody solve a problem, do something better, satisfy a want or a need, then I need to help them make that decision that's going to allow them to get that. And if I'm uncomfortable with selling, I'm not going to get to that part where I really do get to help.

How To Frame Sales To Get Comfortable With Selling [09:34]

And I think what's fascinating in the financial services world is that the sales process can also be helpful and valuable to them as well. Because how often are you working with people, especially if they're a couple, where one of them is much more interested in doing something and you've got that reluctant staller who needs to have help and that couple or family isn't going to get what they need unless you are a guide to help them make a decision? And that's what selling is… it’s helping people, through your conversations, make a decision or take an action that gets them closer to something they want or need.

Michael: You've such a powerful point there in framing sales that way. It truly felt for me like one of those proverbial light bulb above head moments. Like the Eureka moments, when that hit me for the first time. And it was a book I read a number of years ago by Bev Flaxington called "Pocket Guide to Sales for Financial Advisors." And lots of basic sales skills and sales techniques. And one of the things that just really struck me and hit home in the book was this idea of framing sales as, "Look, you have a valuable thing. You shouldn't feel bad about putting it out there to help people with it. If you feel bad about it, you need to find a different company you can work for where you're not ashamed of what you have to sell."

So once you have a thing you're actually proud to give or do or sell or deliver or help clients with, even if you've got a wonderful thing and even if they need it, not everybody realizes that they should do something with this now, right? They're being knuckleheads or they just don't understand the benefit of the value of what you do, or they don't fully understand the problems they've got right now and why they need to change, or all those different reasons why even good, smart, well-intentioned people don't always see the value of something in front of them.

And that the point of selling is not to drag some unwilling person who doesn't want to buy your stuff to buy your stuff, the point is to figure out who actually needs what you have who just might not realize it or isn't at the point to make the decision and take the action yet and help them to make the decision and take the action. And it was very transformative for me to think about it differently that way. "I'm not trying to convince people who don't want to buy my stuff to buy my stuff, I'm trying to help the people who should buy my stuff to get it easier and realize that they need it and how much it will actually help them."

Nancy: To make a confident decision to get that value. That's what we're helping them do. So, the other part is when I think about financial advisors and many of the ones I work with, it's like, you're putting all this effort into more designations, into all of this passive marketing stuff hoping that it's all going to happen. You're going to be out of business soon if you don't get people paying you for what you can do. And they start getting on the trap of doing a lot of pro bono stuff, which I think that's good, but if you're spending more time doing pro bono work with clients that aren't your ideal for later, because clients who are your ideal can connect you to more clients that are your ideal, you're not going to succeed and be able to have the revenue that you need to support yourself, your family, your business. And so tackling this inner belief around what selling is and, "It's not what I went to school for. It's not why I went into financial planning. My parents would be embarrassed if I was a salesperson." We need to get over that, because it's what's getting in the way of helping more people.

Michael: Yeah. And at the end of the day, at an even more basic level, particularly when we're in the advice business, never mind just "the sale" of, "Hey, you've got to sign this engagement letter to say that you'll hire me and pay me some dollars," if you're going to give the client advice and just have them actually follow the advice and implement the advice, you still have to sell the advice. We don't tend to think of it in a sales context, but all the things you would do to persuade a client to actually implement what you're recommending that they implement is still a persuasive sales technique. It's still a sale. So, even if you don't want to focus on the selling aspect of trying to get them to hire you, there's still a selling aspect of just what you're doing in the literal action of giving advice and trying to get clients to take the advice.

Daniel Pink had a book a couple of years ago called "To Sell Is Human" that just was entirely that theme of, everything that anybody does in any kind of professional services realm, and really most of what we do in any job, has a massive component of sales. Whether you're convincing the clients, convincing your employees, convincing your peers, convincing your boss, whatever it is, it's just the essence of all of it is using your skills to persuade someone to make a decision or take an action. And obviously, you can do that in good ways and bad ways. So we're going to talk about the good ways here and not the bad ways. Use the force for good and not evil.

Nancy: Yeah, Daniel Pink's book came out about weeks I think before mine did. So I devoured his book, and I'm like, "Right on, Daniel. Right on. I totally think that everyone is selling." And I think you just gave that clarification that I mentioned earlier that it's not just about getting buy decisions, it's about getting people's commitment. And when I hear advisors talk about they've got people that have signed agreement and then they go dark and don't answer anything for months and months, some of them have even made their first payment or set up the payment service and then just go dark and don't respond to anything and don't take action to get in the documents and information they need to so the work can really begin, that's someone who made a decision but isn't committed to the actions, which then is another conversation to figure out what's in the way? What's those barriers that are fears, usually, keeping them from doing something?

Michael: And so you did a book around this theme. You have a training program around this theme, which is why I wanted to have you here on the podcast to talk about it. So tell us a little bit about the trainings and what you do in helping folks like me, particularly me then, although I'm sure I could still use the help now, of getting better at sales and sales conversations.

The Most Valuable Sales Tool We Have [16:45]

Nancy: Well, it is. It's about the conversation. And so our training and my book is called "Conversations That Sell." And it's about how we can use our conversation as the most valuable tool we have in selling. And that means that's us being able to engage in an information exchange - that's what a conversation is… like we're doing - that has a purpose and is moving somewhere. And a conversation is productive when there is a desired outcome. And it's not just our outcome, it's a joint collaborative outcome.

And so our approach goes beyond “consultative selling.” Everyone's heard that over the years. And in today's world, people are so much better educated, or they have access to so much more information for anything they want to do. And that’s slowed down people's decision-making as far as time, and it's also made people second-guess whether it's the right decision. They get stuck in analysis. Because if I do this, if I decide to work with Michael, well, wait, there's these other 12 people that I've liked their blogs or I've liked this. And have I really vetted them out? And they get paralyzed then to do anything.

Michael: Yeah, that's the infamous paradox of choice. We say we want more choices and then we get more choices and then we feel like we have to analyze and research them all, and then we're so afraid we're going to make the wrong choice that we don't actually make a choice, specifically because we had so many of them that it bogged us down.

Nancy: And right. So going back to that value that we bring along the selling process, it's helping people sort through the information they already have and that we might be sharing with them to focus on what's most important and cut out the other clutter so that they can confidently make their decision or take an action. So, the approach is collaborative, that we're doing this with somebody. And that using our conversation, we're asking the questions that let us know, "What do they already know?" Because when you're especially selling financial services, you do know more than probably the people you're talking to in most aspects of finance, but you don't know what they know unless you give them a chance to tell you. So you can easily oversell or do, and Alan Moore and I debate about the pitch. You've got to pitch. Well, people don't like to be pitched at.

Michael: And we don't like to be pitched at because we inevitably at some point in the pitch get stuck in the like, "You're telling me things I already know. This is getting boring. Now it's really annoying because you're just blathering on more about things that I already know and I can't even get a word in edgewise to tell you that I already know this stuff, which is making the whole conversation less relevant for me. So now I'm tuning it out and thinking about the baseball game I'm going to tomorrow. And now you've completely lost me and I'm not listening to anything that you're saying any more about your sales pitch."

Nancy: "I'm just trying to get out of here. Like, let me out. Where's my exit? Where's my escape hatch? Let me out of here." And I think you hit it on the head about, “It's not relevant.” And we can be irrelevant so easily if we don't first seek to understand information about them.

And it's funny, even in this last month or so, some of the advisors I've been talking with will talk about how their first meeting is them telling the prospect their process. And I'll say, "Did they give you permission for that? Did you earn the right for their time and attention to care about what your process is? And as you're explaining your process, are you focused on the pieces that are going to be important to them?" So if you're talking and your process is heavy, helping them plan for retirement, but the people in front of you really have debt concerns, you're not talking their language. You're not talking what's relevant. And they're going to immediately not start seeing value. And then when you present your holistic approach, for those that present that, they're going to start saying, "Well, I don't need that part and that part and that part, therefore your fees are too much. So let's take out some of those things and reduce the fees and then maybe I can work with you." So we set it up to be this disconnect.

Michael: That's a really interesting point about how I think a lot of us struggle with selling comprehensive planning and the value of comprehensive planning, that we talk about, "What we're going to do is holistic and we're going to cover everything together." And then clients come back with, "Well, I don't actually need this part and that part, so can I have 40% off my fee since I don't want 40% of the stuff that you just listed?" And that we basically set ourselves up for it by overselling holistic. I've joked about this on some of our other podcasts as well. We like to sell holistic financial planning. I've never actually met a single person who woke up in a cold sweat at 2:00 in the morning saying, "I've got to get a holistic financial plan. When I wake up in the morning, I'm going to take care of this."

I mean, you might wake up in the middle of the night like, "I'm freaked out because my spouse is sick and I don't know what the medical bills are going to do to us," or, "I'm freaked out because I just realized my kid is going off to college in 18 months and I don't know if we're going to be able to afford this," or, "I'm thinking about retiring soon and I just want to know if I can afford that." There are absolutely money issues that keep us up at night, that wake us up, that drive us to action to say, "I've got to get some help for this."

And I might not even realize I need more help than just this, so you can get me there to the broader thing. But no one wakes up in the middle of the night that says, "Oh my God, I have to get a comprehensive financial plan. I'm going to find me one of those when I get up in the morning." And so if that's what we're selling, even if it's valuable and even if it's relevant, we're failing that selling framing that you had said, which is, we're not offering the thing that's either relevant to them or framed in a way that's relevant for them. So we're not doing much to help them make a decision or take an action. Ironically, I think we actually...

Nancy: We're making it complex. And I think that this collaborative approach is about making it easy for them along the whole path. Make it easy for them to be able to share information that lets us know, I would say lets us uncover their problems, opportunities, wants, and needs around finances, but also helps them discover some clarity about their own situation.

And whenever you're dealing with more than one person, if you're dealing with family situations or couples, they're not always going to be on the same page, so you start adding value and clarity by the questions that you're asking and what you're getting them to talk about. And then that is where you can...when you learn that information is then when you can position. It doesn't mean you do your service different, but what's going to help them make a decision is maybe 3 or 4 of the points, not the 16-point process that you take.

Or my favorite is when people, "Well, I let them know that we're having four meetings a year," and blah, blah, blah, about their fees. And I'm like, "Do they care that they're having four meetings a year?" They might be thinking, "Gosh, that's a lot of time I'm going to have to spend with you." And the number of meetings a year is not what's valuable, it's what's happening during that meeting and before and after that has value to it, not the number of meetings. So that's one example. If we focus on a specific nuance that we think is what justifies our fees, it probably doesn't because it's not focused on the connection of what's in it for them? What's the real value there? It's a list of those features that can bog down. And now I can start comparing, "Well, you have four meetings. If I go with so-and-so I have unlimited this and I have..." They start comparing the wrong things.

Michael: Well, and you have a good point that, at the most basic level, I've been guilty of this in client approaches as well, of talking about things like,"We're a really deep service firm and we meet with our top clients like you on a quarterly basis." And I still remember I had one of those that came up a number of years ago now. And we're here in the D.C. Metro Area, so our traffic is horrible. We're usually one of the top three worst traffic cities every year behind maybe LA and Atlanta. And we were talking the client about how it was going to be a fairly affluent client. So, "Here's our high-touch service, the great things that we do at the firm. And you would be a client that we would meet with four times a year."

And I could see him reacting negatively to that and fortunately managed to have the presence of mind of just saying, "You seem negative about four meetings a year. Why are you unhappy?" And he said, "It took 40 minutes to get here in traffic. The thought of doing that four times a year sounds horrible." And we're selling the high-touch service of, "You get to meet with us four times a year," and he's hearing, "I have to sit in D.C. traffic four times a year to come work with you." And we were getting further from working with him. What he actually really loved was quarterly phone calls where he didn't have to get in the car and come see us, right? So we took the one thing that we thought was one of our best selling points of, "The extra value we add for our A clients is that we meet with you four times a year instead of two times a year," and it was a negative for him.

Nancy: Negative. Yeah.

Michael: And the only reason we caught it was, he's one of those people that just wears his emotions on his sleeve and is very visual in everything that he does. He couldn't hide how negatively he took the four meetings a year. So that was the only reason we caught. We certainly, never to that point, had ever said, "We normally meet with our clients like you four times a year, how does that sound?" We would just talk about as like, "Well, this is clearly an awesome feature. We're high-touch. We meet with you more often." And it was only literally seeing someone react that negatively to it to ever realize, "Oh, this thing we sell as one of our major features is not at all relevant for some of our clients. In fact, it's a negative for some of them." And we'd never asked them, "How often would you like to meet for this to be a useful advisor relationship?"

Nancy: What a different question, right? Than giving them the pitch of your features that you said the words, "What we think is important." And so in holistic planning or even if you're selling financial products, there's a lot of different features that come along with what you're providing. And we can overcomplicate that because most people, 80% of that, will not matter to them making a decision. So we can easily oversell, make it complex, and stall them from making a decision.

So this whole "make it easy." Make it easy. We have to make it easy for them to share the information that's going to be valuable, we have to make it easy for them to learn from us what we can offer that's important to them, and we have to make it easy for them to talk about, from what we've described, what is valuable. What are they most excited about? What are their concerns? So, we call it the Four Points. In the investigation, when we have to learn information, we have to find about, "What is going on with them today?" And today includes their background of what's their experiences? What have they done?

We also have to find about what's that future state, the tomorrow? So today, tomorrow. When we're looking to learn information, if we can get what we call the whole story before we start launching into the specifics of what they're going to get, we then can very much connect exactly what's going to be important for them in making the decision. And that's where the expertise of knowing your world helps. Because you've got to quickly be able to I call it right-sizing. I've got to be able to adjust the amount of information, the type of information, and very specifically, the data points that this prospect needs to hear that's going to help them see the value and not overcomplicate it with things that are going to come along, and be maybe pleasant surprises later, but aren't necessary for them to make that decision.

Michael: It's an interesting point of, just the whole idea of right-sizing the information you're giving prospects. What data points do they actually care about that will drive their decision? And eliminate the rest. Or I guess I'm compulsively transparent, it's like maybe I'll give it to them in a supplement or a takeaway or something they can look at it later if they want.

Nancy: Exactly.

Michael: I don't want to hide all the other stuff that we're really proud that we do. But you don't have to beat them over the head with features and benefits and stuff that you do that they just don't actually care about anyways.

Nancy: “Knowledge experts.” That's what I call the different professional services, right? You're an expert and have knowledge on something. And so we want to educate and tell, and we can oversell so easily and, again, confuse. And confusion in a prospect means no decision. It's got to be easy.

Michael: So you talked about this framing of like four points to get up to speed on a client story.

How Nancy Helps Advisors Get Better At Sales Conversations [31:17]

Nancy: Right. Okay, so let's start at the beginning of a conversation, okay? Because that's what we do is we..."Conversations That Sell," the book, and our training really helps people put together what a complete conversation and sales process needs to be. And there's adjustments based on the people and situation and all that. But conversations are always going to be more productive if you've prepared. So we work off of this acronym, "what's in it for them," and then we call it the WIIFT. So what's in it for them? If everything any of us do is always focused on what's in it for them, for whoever that other party is, it could be an existing client that you're trying to help make commitments and follow through on actions or prospects, but if we frame everything that we explain, connect it to what's in it for them, it's all going to be easier. So we need to prepare for that. We need to be ready for, "Who are we meeting with?" We have to stop our distractions. We have to not be multitasking.

And I would say there's two levels of preparation. There's the preparation you can do in advance, which is on...you can do it on paper, on screen, where you map out, "What's the objective? How am I starting the conversation? What's the information that I need to learn about their problems, opportunities, wants, and needs? What's the information I need to know that's going to help me then be able to make that recommendation? So what are the questions I need to ask? What's the possible recommendations I might be making? And if I'm going to recommend a holistic service or I'm going to recommend this, what's the value connection? What are the objections or fears that might come up? And then how am I going to effectively work with that?" So I can map out the conversation. And I can do that days in advance or a week in advance for upcoming meetings.

And then there's the powerful pause right before engagement. Whether you're picking up a phone, you're walking into a place where they're going to be, or they're entering your domain. And it can be 15 seconds or it could be 5 minutes, but it's you refocusing on what's coming and these people and eliminating your other preoccupation. Because if you engage preoccupied, you can't help them break their preoccupation when the exchange starts. Because let's just say people like you said coming into your D.C. office, they have just been through who knows what to get there, right?

Michael: It takes 10 minutes just to work off the latent road-rage by the time you go through our traffic.

Nancy: Well, and actually, there's research that the best predictor of someone's behavior in the 20 minutes, in the next 20 minutes, is what has happened to them in the last 20 minutes. It's a recency impact. So you can expect that when you are initiating contact with the person, scheduled or not, you don't know what's going on because you don't know what just happened in the last 20 minutes to them.

Michael: Interesting. So should I ask that? Well, I guess that's part of...

Nancy: That's part of the initiation is...

Michael: Like, "How was your drive coming into the office?" So at least if they say, "Oh my God, it was horrible," I know we need to just drag this out a little bit because they're not going to be in a good mental state for a few minutes here.

Nancy: Exactly. And those people that have a receptionist or someone that greets people, it's training them to help break that and help that person kind of get into the present. That's what you're trying to do. So if you're preoccupied, it's hard for you to be present and be paying attention to what they need at that time to make those adjustments.

Or someone it took them longer to get there, we could use that example, it took them longer to get to your office and they had a finite amount of time with you, now they're pressed for time because they have to get to something. Get kids somewhere, whatever their commitment is. And they're also worried about their departure and what that's going to look like. So now they're preoccupied with, "Oh, man, this was scheduled for 90 minutes, we now have 75. If I sit around and chit chat too much, I'm not going to be able to get to the things that are important to me." And they want to speed things up. And if we miss that and not be able to help them settle in and gain agreement on the objective and confirm the amount of time we have so that we can get them to be in this open information exchange, we're fighting a losing battle in that first 20, 30 minutes. So that preparation has to be so important. Again, beforehand on paper is sketching out everything, but that mental pause to get your head ready to help them once the engagement starts. So that's where it starts.

And then when we start a conversation, so preparation, it's funny, I just was working with a group this week and no one will disagree that preparation is important, but they have all kinds of reasons why they can't… all kinds of reasons or excuses. And so, just even that practicality of, "How do we set up that discipline?"

Michael: Right. Just setting buffers between your meetings.

Nancy: Yes.

Michael: If you've got a 3:30 meeting, don't schedule something else right up until 3:30 or 3:20 even because you're not going to have enough time to come out and get in the right mental state. I got to the point quickly where I just started buffering 30 minutes between any time I was doing multiple client or consulting meetings. It took 10 minutes to decompress from the last meeting and jot my notes or whatever it was. It took 10 minutes just to grab a drink or walk to the water cooler or whatever. And then 10 minutes to sit down and just get refocused on, "Okay, the next meeting coming up is this client and here's what we've got to talk about. And okay, here's what I have in the agenda." And just, like...

Nancy: Do I have everything I need, right?

Michael: ...getting my head back into the game for the meeting that was coming up.

Nancy: And that is absolutely a best practice is in scheduling your buffer, your post-meeting time, your pre-meeting time.

One of our clients in Toronto, he really took issue with that. That just wasn't necessary. Their meetings are back-to-back. Other people get things together, etc. But he's like, "I'm going to test how important this is." And he came back after a few weeks because the course is 10 weeks long and he said, "It's a game changer." That was what he said, "It's a game changer." That's one of those simple practices that we get in our own way.

But the other thing is that when we're looking at meetings, thing is a big thing I see people do, "Our first meeting is this amount of time." Like, they've determined, "It's this amount of time." Well, for the situation, we first need to look at, "What is the agenda? What is the objective? And what is this person's tolerance?" And based on that, how long does this meeting need to be?

So another client of ours, they had standard 60-minute meetings, and so we challenged them to instead of always scheduling 60 minutes, to look at, "What did the agenda dictate as far as the amount of time?" And so many more meetings are being done virtually. So you don't need...maybe you needed 60 minutes or 90 minutes when they came in because there was the getting the coffee, there was all these other things that don't happen virtually. So they can be more time-compact. Anyway, they started making adjustments and they found that they could do 80% of their meetings in 45 minutes instead of 60. Look at that efficiency that was gained by thinking about that.

Michael: Yeah, I know when we started doing more virtual meetings with clients using video chat or GoToMeeting firm, and as we started doing more of that with clients, we had a ton of meetings that started falling from hour-long meetings, which is our standard on the schedule as well. An hour if it's a short meeting, an hour and a half or two hours if there's stuff and it's a long meeting. But we never schedule anything less than an hour. And part of that was just, again, traffic is so bad here, it's going to be 30-plus minutes each way in traffic to get to our office even if they only live 8 or 12 miles away. So, if it's a one-hour round trip drive to come in and back, you can't have a less than one-hour meeting.

Nancy: Oh, yeah.

Michael: It doesn't work, right? At some point, you can't convince clients and say, "Hey, spend an hour round trip in the car to come in for this 27-minute meeting." If you do that, it's the last time they're coming in for a meeting because they're going to say, "That was a waste of my time. It was an hour and a half out of my day for 27 for minutes in your office." But when we schedule video meetings and virtual meetings, the meeting just tends to run its natural course, right? As you said, there's a little bit less of the chit chat and stuff, right? Because I don't need to spend as much time just warming them up while they dial down the road rage. I'm making D.C. sound horrible. It doesn't take them as long to kind of wind down their trip in and get going into where we are. We can talk about the stuff that we need to talk about.

And then when the meeting is done, it's done, right? Even for a client that came in for an hour meeting here's always the infamous saying, "Meetings tend to expand to fill their allotted time." Hour meetings pretty much always ran an hour, give or take a little, but if there was really only 20 or 30 minutes of stuff to talk about and we did it as a video meeting, no one ever complains when a video meeting ends early. No one complains when a conference call ends early. No one complains when a meeting ends early, unless you drove to that meeting and invested a lot of time in that meeting, and then you start wondering why you committed so much time in the meeting.

And so just restructuring to video meetings, we found the good and bad, a lot of meetings take less time than they used to, but, as I think you sort of indirectly alluded to here, scheduling meetings gets a little more complex now because there's the, "Is this going to be a 30-minute video meeting? Does this need to be a 60-minute video meeting? Is this actually weighty enough we shouldn't do this by video? This should be an in-person meeting. And then is this a one-hour in-person meeting or is this a really big two-hour thing that we've got to get them in with?" So, it does add a layer of complexity beyond just, "We do one-hour meetings here, which of the slots would you like?" I can't do that in this more client responsive meeting approach.

Nancy: Which is another reason for preparation. Because if you really map out what needs to be accomplished, you're going to be able to, again, right-size the meeting time in advance and set the best expectation for that with them. So even if you have a long-standing meeting and then as you're getting ready you realize, "Gosh, also now this popped up, and this popped up, we scheduled 60, we really need 90." Getting in touch with them in advance saying, "In our preparation for our meeting and looking at the agenda, here's what we have. We're going to need more time to make sure that we get everything through and that you have enough time for your questions and etc." And instead of running up to that 60 minutes that they were maybe counting on and then hoping they're still available, or rushing through things in the last 10 minutes trying to get it done in that time frame.

The Difference Between Good Prep And Preparation That Is Not Effective [43:22]

So preparation is really the foundation of increasing your probability of success in your meetings, whether it's a sales meeting or a client meeting, it's the foundation. And it seems so simple, but there's good preparation and then there's less productive preparation that gets us ready.

Michael: The difference being?

Nancy: The difference is a lot of people do their preparation thinking about what they want to say. And they don't do enough preparation thinking about, "What do they need to learn? What do I need to ask? What's going to make this a good outcome for them as well as me? What's the engagement along the way?" So even if I have to explain that to them, information, whether it's in the sale and I'm explaining how we're going to work together, what the process looks like or I'm explaining something specific to the next steps in their plan, planning for, "How do I make this interactive? How do I make this something we're doing together versus me spewing a lot of information toward them?"

And people don't give enough thought to how to make that interactive. You gave an example earlier of, instead of telling them about all of this, about the meeting, the coming in, the guy that had the four meetings, that you could have said, "Well, how many times a year do you think it would be necessary or would make you comfortable that we met about your finances?" Being prepared for those questions versus the talking points. So to me, preparation that's not as effective is a list of your talking points versus a list of the information exchange that needs to happen.

Michael: It's an interesting way of framing. I liked the, "We spend too much time thinking about what we're going to say and not enough thinking about what we need to learn from the client, from the prospect, in the meeting." Yeah, I'm reflecting back to various meetings I've had with clients and prospects recently and, yeah, I still do a little too much what I'm going to say and not enough what I need to learn.

Nancy: It's easy to get in that trap. So, when people talk to me about they're not converting, they've got a low conversion rate or, "I'm getting in front of these people finally. I've done all this work and I'm getting in front of them, and then they're not going anywhere. So I haven't heard a no, they're stuck in limbo. So what do I need to do to close better? What do I need to close better?" And it's like, "It's probably not your close, it's probably what happened before that that didn't give you the information that allowed you to make a compelling summary that made it clear that they needed to take the next step to get what they need."

So going back to this conversation framework, okay, so once we're prepared, we need to initiate our conversations. And initiate is, again, setting up collaboration, helping them break their preoccupation, and coming to this shared agenda. So like our financial advisor, and he's been doing this and we've worked with him coming to 26 years now he'll always say, "Here's what we have, what's going to make this a good meeting for you? Or what's on your list?" And right from the beginning, we're getting to this shared meeting agenda, which gains me permission that they're going to participate and not sit there and be judge and jury with me sharing information that I think is important but I don't know if it's important to them. So we have to initiate and really center, "So why are we here and why is it important to you?"

And this is where people when they first practice the initiate they'll say, "Well, I wanted us to get together because I wanted to share with you how the process works and then I'll be able to tell you." It's this I, I, I, I, I, I, I statements. And we've got to really get to the "we" pretty quickly. So it's, "We schedule this time to..." And then get to that shared agenda. And then it's, "And what that's going to mean for you is that by the time you leave today, you're going to have a clear plan of your next steps. And collectively, we're going to agree on the next time we meet." So we get that upfront agreement on where this is going, which paves the way for the rest of it to go easier.

Michael: Yeah, agendas I'll admit is another one of those things I did not do for years. I just would go into the client meeting with, "We've got our plan. This is the plan presentation meeting. We're going to come in and present the plan." Or, "It's a portfolio review meeting. We'll make sure we have the performance reports prepped and then we'll go in and review the portfolio and try to always remember to say to the client at the end, "Is there anything else that you had questions about today?'" And, at best, it was a throw in at the end. And, for me, I never got the importance from my end of trying to send out agendas in advance and do that. It's a portfolio review meeting. We're going to talk about the portfolio review. I sent the client a meeting confirmation that says "portfolio review" so the client knows it's about a portfolio review. So I don't really need an agenda. We all have kind of said what this meeting is about.

And the thing that never clicked for me was sometimes something has gone on in their life and what they actually want to talk about at their upcoming financial advisor meeting has nothing to do with the portfolio review that was scheduled. Or the plan update or whatever thing it was that we were going to do in our meeting because this is our process, this is the meeting where we do the tax review or the end of year loss harvesting or whatever the thing is. And once we started reaching out in advance to say, "Here was the agenda and what we were going to talk about, is there anything you want to add to this from your end that you want to make sure we cover in the meeting?" And every now and then, the thing clients would reply was something that's like, "Oh, that's way important, more important than what we are going to talk about." And you've just completely sent the meeting in another direction. But, "That's fine. That the thing you actually want to talk about, so that's what we're going to cover."

Nancy: And knowing it in advance helps you be ready to be valuable during that.

Michael: Yes, it's a heck of a lot easier than we would get into a meeting doing a portfolio review or something, it's like, "Well, is there anything else you want to talk about for the last 15 or 20 minutes of my meeting?" Like, "Oh, well, I'm thinking about changing jobs and starting my own firm." Like, "Wow, that's going to be really hard to cover in the 15 minutes we have remaining in this meeting. I wish I'd known about that sooner." And just those kinds of things which to me in the past were either they would derail the meeting or more often was, "Hey, that's a really important thing. Let us know all the information that we need to take in and we will schedule another meeting with you next week. And we will dive into that further." And then we would. We still try to be good service people with the clients that we're working with.

But there were times in retrospect, it's like, "I probably didn't need to have the first meeting to find out at the end of the first meeting that there was something else they really wanted to talk about, which I then turned into a second follow-up meeting. And we probably did more meetings that we needed to here because we didn't just ask in the first place what they wanted to talk about." And just getting into a habit of both a week in advance to say, "Hey, you know, we normally got our portfolio review coming up for the next meeting, I also want to check in on what's going on with your will because you said you were going to update that in the last meeting. And is there anything else you wanted to add to the agenda for us to talk about at the meeting next week?" And it's pretty amazing how much more productive the meetings got just because I knew what was on...

Nancy: Their mind.

Michael: ...top of mind for them, on their mind. And it didn't take long to figure out like whatever they answer to that email, that always goes first on the agenda. Your thing goes second.

Nancy: Imagine that. Yes.

Michael: Their thing goes first. Now that part...I'm slower on these things but that part I figured out pretty quick. And it changes the conversations. And I kind of realized, they were tending to be more engaged because we were talking about the thing that was actually on their mind and not just the routine meeting I wanted to do. With the caveat that as you've kind of alluded to here, you have to schedule more padding for meetings, you have to schedule a little more time. Just, it takes more time to proactively have good meetings. That I think is what I didn't realize of just, "Hey, I've got five hours, we can cram five one-hour meetings in there," boom, boom, boom, boom, boom like the other advisors we were talking about. And this realization that having good meetings takes additional time to make sure it's a good meeting beyond just what you do in the meeting.

Nancy: So one tweak to what you just said, Michael. It doesn't take additional time because we have found in some studies we've done in some firms and other companies that the time for preparation saves time later and in multiples.

Michael: Right. Well, if I took the 10 minutes to have the email exchange that he wanted to talk about changing his job, I would have saved the one-hour meeting we had...

Nancy: Exactly.

Michael: ...that didn't actually cover it in the first place.

Nancy: Exactly.

Michael: Okay. Yeah.

Nancy: It saves time either in the direct meeting or it saves time in the follow-up afterward, in multiples. It is not a one-to-one. So when people say, "I don't have the time to prepare," it's not about having the time, it's about making the time. Because when you make the time to prepare, you're going to be more efficient to have more time to prepare for your other things. And so we get ourselves in this cycle of scrambling more and then having to do I call it the chase and follow-up. So preparation isn't...it isn't extra time. That's just one tweak that I would after what you're saying. Because I've seen it over and over, again, personally and with all the clients that we work with.

Okay, so now we have a set agenda. We have a willing information exchange that's already started as we start a conversation, and then we want to make sure that we confirm time, right? "So we had 90 minutes scheduled, do you have a hard stop?" It's just respectful to just verify that the time frame still works for them. And it also lets you know where you can flex within the meeting. Because somebody, again, the traffic was bad, now they're concerned that they really need to leave 10 minutes earlier than they thought. And so the whole time they might be rushing things and not settling in to share information because they don't want to be the one that doesn't get out the door on time. Or you find out that someone has flex at the end and then allows you maybe to explore something that was unplanned and yet really important.

Michael: So you would ask this, because I'll confess, I did not routinely do this in client meetings, consulting meetings. So you would routinely ask just at the top of the meeting like, "Hey, by the way, we had this on the calendar for an hour," or whatever it is, "Does that still work for you? Do you have any time constraints I should be aware of?" And just put it out there as a check-in.

Nancy: Yes. And people are different. We always talk about...in our world, we talk about tribal types, but you could use DISC, Social Styles. There's different communication preferences. So you've got some people that they are going to be so focused on the time and trying to drive things because they want to make sure you're not going to take more time than needed. So by getting that agreement, again, up front on time, you remove that distraction for them.

Then for the people that are verbose… take can share lots of information, their experience and all that, you're now giving a parameter to that that then 45 minutes into a 90-minute meeting you could say, "Hey, Bob and Joanne, we've got 45 minutes left and 5 agenda items, can we move on to this next one?" You get to use that to manage your meeting. Because even though you're in a joint conversation and collaboration is king, you are still the leader of keeping that meeting productive and moving toward something. So yep, upfront agreement on agenda, upfront agreement on any amount of time, even if you schedule the time, it's just...I think it's a common courtesy.

Michael: Yeah, I mean, I get it, it's a common courtesy. I wouldn't try to not do it because I don't want to have that talking point in the conversation...

Nancy: But don't think about it.

Michael: ...to get their constructive feedback about their time. Yeah, I just don't think about it. It's a presence of mind thing of like, "Okay, here's another thing I've got to remember to do when I'm conducting good meetings." I mean, I think that to me is one of the reasons why it just takes time and experience to get good at this in general for what we do as advisors. Early on in your career, you're so in your own head of just, "Oh God, they asked me a tax question. I need to make sure I give them the right number and don't tell them the wrong IRA contribution limit or a tax rate." We get so stuck on, "I just want to make sure I don't want to give an incorrect factual answer that gets me sued."

Nancy: Going to hurt me. Yeah.

Michael: I don't have the presence of mind to think, "As I answer this question, am I conducting this meeting in an effective manner?"

Nancy: Oh, yeah, that's right.

Michael: You have to get to a certain level of comfort with the rest of your expertise, I think, to get to the point where you can have the presence of mind to then focus on, "Am I running a good meeting? Am I having a good conversation here? Is this going the direction that it needs to go?" And not just be stuck in the, "Oh, they just asked me this." Like, "Oh, what was that rule again? I know I read this." And trying to recall some technical information, because that's what happens when you're still in the learning phase.

Nancy: Well, and I agree with that to a degree because I do think early on, having a framework to your conversation actually helps you settle in and be more comfortable with the exchange. And most people, if they're enjoying their experience, and people enjoy an experience that is focused on them much more than if it's focused on you, even if you can't recall that piece of data that's asked for at the time, you can say, "Let me confirm that so that I get you the right information." And I think for people just starting out, that it's okay to let them know you want to be sure to give them the right information, and so it's a follow-up to them.

Michael: As I put it when we go through some training with advisors in our office, there is a basic level of standard information that clients just kind of expect you to know off the top of your head or they start questioning you as a professional. But when you get to more complex stuff, which comes up in a lot of meetings, it's okay to say, "Hey, let me research that and get back to you. I just want to make sure I give you the right information." That's an okay answer. I don't think less of my doctor because they say, "Hey, I need to research something. I want to make sure these medications don't conflict and then I'll come back and let you know." I'm usually thinking, "Awesome, you do that. I'd like the medications to not kill me." Right? This is not negative. This is like, "Oh, my professional is being super diligent so I don't get harmed. I like this."

Nancy: Right. Right. So, like you said, "Oh, gosh, that's another thing to remember." So that's why, in our training and as we work with people to put together the process, we give this easy-to-remember framework. So in initiating a conversation, it's a three-step start. You need to always greet them. You need to explain why you're connecting, get agreement, and then you need to ask. Meaning, ask about time and ask about personal connection to see are they someone that is going to want to spend time relationship-building or are they someone that's going to want to jump right into the agenda. So, the 3-Step Start, it's just, "Okay, that's what I've got to do at the beginning of every conversation." There's a framework to it. And it doesn't take that much effort once you have that down. And it doesn't take that long. Because if you don't start the conversation well, it makes everything harder going forward.

And so I would say that the real purpose of initiating conversation is to earn the right to get into the information exchange. Because you need people to be giving you information that, again, is going to let you position not in a negative, manipulative way, but in a relevant way what they need to know to understand what you offer so that you can move forward. And so you've got to earn the right for people to share. So a lot of times I hear advisors, they start right off, "Well, what kind of assets do you have?" Is that really the question most people would want to answer right from the get-go? Those are data points.

Michael: I feel like from our end, and this is probably a misconception you'll disabuse us of, but, I mean, I think the mentality from our end, you contacted me and said you want to work with me. You want to hire me to give you advice. In order to give advice, I need to understand your situation and the facts. So when you come into the meeting with me having said you want to hire me for advice, yeah I'm going to ask a lot of information questions. What did you expect? You came into a data gathering meeting for advice.

What Makes A Major Difference With Someone’s Comfort Level And How Much They Trust You [1:02:12]

Nancy: So now you're interrogating them. Right. But you're interrogating them then instead of investigating. So right, you have to ask data questions because you have to understand their situation. But if you would first ask questions around context, it's going to open up and make it more comfortable, they're going to start trusting you, and then the rest of the information is going to be easier. Because how many times do you meet with people where maybe they're not proud of the data they're going to share with you?

And so you're asking them to.. okay, you used the doctor example. So you go in to the doctor and they make you take everything off and lay there naked. And then the doctor comes in. No, they make sure that you understand what's going to happen. The nurse warms you up to, "Here's what's going to happen." They take your blood pressure. They do this. They do that. They give you a gown. The doctor comes in, there’s this little small talk. I mean, think about that, they don't just jump right into a physical examination.

And so I think that you're right, you guys do need to do an examination of their financial situation, but if you can start with questions and context that helps them be comfortable with the direction it's going. So we need to ask questions around today, tomorrow, risk, and reward. We need to find out what's... So, "You know what? You sent an inquiry or you gave a call to our office that you wanted to work with us or that you wanted to find out about working with us and what that entails. That's fantastic. To help us get to that point, I'm going to be asking you a lot of questions so that I can understand what's going on today, where you want to be, and we can see where our services are going to be most beneficial." So we've got to give it a context.

And then we need to find out today, tomorrow. And I think the important thing is people usually get, "What are you doing here? What have you done in the past?" Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. "What accounts do you have here, there?" That's all important information. The information around that, though, is what lets you know their sense of urgency. How important it is for them to do something. How committed they are to actually do something. Are they tire kickers or are they serious? You get the dynamics of the couple if there's more than one person. And so we have to be an investigator versus an interrogator getting data points.

Your Primary Competition As An Advisor [1:04:52]

The data, we can gather along the way, but we've got to get them explaining where they're coming from. And that, I think that's really what makes the difference in someone's comfort level and how quickly they're going to trust you. So some people will trust you based on your degrees and designations, other people want to know, "Who are you about? What are you about? Can you be trusted?" I'm going to be talking to you about something that's, hopefully, number three or four in my important list, but it's a pretty important thing in my life, my financial well-being. How open am I going to be with you about my fears around this? My concerns, my hopes, my dreams. That is where those emotions are the motivators that are going to help people decide to do something or not. Because your competition probably isn't your biggest competitor, it's them doing nothing.

Michael: Yeah, as I like to put it, your primary competition is not other advisors, it's apathy. It's them just deciding they don't care enough to do anything. Which, again, to me was part of what hit home, that a big point of selling is, I'm not selling against what the other advisor does. So, "Here's why our service is better or our advice is better or our experts are more experty," or all the other things that we might try to do to differentiate from another advisor. My primary competition is apathy, and that they just decide to do nothing because life is busy and they're distracted by other things, and so forth. And that part of selling, again, is just getting them to the point of making a decision or taking an action to say, "Yeah, I'm ready to actually do something now," and hopefully with us.

Nancy: Right. And that's usually not based around data, that's based around their fears, concerns, hopes, and dreams, right? That's what's going to make it compelling for them to do something. Because anything they do is change. And I can remember, we have some friends, very, very high-net-worth people. And I preach to everyone how they need to work with a financial advisor. Because we see in our lifetime, my husband and I in the 26 years, we see how it has helped us be on a path where we didn't stress about college funds for our 3 kids. And we go on great vacations every year. And we have our second vacation. We have all those things. And other people in our same financial situation don't because they haven't had good guidance along the way or adhere to any plan. So anyway, I preach about everyone needs one.

So finally, this guy says to me, "You've got my wife, you know, undies in a bundle that we need to be talking to your guy. I don't want someone telling me how I have to spend or save my money." So what was preventing him from getting really help that they need? Because he had...I mean, his income accelerated very rapidly. They were not in a position to manage that well. And so they were making a lot of decisions that hurt them in the very short-term. But because he had this fear of what that was going to mean someone telling him, he wouldn't even consider that.

So when I said to him, "They're not going to tell you what to do with your money. You put together a plan of where you want to be and what works for you and all that." And he was like, "What?" And they did. They ended up working with our advisor for years. And our advisor even helped him negotiate some new terms on something with his career that was a whole another layer of income that he had never considered. So, "Oh, it's the best thing we ever did. Oh my gosh," you know? But if he couldn't have ever voiced that to someone that could help them with that….

So if you've got people in front of you that for some reason they've been compelled to explore this, their spouses nagging them or something, then with you, you can't uncover what those potential barriers might be. We call it the risk and reward. The risk of them doing nothing and staying on course of what they're doing or the risk of them doing something different and exploring that. So, "If you worked with us, what concerns do you have about having a financial advisor in your world?" Find out from them and then they'll start talking themselves in or out of it. But people don't ask those questions because we assume, "Well, if they don't ask them and if we focus on data and analysis and, "Here's our process," it's a no-brainer that they have to work with us." But we've got to understand what's in the way.

Michael: That's a powerful question just to ask, "What concerns do you have about working with a financial advisor?" I think of more than one situation in retrospect I probably should have asked that question.

Nancy: And what do you think you would have learned? What would you have learned if you would have asked that?

Michael: I'm remembering back to a situation not dissimilar to what you just said of a prospective couple that we were working with, which he was just clearly in the meeting. It was one of those, like, the wife was driving the meeting and the husband was there because she said he had to be. And we talked to her and we primarily engaged her and we tried to draw him into the conversation periodically, and he pretty much declined. He spent most of the meeting sitting there with his arms crossed, not in a good way. And just neither of us, like, there were two in the meeting, I don't think either of us just ever, I guess, again, had the presence of mind just to say, "What concerns do you have about working with an advisor?"

Because, what I like about the question is it's a good way to...I'm imagining if I had asked that in the meeting, he would have probably piped right up with something, but the struggle we were having was, like, he clearly wasn't happy to be there. We didn't know how to ask the question or raise the issue without just saying, "So it looks like you two are fighting here in our office without saying anything. What's the deal?" And I guess I know a few advisors that would probably just go out and say that. But that's not my style. So, like, just, we couldn't figure out how to raise the question. And so eventually, we finished the meeting and they left and they never came back and they never contacted us...

Nancy: And what a shame.

Michael: ...again. And we looked at it as like, "Well, no surprise because they weren't on board because he clearly wasn't on board to be for this planning engagement in the first place." But as you've raised in the conversation here, for all I know, his only hang-up was he was completely convinced that at the end of this we were going to tell him how he's allowed to spend his money or not spend his money, which is not our process either, right? It's we're helping you plan for yours. We're not telling you what to do. But we never gave ourselves the chance to address, even if that was the concern, and then relieve him that it's not what we were there to do.

Nancy: Well, and think about it. I think I've mentioned a couple times that you give value throughout the process. If you were able to let him articulate whatever that was, you might have been able to help the two of them come to some common agreement or understanding. So you're giving value to their relationship by getting things out in the open so that they can be worked with. So risks are one thing, rewards are the other, though. We don't ask people about the benefits, we just assume that that's going to come out in our four meetings a year and we're going to be looking at your tax planning and we're going to help you do this and help that. But asking them, "What do you hope to gain by working with a financial advisor? What's the best outcome of this a couple years from now?"

And then you'll find out, are they going to talk about financial performance? Are they going to talk about less stress? Are they going to talk about less time on their end? Are they going to talk about getting them and their spouse on the same page and that it's going to maybe avoid some more internal family conflicts? I mean, you don't know, again, what is going to be the compelling reason, but you can give them the chance to tell you in a very non-salesy way like, "Oh, once you tell me this, this is my set-up into my close. I'm going to trap you into that." But also the rewards of them doing nothing. So, "What's comfortable about the situation that you're in that might prevent you from doing anything different?"

Michael: Dan Sullivan of Strategic Coach has a question like this. I'm probably going to slightly butcher his exact version. But something to the effect of, "If we were meeting three years from today, what has to have gone well in working together that you would be happy with how the three years have gone," right? It asks the client to visualize essentially, "What does success look like?"

Key Questions To Ask A Prospect Throughout The Meeting Process [1:14:18]

Nancy: Look like. But that's a great question itself, "What does success look like for you?" I mean, there's so many different ways. Because that question as you asked it is great for some people, and for some... It's so funny because my husband is not a dreamer. And so whenever our financial advisor asks us about our dreams, my husband just sits there and stares at him blankly. It is the funniest thing. He has given us assignments over the years of things we have to do, and Jon will always come back in not having done those because he just thinks it's stupid and he just doesn't get it. And so we have to be careful with how we ask for information on whether people can go there or not. So you gave two good examples, though. "If we were meeting three years from now, what would have made this good for you?" Or you could ask someone that's more direct, "What does success look like for you in working with us?"

Michael: Yeah, I started asking a version of it that now is, "What has to happen over the next year of us working together for this engagement to feel productive and useful for you?"

Nancy: Oh, that's a good one.

Michael: And that's how I ask now. Particularly for folks who're going to be working with new or, like, there's something that brought them to the table or that they're meeting with us and engage and have this conversation and potentially engage us as advisors is just to ask them like, "What has to happen or change over the next year to make this advisor engagement productive and useful for you?"

Nancy: That's good.

Michael: And it elicits interesting answers that usually have nothing to do with the things that we sell.

Nancy: Right. And when you drive your conversation with prospects, and you can do this very much with your clients as well each time, but when you drive it initially with prospects, you actually can show your expertise through the questions you're asking and differentiate yourself more than giving them a pitch or an overview. Because you can set up your questions, "You know what? The next series of questions I'm going to ask you are around this aspect of financial planning because we find that this is often the driver for many people in your situation." So you can work in your expertise through question set-ups versus reciting things.

Or, "I was recently at a conference and I got to hear so-and-so speak, and it was fascinating the new research that's been done around the new tax laws. And so I've got some questions for you to make sure that we can maximize the benefits or extract whatever out of it." But you can use those things to set up your questions so you're educating them about your experience, how you stay current, and your knowledge without telling them. And it changes their acceptance of comfort and their trust in you.

Michael: So where does the conversation go next in this?

Nancy: So after you understand their story then you summarize it. "Okay, Bob and Joanne, so what we've learned is, here's what's going on now, here's the challenges you have, the concerns you have. What's ideal for you is this, this, and this. So do I have that right?" And then when they're like, "Yeah," "Do you want to hear how our services then are going to help you get there?" And then now you've got permission to now explain what you do. But this is where that right-sizing is so important. Focusing on the aspects that are most important to what you just heard.

So even if you have a 16-point process, you can show a visual or show that, but you focus on, "Here's what's most important. So, you mentioned that taxes are so important to you, and here's what we do surrounding that." And then you can give an example. "So when we were working with so-and-so," you know, names withheld, "One of the things that we found was that blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." So you can work in your validation and your proof that you know what you're talking about with that. But you focus on the three, four, maybe five key things that draw out. And so how you do it isn't usually as important as the outcomes that you're providing in your process.

Now, once you get, of course, to their signing on, you do need to set expectations on, "What does the implementation look like? So, we're going to ask you for this and this." But that, no one is going to decide to buy your services based on your intake process or onboarding of new clients. Unless I'm wrong.

Michael: No, maybe if that's really their hot button because it was really painful last time and took a lot of time. Unpleasant but...

Nancy: Right. Right. But you'll know that because you would have asked them about their past experiences. So you'll know that they were frustrated with whoever they were working with.

Michael: And at some point, you probably have to add more value beyond your onboarding process or they're not going to stay. But, yeah.

Nancy: Exactly. That's not what your sale is going to be. So anyway. So that's what's next. And we and we call it the What's to WIIFT. Explain what you need them to know, but then immediately connect it, "And so what that means for you." Or, "As you were telling us this is why this is important," but we always have to connect it back to them. So four meetings a year, right, just, I love using that example. Four meetings a year, you know, "Why the four meetings a year are important to you is based on your cash flow and how your bonuses are paid out at work, that's going to allow us every quarter to recalibrate, and be able to whatever." So I've got to tie it into them on why it's important. "And we can do those virtually because traffic in here is hard for you and that was something that was important." So you just have to connect it.

And that's where you, by right-sizing, make it present. Helps them see, "Now I see what's valuable to me." And then, of course, what's key is after each point or every two points you say, "How does that sound to you? How does that compare to what you were doing before? How do you see this going to help you get where you want to be? How do you see this is going to minimize the time? You said you're spending too much time working under this. How much time do you think you would save if we were doing this part of it?" So you're letting them talk value along the way. And if you're hearing them not talk value, you know that that's not important or that's something that they're not agreeing with, and you can adjust.

But if you give them your whole spiel and then say, "How does that sound to you?" or, "What questions do you have?" or (this is favorite), "So does that make sense to you?" That is a really challenging question because if someone says no, in some ways, they might have to feel that they're admitting ignorance. So instead is, "Have I explained that to the level that you need?" You take ownership for something if they didn't understand it. But we want to engage them still along that way. And then through that exchange, we want to also find out about their concerns about, "Well, in the process that we have, what would be… is there anything in there that is of concern to you or that you're questioning or that you're wondering how that really works out?" But you're giving them a chance to let you know because when they tell you then you can work through it.

And then the close becomes so easy. "So based on everything we talked about," and then you tie in what they were telling about value, "The next logical step would be this." And it's easy. That's what people say is it's so easy to close when you've done the other things productively.

Michael: Yeah, the thing that strikes me is just the level of asking questions along the way, of just breaking, "Here's what you've told me about your situation, my understanding," say what you've learned, "Do I have that right? Here's a piece of what we do. You're very concerned about estimated taxes because you got stung on it last year, so, we do four meetings a year so we can line them up for your estimated tax payments to make sure we're always checking in and that you've got your payments right. How does that sound to you?" And just asking those questions and taking those pauses.

Nancy: Power in the pause, Michael. Power is in the pause.

How Advisors Tend To Oversell - And How To Avoid This Mistake [1:22:52]

Michael: The piece that I think took me a while just to get used to in the sales process is that, as you said, "I've got my 16-step process," or, "Here's the 12 things that we do great at our firm that we're going to do for you and you're going to love it. And we've got all this value. Let me show you how much value we put on top of the value,” (to justify our fees). And that often it's only one or two things that are really what drives the sale for a particular client. It's whatever their hot-button issue is. Yeah, yeah, you've got to check the box and some other things, but often there's only one or two hot-button issues that really drives the decision. And if you can just clearly address those, you're already done. They're already saying yes.

And it took me a long time to not want to then still talk about the other 11 things that we haven’t talked about yet because I'm like, "You're saying yes already, but wait, there's more." And, like, just couldn't help myself. Because we get really proud with what we do and what we offer, it was hard to stop. The label that one of our founding partners kindly gave me frequently was like, "You already closed, stopped talking past the sale."

Nancy: Stop overselling, right?

Michael: Because I would just keep going. And then it was even harder, at least for me, to really accept like, "Yeah, there were 12 awesome things that we want to talk about, we do, but they really just bought us for one, and that's okay."

Nancy: And the others can be pleasant surprises later.

Michael: Yes!

Nancy: To keep them loyal and giving referrals and renewing every...yeah, yeah.

Michael: Yeah. But just that whole idea of like, "I felt like I had to show all 12 things to make it add up to what they want to buy."

Nancy: And where did that center, maybe in your belief in what the value really was?

Michael: Yeah. Or I think particularly early on, frankly, there's probably more my insecurity that I was worth the fees that I was charging. So I had to like...now looking back on it, I call the value barf. I would just keep barfing up more value. "And we do this. And we do this. And we do..." Just trying to stack the layers to make sure that it added up to enough value that would get them to say yes, not even recognizing that sometimes they were already sold on the first one or two items, we didn't need the rest.

And that not only did they not need it and not necessarily want it, it was not at all constructive to say, "But wait, let me just talk about them for a few minutes." Because at that point, that was entirely about me and not about them. I was just really proud and want to talk about the stuff. I didn't think of it that way at the time, but looking back, that's clearly what was happening. Just that whole phenomenon of, "Sometimes it takes far less than we think it does to get someone on board as a client if you just answer and address the one or two things that's really bothering them and pressing on them."

Nancy: Yep. And then going back to something we said too at the beginning, then they're not saying, "Well, I don't need those things, so I want to adjust the fees."

Michael: Yeah. Yeah. And, I mean, for me, the first change I made just realizing that was,you talk about setting the meeting up well. And I don't know, maybe you can tell me there's a better way to do this, but I just got in the habit of starting every meeting with a new prospect of just saying, "So what brings you to our office today?" Particularly because we tend to work with a lot of retirees or near-retirees. So, "You've been managing your own finances for 20 or 30 or 40 years, one day, out of a clear blue sky, you contacted us and showed up in our office. So what's going on that you're actually here today?"

Nancy: And that is a great initial question because based on their answer then you know where to go. And wasn't a data point.

Michael: Yeah. I would ask what and why, and just let them answer. It's like, "Okay, this will be the dominant theme for all of our conversation. Whatever thing, you just answer to that. If I can solve that, this is probably going to go very well. And wait until you see the other 11 things we've got too."

Nancy: Pleasant surprises, like I said. I mean, it's always...I love it when people will say afterward, "You delivered what I hoped or expected and so much more." That is a good place to be.

Michael: So, the challenge to me in advisor world today is that no one teaches us this stuff. There was an age in the industry where sales training was pretty standard. Everybody come in and got sales training. It was generally done by the large firms because that was where most advisors were. And they would hire people in and they would put you through a sales training process. They usually marketed as advisor training and then it turned out it was sales training. But it was still really good to learn sales training because whether you're selling a product or you're advisor yourself at some point, you have to convince people to make a decision or take an action. And these days, as we said at the beginning, sales seems to have become such a stigma that, "no one wants a sales job anymore," right? I came here to be an advisor and not sell. Well, you've got to sell yourself if you're going to be an advisor.

But then the world of sales training is not what it was before. A lot of the firms just don't do it anymore because they basically figured out they train people and then the people leave, or the sales training is still mired in our roots, which is “producty” sales training and not what we're talking about here, which is really just, you're having a conversation with the client about the stuff that they care about and then showing how your stuff solves their stuff.

Nancy: That is such a very succinct way of saying that, Michael.

Michael: Yeah, it's not rocket science. Just ask them what they want and then give them that. And don't overcomplicate the rest of it. With the caveat that, figuring out how to have those conversations well. And just, at least for me, my hang-up for the long time was just figuring out, "What are the right questions to ask? And literally, how do you ask them and not sound awkward in the meeting?" For me, it took a long time to find the words. And I still feel like I'm constantly in the quest to find better words to ask some of these questions and start some of these conversations. So I know, you have tools and system that you built around this. So can you tell us a little bit about, what do you actually do? We spent a while now talking all about sales and having better conversations and stuff, but what do you actually do in this world of trying to teach it?

What Nancy Does To Help Advisors Learn An Effective Conversation Framework [1:30:20]

Nancy: Well, we help through training and helping people put together their process, but we help people learn this framework, but then take each piece and make it their own. So we don't give people scripts, instead, we introduce them to, "Here's how you initiate a conversation. Here's the framework, the 3-Step Start. Now let's work on how that sounds for you." So we call it Genuine Sales, our course, because it's, "Let's take the best practices and best processes, but then they've got to be yours because you're, in most cases, selling yourself. So if you are not comfortable in the words you're using or it's not relevant in the work that you're doing or how you explain things, it's not going to be real.

So in our training, we do what we call the Immersion. And when we do it virtually for small teams, we have a group of people come over, and this was something Alan Moore challenged us to make sure we could do it and eliminate the travel, but over four initial sessions, we help them learn the system, the system of a conversation. Because systems have predictable outcomes and steps and stages and all that.

And then we have accountability over the next seven, eight weeks to focus and use the information. So it's all about...it's not more knowledge, it's about actionable tools and processes. Because if you're not using it, you're never going to get better at it. So then there's the accountability each week to have to focus on a different part. And then with your group, we practice different pieces. Find out what worked, what didn't. And so, let's talk about questions. We in the 26 hours over these 10 weeks, we probably spend 4 to 5 hours just working on the questions, and then practicing them and tweaking them, and learning from each other and creating resources so that it's easy to, "Okay, I need to ask questions around this. Here's my cheat sheet. I've got 20 questions, which of these 4 best fit their situation so I can make that easy?" So it's all about best practices and then working through activities to make them your own and make it comfortable to use it.

So over the 10 weeks, we just watch people's confidence soar, we watch their skill level soar. Because typically, if they're having regular conversations, meaning… I mean, most people should be having multiple - if it's not a prospect meeting, it should be a center of influence meeting or a networking session - they should be having conversations with potential business providers, whether it's prospects or someone else, every week. And so we typically see that by two or three weeks, they're already seeing that they've had success because, "Oh my gosh, look at if I stop my normal of throwing up on them as soon as I get a chance and I get to tell someone what I do and their eyes glaze over and they're just trying to run away from me, but instead I lead with questions, and by learning that information, I earn the right to position what I can do and lead them through getting a decision," they just become more confident in building those skill sets.

So we have, I think we're at, like, 99.4% point of people by the end of the 10 weeks have already returned their financial investment because of extra sales. And then, I mean, you've heard in some of the other podcasts.

Michael: Well, in our business, clients are still really valuable. It only takes a client or two to make most investments and ourselves pay off very quickly when many clients pay thousands of dollars, some of them pay thousands of dollars annually recurring with really high retention rates.

Nancy: Absolutely. So it's so wonderful to give people something very practical and actionable that has a very quick return on them because selling isn't what most of you guys aspire to do or really want to do. So if you can do that well and efficiently, it gives you more time to focus on the things you like to do.

Michael: And what does the program cost for people that are interested in going through a training like this?

Nancy: It's $3,500 for a 10-week program. So most people, like I said, one or two new clients and they've returned that and then they accelerate. And you know this if you've seen it on some of the "XYPN" podcasts. We have some great success stories, like Kyle Moore, who sold $220,000 in his first few months because he just needed this process to his conversations to stop burning through his leads.

Michael: Is there a common biggest mistake you typically see that advisors make or do? Because I know you do this for a couple of industries. Are there particular common patterns or blocking points in our advisor world?

The Common Mistake Financial Advisors Make When Trying To Sell Comprehensive Plans [1:35:35]

Nancy: Yes. So we'll get over the fact about the lead gen things and people not spending their time in the right ways there and talk about the actual, once they have someone, the biggest thing is this talking at them and telling people what they do, trying to convince them that they need a financial planner. I see it all the time. I do strategy conversations, they're like, "Well, this is what my first meeting looks like. I have my overview. I tell them everything I do, and then I ask them if they want to sign up for the service." And like, "Oh my goodness, no wonder no one is going with you. You're not making it about them. They're not seeing value for them. You're just talking at them." I think that is the biggest.

Michael: Well, and I know I was guilty of this early on. I learned all this stuff, I know this stuff. I should just be able to show you that I know all this stuff and then you should want to sign up. It's how I want it to work, right? I want to tell you about the stuff that we do and then you'll want to sign up. So I just need to tell more people what I do and then more people will sign up.

Nancy: So I was talking with a man last week, and he said, "You know, my stupid family and friends, I keep telling them how they need a financial plan and all the reasons why and they're just ignoring me." And I said, "Do they even know what a financial planner does? Because you're telling them they need something that they don't even know what it means, let alone what it means for them, and they haven't really given you permission to pitch at them about it. So of course, they don't want to hear you. And the people closest to you," in this case, this guy was a career changer, I go, "They know you as someone that's done this. And now over the last year, you've taken classes and they're thinking, "Why would I listen to him about finances, he doesn't know anything."

Michael: "I remember 12 months ago when he didn't know anything about this. How much can he learn about my life savings and how to handle it in a 12-month class when I knew him as an engineer for the past 17 years?" Yep.

Nancy: Right. So we talked about, "What are the three or four questions that you could use to start that conversation to find out what they maybe know about financial planning? Whether they've got anything that they've ever considered talking with somebody about. And maybe there's something that you could quickly help them with to show you've got some value there and then say, "You know, why don't we sit down?" Because grabbing them at the family birthday party isn't really a way to get that done. So that's the number one thing I see.

So my second one is the interrogation, is digging in for all these data points instead of getting context to that person's financial world where the data points make sense. Because somebody with $5 million in assets, is that because they inherited it? Is that because...and it was a sudden thing, they've never managed it? Is it because they've been scrapping and working their butts off since they were in high school and so there's a different emotional attachment to it? You don't know. So that's the second big thing.

And then, oh, I mean, but then there's the third that I think is really important. They don't ask for people to take the next step. So that's the big thing. They don't clearly lay it out of what needs to happen. So somebody says, "Well, let us think about it," or they actually give them permission, "So now what I'll do is I'll put together a specific recommendation and an initial starter plan for you, and I'll send it to you, and then I'll follow up with you sometime next week and we'll see where we go from here." And that is, I always say, what you've done is take all the responsibility and you've let them off the hook. Again, not nailing them on the hook in a manipulative way. But now what you've done is you haven't scheduled anything, you've just committed to do how much work and you don't have any commitment that they're in it with you.

And some people don't even need a proposal to take the next step to schedule a planning meeting. But if they ask you to put something together, that's when you need to say, "I'd be happy to do that. Let's schedule time for us to then review that information because then we can walk through it together and I can answer questions real time." And if someone is elusive at that point and they won't commit to anything, they just say, "Oh, send it to me and then I'll let you know what questions I have," what do you think happens, Michael?

Michael: Yeah. So how should I be asking this question towards the end of my meeting to set it up?

Nancy: You should say, " I'd be happy to put that information together with you," just like I said.

Michael: Well, but if they haven't asked for… just, you know, "I spent the last hour hopefully investigating not interrogating you about all your issues and your problems. And I know I've got cool stuff and I hopefully did a good job of linking my cool stuff to your problems and concerns." And now we're getting to the moment at the end of the meeting where, like, the close action has to happen. So, if I'm not supposed to say, "Hey, why don't you take this stuff home and think about it and I'll check in with you next week," how am I supposed to ask that?

Nancy’s Three-step Finish For Closing A Meeting To Sign On New Clients [1:41:19]

Nancy: So we call it the 3-Step Finish. We have the 3-Step Start, it's the 3-Step Finish. So the first thing I want to do is say, "I want to check for their readiness." And so I'm going to say, "Based on all these things that we talked about today, how does this sound to you, the plan that we would take in working together?" Or, we can do one last check-in whether they have any concerns. And often those opinion questions, they didn't ask them to make a decision, they didn't say, "Do you want to work with me?" I'm asking them how they feel about it, how they think about it, whatever. Often that will lead them to say, "I think we want to get started." We don't even have to often ask that commitment or decision question.

If they don't, though, but we know that from their opinions they're positive about it, then that's when we confirm value one last time, "Well, you know what, Bob and Joanne? I'm confident that in working together, a year from now, you're going to be in a much better position and you're going to have spent less time personally on this that you said was so important to you. Should we initiate an agreement?" Or whatever your next action is. So initiate agreement, "Do you want to schedule the implementation meeting, which is the first step in the process?" But we've got to be specific on what we're asking them to do. That's it. It's really that simple. We call it consolidating versus closing. Consolidating means bringing together. What you're doing is just bringing together that whole conversation you've had and laying out the clear, easy next step for them to make a decision then.

Michael: So what are you building towards? What's next for you, having created this system and now making available to advisors as a program and you've written your book on it? And for folks that are listening, we'll make sure we have links out to Nancy's book and the Genuine Sales training and the rest if you're interested. So this is episode 88, so you can go to kitces.com/88 to find the links in the Resources area. But Nancy, for you, what are you building towards?

Nancy: Where are we going?

Michael: Yeah, where are you going with this whole system and structure and book and everything that you've created?

Nancy: Yeah. So, I have been helping companies strengthen their sales for almost 20 years. A few more months it's 20 years. And I've always worked in financial services, because I was in banking for five years myself before that. So we've always had this part. In these last three years, we've seen such a need for the smaller companies to get the resources and the tools and the methodologies that typically aren't available to them.

Michael: So not necessarily just financial services, just small business across the world?

Nancy: Professional services. There's a specific focus, there's a ton of marketers and financial advisors and accountants, and CPAs that have technical expertise but then don't know how to build their sales function. So knowing how to sell is one thing, and we've got great training for that, but one of the gaps that we've identified is people also don't have defined their sales process. So there's the conversation part of sales, but what's the process from the time I get a lead to onboarding them, what's the process? So that is coming out very soon. So the additional resources to help the small businesses get the work we do for companies, which is very holistic. We help them hire the right people, you know, assess them. We put together their whole training plans and process plans. It's very comprehensive for the companies.

But small businesses don't have the $75,000 to $100,000 to invest in that. So we have worked really hard the last couple of years on, "How do we allow this help that they need to be affordable and accessible?" And that's what we're doing. So we'll be launching the Genuine Sales Growth System, which includes putting together your process, helping you become skillful in the conversion conversations, and then having the accountability for the add-on afterward. And that's what's next for us, bringing what big corporations get to the people that need it most. Because I do understand that for a lot of people in their small firms and in their growing firms, that if they don't figure out this part of running their business and if they don't put as much effort into a sales function and process as they do into their planning tool or setting up their payment system, they're going to struggle needlessly.

Michael: So for advisors who are interested and listening, Genuine Sales is the conversation, like, learning to do the conversation itself in that meeting with that client and maybe the preparation leading up to it to make sure that that meeting ends favorably. The Growth System that you're building is the rest of the system and process that leads up to that about, "How do you actually build up to getting more meetings with prospects so you can then do this good sale system to close?"

Nancy: Right. We don't focus on the marketing aspects. It's, once you have someone's name, what is your process? What are the resources you need? How do you start nurturing someone before they're ready to raise their hand and schedule an appointment? And so it's working through defining that workflow process for your practice.

Michael: So as we wrap up, this is a podcast about success, and one of the things we always observe is just even the word success means different things to different people. So, you've built this successful system, advisors are using and other industries are using it. You've built a successful business doing this training and systems development for others, but I'm curious just for yourself personally, how do you define success for yourself?

Nancy: By the number of people I help succeed each year. And working with my business coach this last couple of years, he said, "You really are not driven by the dollars at the end of the year that are there." I said, "No, I'm driven by the number of people we've helped that year."

Michael: I love it.

Nancy: And so, we can work with big companies and work with 100 people on their sales team, and we've done that around the world, and I love it, we know we help them, but it's not personally as satisfying to me as helping the small businesses because there's something different at stake there.

Michael: Well, I hope we inspire a few more people to succeed in the coming year and themselves to your list of people you've helped with the discussion here. Again, I feel like we've gone so far. The pendulum has swung so far in the industry from having our roots in selling products and that was how we were getting paid, to this other end of the spectrum where we get paid for our advice, not our products and have gone so far away that now we don't even want to talk about sales and selling, even though we still need it, that I know it's become a blocking point for a lot of advisors. And so hopefully the discussion here inspires a few to, "I get the book or go through the program and learn how to do this better."

Nancy: Start a conversation with me. Right. There'll be a link in there for them to schedule a conversation where we call it a strategy conversation. But we just finished up with a group of financial advisors, and several of them at the end with their celebration, you know, said, "And what I've realized," and I think this summarizes it, "Is sales is not a dirty word." And I thought, "That's a great way of ending it, sales is not a dirty word." And we can do it in a very collaborative and comfortable way that doesn't compromise our ethics and who we are as a person. And I think that that's what's so rewarding is when I discovered that 23 years ago, it was really a life changer. It was a career changer and a life changer for me. And so it's just so rewarding to help other people get there and then get the tools to do it well.

Michael: And if you're an advisor that's listening and you just don't feel like you're that comfortable with what you have to sell in the first place, recognize from the industry's perspective the other dynamic is maybe you need to be at a different place where you can actually sell something you're proud of selling. Because I know that's still a blocking point for some advisors as well. That was certainly the biggest shift for me. It's amazing how easier it is to do this when you're genuinely proud of what you do and the value you deliver.

Nancy: That's so true.

Michael: Well, thank you, Nancy, for joining us and talking about why sales is not actually a dirty word on the "Financial Advisor Success" podcast.

Nancy: It's been my pleasure.

Michael: Thank you.

Disclosure: Michael Kitces is a co-founder of XY Planning Network, which was mentioned in this podcast.