February 11
Selling the Invisible
Most of us make a living selling something that can’t be seen, can’t be touched, can’t be tasted, smelled, or heard. We sell services.
Unlike ice cream or perfume or a brand new car, which purchasers can experience with their senses, what we offer is invisible, intangible, and has no taste. Whatever “it” is that we sell, “it” happens largely inside the customers’ brains.
So how do we persuade our customers to buy from us something that has little or no sensory input?
Surprisingly, in the same way marketers sell Haagen-Dazs, Obsession, or a shiny new Lexus.
Those products are sold when their sellers succeed in creating inside the minds of their customers a future story of pleasure experienced or pain avoided.
Take for example, every perfume commercial you’ve ever seen. What are they selling? Romance, adventure, seduction. Or at least the imagined hope of it. Buy this perfume, dab it on, and that’s what will happen to you. Can’t you just picture it?
Or consider all those Lexus commercials last December. You know, the ones with the devilishly beautiful couple still in their pajamas on Christmas morning, one leading the other out to magically unveil the shiny new car with the big red bow on top. What are they selling? An over-the-top surprise gift, leading to overwhelming gratitude on the part of the [wife, husband, girl friend, boy friend], leading to ... Well, you get the idea.
The key to the sale is the future story brought to life inside the mind of the prospective customer.
This is just as true for you as for your local Lexus dealer: To sell a professional relationship with you, you must bring to life inside your prospect’s mind a narrative of a shared future, one in which they are finding happiness or avoiding danger because you are a part of their life.
“Great,” you say, “but how do I do that without the benefit of sensuous smells, new leather seats, and a million dollar TV advertising budget?”
My answer: learn to master the art of story.
There’s something different about the way a story touches us and inspires us and moves us to take action, compared to other ways of communicating. Steve Sabo captured the essence of this difference when he stated:
Tell me a fact and I’ll learn.
Tell me a truth and I’ll believe.
Tell me a story and it will live in my heart forever.
It is not altogether clear why stories have such impact, but I believe it has to do with the way the two sides of our brains operate. It is thought that the left hemisphere is the critical, analytical side. Its function is to process numbers, evaluate data, and keep things neat and tidy. The right hemisphere, by contrast, is the intuitive, creative side. Its function is to think imaginatively, handle abstractions, and form and decipher stories. Storytelling and story listening are definitely right-brain activities.
The mental picture I have is that when story-based information is directed toward our brains, it gets routed to the right side, whereas numbers, statistics, and logical arguments are directed to the left side of the brain. Upon arrival, bundles of information sent to the left side (numbers, statistics, and logical arguments) are scrutinized and critiqued careful and skeptically, because that’s what the left brain does.
Story-based information, on the other hand, is subject to less cynical review because that’s the way the right brain operates. It’s as if stories bypass the harsher scrub-down and go straight into the system. And since most of our important decisions are made intuitively and then later justified analytically, stories can be very potent in moving us to action. When it comes to touching hearts and affecting behavior, a well-placed story is almost always more effective than numbers, statistics, and logical arguments.
Stories Connect Us on a Human Level
I have learned that stories are the real ties that bind, regardless of the type of relationship. Sharing stories is an honoring, intimate experience that results in feelings of closeness and affection.
Sharing stories is the best way in the world to connect with people, to understand them, and for them to feel understood. We create genuine human connection by sharing the stories of our lives. As we share experiences back and forth, we start connecting on a personal level. It’s very natural and comfortable.
I believe that we human beings are hardwired to connect with each other through story and to share important information, both factual and emotional, by sharing stories. For thousands of years, we sat around the community fire sharing the events of the day. We sat on the porch and rocked and talked about life. We shared happenings at the family table. We told our children stories at bedtime. We hung around the fishing hole weaving tales waiting for the fish to bite.
Today, however, with Twitter and iPods, text messaging and life’s busy pace, we don’t seem to have nearly as much time for story sharing. Nevertheless, I think it is still a basic human need to tell stories and to hear them.
Because this deep need to share stories is still strong within us but is so seldom honored in today’s world, when you offer to listen and share stories with prospects and customers, they appreciate it and they connect with you. As a result, they start to feel comfortable with you and trust you. One of the most important things you can do in an initial meeting is to use stories to nurture a relationship of sufficient trust so that when you ultimately offer your advice, prospective customers will accept your recommendations and implement them.
Stories Create Empathy and Understanding
By sharing stories, we are briefly able to see the world—or at least a part of it—from another’s vantage point. We take in their words, their tone, and their body language through our senses and send them on to our minds, where they become the catalyst for our own internal reconstruction of the life experiences they are sharing with us. Their stories remake the neuron structure of our brains, and thus they literally become a part of us. True empathy and connection occur.
Just as story sharing builds human to human connections, conversely, whenever people reduce or terminate story sharing between themselves, their relationships are weakened. If you look closely at any relationship that is fading or already dead, you will find the parties to the relationship—whether friends, a married couple, family members, management and labor, or even nations—no longer share stories.
In fact, if you work back upstream to the point in time when the relationship turned from good to bad, you will discover it was at that moment that the parties stopped listening to each other’s stories and stopped trying to tell them to each other. I’m not sure which is cause and which is effect, but I’m certain that, left unchecked, the cessation of story sharing is an unmistakable harbinger of the death of the relationship. Strong and lasting human relationships require the sharing of stories.
A Secret about Stories
We connect with those who listen to our stories, and we cherish those whose stories we have truly heard. Through stories, we understand their world and they understand ours.
The fact that this can happen quickly, almost immediately, is one of the keys to honest and authentic professional selling. When two people meet at the story level, they don’t need decades of memories to create a meaningful friendship. They become friends by creating a positive story of their future together. Friendships turn prospects into customers.
My third book, Double Your Sales:
An Honest and Authentic Approach to Professional Selling, is based on these principles. It teaches how to use story to connect, to humanize, to warn, to encourage, to clarify, and to share information, both personal and professional.
Most importantly, it shows
how to use stories to create between you and prospective customers a shared narrative of your future together. It allows both you and them to visualize a tomorrow in which you are working together for your mutual benefit. Without that, few if any sales are likely to happen.
Fortunately, you don’t have to become a professional storyteller to be a successful salesperson. You don’t have to understand all the details about stories and how they work, any more than you must be able to service a modern computerized, fuel-injected automobile to successfully drive it. It doesn’t hurt to know those things, but it’s definitely not required. Your innate skills as a storyteller and a story listener, with a little practice and a little polish and with an engagement process based on a sequence of storytelling and story listening will be enough.
But the key is to remember that the most important story of all is the one being created in the mind of your prospect – a future story of pleasure experienced or pain avoided, resulting from their relationship with you and their implementation of your client process. That is the way to sell the invisible.
If you enjoyed this blog please send Scott a comment.
January 2011
The Life Circle: Roadmap to Better Planning
Financial and estate planners traditionally have focused on money and property as the defining elements of a client’s wealth. But consider this: If your house were on fire, and you had time to save only one possession, which do you think it would be: the cash in the top drawer of the dresser or your family albums with the only photos of your children as babies?
Money has value, but only quantitative value. We inherently understand that many things hold far greater value than money, and we readily would part company with all our money rather than lose something that holds tremendous emotional value for us. As the MasterCard commercials rightly recognize, we can buy many things of value with money, but some things are “priceless.”
Now, here’s a fascinating question for you as a professional: If you asked your clients the “burning house” question, what would you expect their answers to be? Wouldn’t you be surprised if even one of your clients said that they would forfeit the irreplaceable photo albums in order to save the cash?
If so, this means that you already recognize that real wealth is not limited to money and property. It’s just that, until now, in the traditional world of financial and estate planning, the wealth of a client’s life—the admittedly greater wealth that belongs not to money but to meaning, history, relationships, purpose—this wealth has been “none of your business.” It’s personal, and traditional financial and estate planning are largely impersonal. And this is exactly what changes when we enter the world of Level-Two client service. It becomes personal indeed, to the point that the client’s
most meaningful wealth informs the decisions that determine how the client’s money and property are managed.
It is crucial to understand that these areas of wealth, which Level-One client service largely ignores or, at best, regards as incidental, move to center stage in Level-Two client service. The ancillary questions that you may or may not have asked a client earlier will now become the crucial, defining ones— questions about the things they value most. such as their heritage, personal history, and values.
Before we discuss how you can do this, let’s look at a map of what a client’s comprehensive wealth typically includes. We call this map the Life Circle. It’s actually a tremendously useful tool to have on the desk when talking to a client, as it illuminates, in a highly visual way, the Level-Two axiom that a client’s wealth is far more than his or her material assets.
You can readily see that Level-One client service deals only with the upper left quadrant, the “Financial” area, essentially ignoring the other three areas as well as the areas in the center. This way of thinking has led us to ignore more than 75% of our potential usefulness as financial professionals whose purpose is to advise clients in the management of their wealth.
Of course, we didn’t realize this. We may have thought of the categories contained in the center and upper right and lower quadrants as the province of genealogists, therapists, clergy—but certainly not the hard and impersonal lines of financial advising. We simply haven’t had the vision, concepts, methods, and tools needed to acknowledge and work with them. The simple truth is, whatever a client values is part of his or her wealth. As such, it may directly or indirectly affect decisions involving any area of wealth, including finances.
As professional advisors, we’re trained to focus on the financial, legal, investment, and tax issues that affect our clients’ wealth. This is all good, solid, Level-One thinking. But we shortchange our clients if the services we provide fail to take into account and appreciate their wealth as extending far beyond money and property alone, because the most significant wealth we possess as human beings is not material. Material wealth, considered in isolation, is devoid of any real or enduring meaning. If our services deal only with the client’s money and property, and ignore the client as a human being, then those services are similarly devoid of any real or enduring value.
The Life Circle reminds us that clients come to us with a heritage that connects them to a past, to people and places, cultures and traditions out of which they emerged into their present life. Each client is part of a family that has shaped his or her identity, beliefs, and values. All belong to a larger human community through friends, work, the organizations to which they belong, and the causes they hold dear.
Through the stories of their past and their vision of the future, they naturally seek to learn and grow humanly, to live whatever spiritual life speaks to them, to be responsible and skillful stewards of their life’s riches, to shape their destiny, and to move into ever deeper fulfillment of their life’s meaning and purpose. Properly addressed, understood, and applied, these non-material assets inform the client’s material wealth with meaning and purpose, and establish real and lasting value in the professional relationship.
The Life Circle is a visual reminder that we humans are so much more than our bank accounts. It helps us to remember what’s most important, and to make sure that we acknowledge, appreciate, and honor this in the way we provide service.
We sometimes use The Life Circle as a roadmap to help us visit the stories that shed light on the key components of a good plan. Those stories will lead us to answers to questions like “What do you see as your life’s purpose, and how did you come to understand what it was?” and “Who do you consider ‘family’ and what do each of them mean to you?” and “Besides your family, who else is important in your life and why?” and “What causes and organizations do you stand behind and what led you to feel that way?”
As those stories are shared, they lead the clients and us to consider, for each dimension of their lives, another important set of questions: “How do you personally define success in each of these areas of your life?” Once again, the answers reside in the client’s stories. Once again, by listening attentively and lovingly to their stories, we can glean the true answers. We can then ask the next questions, the questions at the heart of the matter: “What is still missing for you to feel successful in each dimension of your life and how can we help you achieve it? What are the stories you want to be able to tell about your life’s purpose, your family, your community, and your financial well-being, and how can we help you be able to tell them?”
The Life Circle reminds us that all the pieces of life are interrelated; similarly, all the stories are interrelated. A meaning of money story can tell us just as much about the meaning of family or the meaning of community as about the meaning of money. And the same principle applies to financial plans and estate plans: it’s never just about the money, because everything we do with the money affects the other pieces. It affects family relationships, it affects our footprint in the communities we care about, it affects our ability to live our life with purpose.
The Life Circle, in the hands of a caring SunBridge advisor, helps us understand and then piece together the most important parts of our life in a plan that reflects our deepest values. The Life Circle is the roadmap that leads to deeper, richer, more meaningful planning
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December 2011
Give the Gift of Self
“Silver and gold are not gifts, but only excuses for gifts. The only true gifts are gifts of self.” Anon.
In this season of gift-giving, it’s easy to get sucked into a frenzy of gift-buying. The urgency of checking off our list can seduce us into focusing on gifts that come from a store and can be tied up with a bow.
Surely they’ll be appreciated when opened, but just as surely they’ll soon lose their luster and be forgotten. The truth is, most of what we purchase in our gift-giving frenzies are things the recipients don’t really need. A comment by Dallin Oakes, my university president in my undergraduate days, explains why these gifts ultimately leave both giver and receiver feeling empty:
“You can never get enough of what you don’t need, because what you don’t need won’t satisfy you.”
What they do need—and what we all need—more of is a little more old-fashioned human kindness.
I’d like to suggest that in lieu of (or perhaps in addition to) those store-bought gifts, we consider giving gifts that are a little piece of ourselves. But what to give? I believe if we pause and take time to ask ourselves one simple question, we’ll know what to give.
What can I do to demonstrate my love, esteem, respect, or appreciation for this person?
Note that the question invites us to “do” and to “demonstrate.” Loving, esteeming, respecting, and appreciating all call for expression and action.
Here is a short list to get you started. I’m sure your list will be much longer and more specific than this one.
Listen.
Listen generously.
Listen generously to their stories.
Ask how they’re feeling.
Ask how they’re really feeling, and pay close attention to their answer.
Share.
Share what’s in your heart.
Share the stories in your heart.
Express appreciation.
Express appreciation that is specific, sincere, and succinct.
Express appreciation that is specific, sincere, and succinct in a written note.
Seek to understand.
Seek to understand, then to be understood.
Forgive.
Ask for their forgiveness.
Call.
Call just to say hello.
Call just to say hello and forget about the time.
Bake their favorite cookies.
Bake their favorite cookies and then eat them together.
Share some photographs together.
Hug.
Hug long and hard.
Hug long and hard, look them in the eyes, and say “I love you.”
Hug long and hard, look them in the eyes, say “I love you, and here’s why . . .”
By now, you get the picture. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
If you enjoyed this blog please send Scott a comment.
November 2010
What do you do at work, Daddy?
When they were smaller, my children used to ask what I did at work. When you’re not a fireman or a police officer but an estate planner and financial advisor, it’s a bit challenging to describe what you do to a five-year-old. As they grew, though, they figured out what estate planners and financial advisors generally do.
But in 1998 we moved to Orlando and shortly thereafter I started SunBridge. That renewed their uncertainty. Today, even though they’re smart and mature, they still have a hard time following the evolutions of this company.
They’re not alone. Professional colleagues frequently ask: “What all do you do at SunBridge? You seem to have such a wide array of offerings that it’s hard to understand them all.”
So, anticipating my family’s questions as we gather this Thanksgiving at my daughter’s new home in Wilson, North Carolina, and hoping to craft an answer that will also satisfy those professional queries, I wrote out the following description.
To my dear and precious Elisabeth, Nathaniel, Sara, Kate, Evan, and Paul (and all of my wonderful professional colleagues)—here’s what I do at work:
Our mission at SunBridge is to touch hearts and change lives. We do this by providing practical, affordable, and innovative training, tools, and support to professional advisors and to select client families in our area. Here’s a summary of our programs.
Services for Professional Advisors:
The Legacy Builder Network is a community of caring professionals who tap into the power of family heritage and legacy stories to develop deep, meaningful relationships with their clients and design financial, estate, and philanthropic plans that are based on their clients' most significant vision, values, and purposes. See
www.SunBridgeLegacy.com.
The KEY Advisor Network is an alliance of attorneys and financial advisors who provide middle-class and upper-middle-class families the training, tools, and support they need to navigate the financial and legal issues of these turbulent times and to de-clutter their financial and legal lives, put their houses in order, get their ducks in a row---and keep them there. See
www.SunBridgeKeyAdvisors.com.
Double Your Sales Professional Training is a client engagement system based on a sequence of simple stories that helps honest and authentic professionals connect with people more quickly and effectively and allows them to turn more prospects into customers—customers who buy, who buy more, and who buy more often. See
www.DoubleYourSalesNow.com.
Time to Think Teaching and Coaching is an approach to leadership and professional services based on the observation that the quality of everything we do depends on the quality of the thinking we do first, and the recognition that the environment we create will determine whether those around us can think for themselves with rigor, imagination, courage and grace. See
www.TimetoThink.com
and
http://www.sunbridgenetwork.com/TTT.html.
Services for Client Families:
SunBridge KEY Advisor Planning is a common-sense, down-to-earth program for giving middle-class and upper-middle-class families in the Orlando area the training, tools, and support they need to navigate the financial and legal issues of these turbulent times, and to de-clutter their financial and legal lives, put their houses in order, get their ducks in a row---and keep them there. See
www.SunBridgeKeyAdvisors.com.
Legacy Planning Associates is a comprehensive process for high-end Florida families in which hard-core legal, tax and estate planning is integrated with family vision, virtues, and values for a lasting legacy, assuring that a family’s heritage, faith and life’s purpose are the foundation on which to shape future generations of healthy, productive, and responsible children and grandchildren. See
www.LegacyPlans.com.
The Money & Success Client Connection System is my process for engaging new clients. I use a Double Your Sales-based “Get Acquainted Conversation” to set up a deeply-connective Meaning of Money Priceless Conversation, which leads to customized estate or financial plan based on their money stories. Later, I use the Meaning of Success Priceless Conversation to begin a long-term advisory relationship by discovering what elements of success are still missing for them. See
http://www.sunbridgenetwork.com/Money_and_SuccessHOME.html.
That’s it. Seven programs. All based on the power of connection, the power of story, and the power of thoughtful, integrated, people-centered processes.
In this effort, I am blessed with the greatest help on the planet. Sharon Greenway and Cyndi Campbell are the other members of the SunBridge team, and my partners at Legacy Planning Associates are Mike Cummins and Mary Tomlinson. Each one is brilliant, creative, hard-working, generous, and full of integrity. I’m thankful I get to work with them.
I’m also thankful for the blessing of being able to work with some of the most exceptional professional advisors and client families anywhere. Something attracts the best and the brightest and the most caring to our networks and programs—the kind of folks you’d pick to hang out with as friends if you could pick anybody. What I said about Sharon, Cyndi, Mike, and Mary— brilliant, creative, hard-working, generous, and full of integrity—is equally true about the advisors and client families we serve. Every minute spent with them is a treat.
As you can see, I have a lot to be thankful for. Life is good when you love the work you do and the people you do it with. As I’ve often said, if you want the perfect job, sometimes you just have to go out and build it yourself.
So now let’s get on with the turkey and dressing.
If you enjoyed this blog please send Scott a comment.
October 2010
Knee Pads: An Eye to See, A Heart to Care, and a Will to Act?
I heard a story this week at our SunBridge team meeting that I think must be shared. While Sharon Greenway will no doubt be embarrassed for others to know about it, her story must be told.
Sharon, our incredibly capable Chief Operations Officer, is an avid volleyball player, and she has passed on her passion for the game to her daughter, a high school freshman. Sarina is so passionate about the game that even though she is in a brand-new school this year, she is a full-time starter on the junior varsity volleyball team at Olympia High.
Last week, Olympia’s varsity and junior varsity teams played the teams at Evans High. Evans High is a struggling, traditionally black school in a low-income, high-crime section of Orlando. Athletics is one of the few positive outlets for a student body that doesn’t have many bright spots in their challenging lives. The matches were epic struggles between determined competitors, but ultimately the Olympia girls—most of whom play club volleyball on national traveling teams—were victorious.
But that’s not the story here.
As Sharon watched the two teams play, she noticed that, of the 24 girls on the Evans teams, only five had knee pads. To a serious volleyball player, knee pads are like shoulder pads to a football player or shin guards to a soccer player: you just don’t play without them. And yet, here were 19 girls who didn’t have them, scuffing and scraping their knees whenever they went to the floor.
Those bruised and bloody knees really bothered Sharon. Yes, those girls were competitors, but they were people first—people who couldn’t afford the proper equipment to compete fairly. That just wasn’t right.
But rather than shrug her shoulders, high-five her daughter and her teammates for their victories, and return home to her comfortable neighborhood, Sharon decided something had to be done.
She launched a campaign to round up knee pads for the entire Evans roster. She first contacted the parents of the Olympia players. Many had “extra” sets of knee pads they could give. Some wrote checks. Then Sharon reached out to her daughter’s club volleyball team and their parents. They too were inspired by Sharon’s leadership and an obvious need.
In short order, there were enough and to spare, for every girl on the Evans High volleyball teams to have her own pair of kneepads. The Olympia coach has invited the Evans teams to a joint clinic where each Olympia player will present kneepads to their opposite number from Evans. No more bruised and bloody knees for the Evans High volleyball team.
I’m sure there are some surly people who might point out that knee pads are not on the same plane as food, shelter, and medical care, but they would miss the larger point. I believe that any time there is a need we are able to address, we have a moral obligation to do so. The SIZE of the need is not nearly as significant as the EXISTENCE of the need.
I admire three things in this episode: First, Sharon perceived the need. How many other teams and how many other parents have played against Evans High this season and through the years, yet did not notice that only five players out of 24 had knee pads? How many were so caught up in winning the game that they failed to see the impact on the lives of those young girls?
Second, she cared. Having seen the need, she yearned to avoid a hurt, to right a wrong, to equalize an inequity. In her heart, she knew she could not turn a blind eye to what she had observed.
Then she acted. How many of our good intentions are ignored, or allowed to wither on the vine? How many acts of service are “procrastinated” into oblivion? How many of us “mean well,” but fail to DO well?
Here is the lesson I am taking away from the story of the kneepads: I will strive to have eyes to see, a heart to care, and a will to act, when I am in the presence of needs great or small. I cannot do everything, but I can—and I must—do something.
Thank you, Sharon, for teaching this lesson so eloquently.
If you enjoyed this blog please send Scott a comment.
August 2010
What Does Money Mean to You?
The meaning of money is as unique and personal to each of us as our fingerprints. It is something we have acquired through a lifetime of experiences with money. Then in turn, like it or not, our lives become significantly defined by what money means to us. It shapes our personal identity, our relationships, our careers. It affects our sense of the past, our awareness of the present, and our vision of the future.
So why would we even consider entrusting our money to someone who doesn’t really understand what money means to us?
Whether we’re considering leaving money to children, grandchildren, or a charitable organization; or we’re about to turn over investment assets to a financial advisor; or we’re asking someone to help us make estate or financial plans, we should share our wealth only with those who are privy to the meaningful experiences that have shaped our understanding of what money is all about.
Those who would inherit our money need to know what it took to earn it and safeguard it, and they need to hear in our own words the lessons life has taught us about how to use wealth wisely. When an inheritance is combined with the wisdom to use it wisely, it can become a meaningful and lasting legacy.
Those who would manage or plan for our money need to appreciate the experiences that have influenced our sense of what money really stands for, and they need to understand how it fits in with the larger themes of our lives.
The best way for them to understand what money means to us is by hearing our “meaning of money” stories. Steve Sabo has pointed out that stories are the most powerful way of teaching and transforming:
Tell me a fact and I’ll learn.
Tell me a truth and I’ll believe.
Tell me a story and it will live in my heart forever.
It is by sharing our experiences in our own words that we convey to them the important money lessons and insights of our lives that are critical to their wise use and management of our wealth.
Nearly half a century ago John F. Kennedy envisioned “a great future in which our country will match its wealth with our wisdom.” Using the power of our meaning of money stories, we can uncover a treasure house of wisdom about the meaning of money hidden within ourselves—wisdom that deserves to be shared and cherished for generations to come.
If you enjoyed this blog please send Scott a comment.
July 2010
Story is the Key to Client Connections
Story is the key to a truly client-centered practice. As professional advisors, we actually begin to make the transition from transactional to relational when we become willing to meet clients on this common ground of sharing and listening to stories about what the client has been through, what events shaped and influenced his or her values, and what matters most. We shift from trying to get the client to understand why he needs our product or service, to understanding who the client is. This new direction is so basic that there isn’t an area of our practice that isn’t deeply affected by it.
This is true for at least two reasons: First, the stories of our experiences form the reality in which all of us live our lives. Who we each are as a person is defined not by what has happened to us, but by how we remember and describe what has happened to us. We have the inherent ability as human beings to choose our response to what the world does to us and to assign our own meanings to the world’s actions and our responses. Consequently, we are not the events of our lives; rather, we are the sum total of the stories we hold on to and tell about the events of our lives.
Second, story is our native language. Until we were a dozen or so years old, it is how we looked at and made sense of the world. It is how our parents taught us right from wrong. It is how we played (cops and robbers, cowboys and Indians, Barbie and Ken) and how we learned. It is how we connected and communicated with those around us. It wasn’t until later that we learned how to be analytical. Even then, it wasn’t until law school, business school, or professional training that much of our native expression in story was replaced. But a part of us—and a big part of our clients—still longs for story, this most human of media.
I’ve learned first-hand this power of communicating in our common native language. I have a college degree in Portuguese, which I earned after I had spent a number of years in Brazil speaking Portuguese most of the time. Unfortunately, I subsequently lived for 20 years in places where no other person spoke Portuguese; consequently, I lost the ability to speak comfortably in this second language.
Now I live in the Orlando area and have frequent opportunities to speak Portuguese. But because of that 20-year hiatus, I have to work hard to be fully present in the conversation. I notice how tense I become as I struggle to remember how to express a certain thought, or conjugate a particular verb, or construct agreement between nouns and adjectives. I’m sure that I often miss the meanings of the other person’s statements, and certainly the nuances of tone and expression.
Occasionally the person I’m speaking with, recognizing that his or her English is better than my Portuguese, switches the conversation to English. It’s amazing for me to notice how I immediately relax, begin to enjoy the exchange of ideas, and grasp the whole conversation.
Clients may find that meeting with a financial advisor or attorney can be a stressful situation, especially as we discuss money, taxes, investment, death, or disability. As if this weren’t daunting enough, we often speak to them in our legal-ese, financial planner-ese, or analytical-ese. If we’re perceptive, we may notice how tense they become as they struggle to understand us, and to express themselves in the language of our transactional world.
But if we switch from the traditional, professional idiom into the client’s native language of story, the whole tone of the conversation changes. They relax, they enjoy the exchange of ideas, and they grasp more of what we’re seeking to share with them. More importantly, they begin to share who they are with us.
I have found that the best way to get comfortable with stories is to begin telling your own to someone you trust. In a truly client-centered practice, the line between personal and professional is not nearly as hard as it has been traditionally among financial and legal professionals. In fact, it’s safe to say that our success as a client-centered advisor will depend on our ability to share our wealth with the client—our experiences and stories, our wisdom and discernment, our compassion and creativity.
Truly client-centered professional service is rooted, first and last, in a rich and meaningful dialogue between two human beings, two equals—not an aloof expert and a passive client. Naturally, there are many things that we and our client will not elect to share with each other for many reasons.
It is, however, essential that we become comfortable with the language of story, and be willing to show up humanly in the truth of our stories. We teach best by example, and by doing this, you demonstrate in the most powerful way possible your qualifications and trustworthiness as a client-centered advisor.
It’s hard to overstate the power that story has to create an immediate and lasting connection between any two human beings. One of the things I learned from a project of capturing clients’ life stories on tape and preserving them with the photographs and documents from their personal histories, is how deeply and quickly one person will bond with another, even a total stranger, who demonstrates a genuine interest in that person’s life and experiences.
We show how much we value another person simply by asking what we at SunBridge call “story-leading questions,” then listening generously, with undivided attention. In this simplest and most natural of human exchanges, we can create amazing and lasting trust and friendship in a matter of a few minutes.
A client’s stories drawn from his or her most meaningful experiences are a gold mine of understanding for the attentive advisor. The client’s values and priorities are laid out for the discerning to see and appreciate, far more effectively than can be achieved through the most cleverly designed questionnaire.
Story provides a context within which the client’s concerns and problems can be identified, pointing the way, often immediately, to deeply human and gratifying solutions. When the client and advisor share the language of story, they become more fully human in each other’s eyes. The client who is invited to share his or her life experiences as part of the advisor’s search for answers to the client’s problems feels valued, heard, and understood. And the advisor’s counsel acquires a correspondingly greater value, in every sense.
Since the prospective client has usually come to see the advisor about some issue related to finances, I’ve found it helpful, after learning something of who the client is, where he came from, and how he ended up here, to invite him to share with me what I call “meaning of money” stories. These are experiences that have helped the client define what money means to him (a meaning that’s deeply personal and individual), which in turn dictates what types of planning the client is open to considering.
Often those stories are about something that happened early in the client’s life when he discovered—often dramatically—what money meant in the family or community in which he grew up. Sometimes the story takes place early in the client’s married life, when he abruptly learned that money meant something entirely different to his spouse. To get this ball rolling, I often share one of my experiences, when a new pair of shoes helped me understand the meaning of money in the Farnsworth family.
I grew up on a small dairy farm in northwest New Mexico, one of thirteen children. Our place bordered the San Juan River across from the Navajo Reservation. Things were difficult for us financially with so many mouths to feed, but we raised most of our own food. We had dairy cows, chickens, pigs, a beef cow, gardens, and orchards, so we were able to provide for ourselves that way. Shoes and clothes, however, posed a real challenge for my parents. Fifteen pairs of feet were a lot to keep in shoes!
One of the many blessings we had was our Uncle Jack, who had a trading post on the Navajo Reservation, where we could buy clothes and shoes wholesale. Every month or so our family went out to the trading post and got the things we needed. A trading post is not exactly Saks Fifth Avenue; it’s a store stocked with only the basic things of rural life, a general store with sheep and goats, and rugs, jewelry, and the like.
Before we went to the trading post we invariably had a family meeting to decide who would get what. My father was not one to brook any sort of “confusion,” as he called it, when we got to the store.
I remember when I was eleven, I’d decided that I was due a new pair of shoes, but the family council had decided that I was not going to get a new pair of shoes, and this left me anything but pleased. I can still remember sitting in the back seat of the car in the driveway, the whole family ready to go, and we couldn’t leave because I was throwing a fit.
My father stood in the driveway reasoning with me through the open window of the car. Finally, after some minutes of unsuccessfully trying to persuade me to be happy about what I was going to get, he did something unexpected. He lifted up his shoe and laid it on the window seal of the car, then turned it over to show me the bottom. These were his good Sunday shoes and the bottom was totally broken out. There wasn’t enough leather there to re-sole them, even if we had had the money, and he, the inclination.
He looked me straight in the eye and he said, “Scott, we can’t afford to buy me new shoes today, and we cannot afford to buy you new shoes, either. Do you understand, son?” Did I ever! In an instant, through the image powerfully conveyed by that single, unforgettable, moment, I understood what money meant in our family. That moment was indelible. It still shapes the way I think of money; it still affects the way I respond when my children ask me for things.
Each one of us has had experiences that define what money means to us. As truly client-centered advisors, we take the time to understand what money means to our clients by listening to their stories. They also have stories about their family, community, heritage, and many other important facets of their life. Indeed, every person has many stories, however unwitting, unformulated, or even forsaken they may be. Hidden within each story is a compass heading for deeply fulfilling financial choices and directions. These are the keys to client connection and client understanding.
If you enjoyed this blog please send Scott a comment.
April 2010
The Power of Story-based Planning Part 5;
Do Questions Matter?
Nancy Kline, the author of
Time to Think and More Time to Think, has taught me a number of significant truths. One is that “the human mind thinks best in the presence of a question.”
As I turned that idea over in my brain a hundred million times, I began to see that
questions matter, and they matter deeply in every field of human thinking. The nature and quality of the questions we ask determine the nature and quality of the thinking we spark and of the answers we receive.
I learned in law school that certain types of questions lead to particular kinds of answers. For example, “open-ended questions” elicit a different kind of answers than “yes/no questions,” and these are different from “leading questions,” which guide a witness to testify a certain way. The type of questions we ask or the way we phrase or frame our questions influences the answers we receive.
This principle is readily seen in the field of education. As a Portuguese instructor, a college professor of business law, and now as a facilitator of professional training, I have observed that students receive, process, store, retrieve, and apply information differently according to the types of questions they are asked and, indeed, by the types of questions they anticipate they will be asked. The learning processes and the thinking processes for one type of question are different from the learning processes and the thinking processes for all other kinds of questions.
For example, a course in which students believe they will be graded with a true-false, multiple choice, matching, or short-answer exam will produce a different kind of thinking and learning than a course in which the anticipated exam is essay, open-ended, problem-solving, or issue-spotting. Similarly, an oral exam results in a very different educational experience than a written one.
The type and style of questions also determines the nature, quality, and quantity of information available to the teacher to assess the students’ comprehension of the subject matter and their ability to apply the material elsewhere. Some kinds of questions deliver rich and abundant information about the student and the learning process, while others yield scant and sketchy insights. If teachers want to understand how well their students are thinking and what they are learning, they should pay careful attention to the nature of the questions they ask.
Successful” students — i.e. those who score well on exams — learn how to anticipate the nature of the questions they will be asked and apply the learning and testing strategies that work best for those kinds of questions. On the other hand, “successful” students — i.e., those who learn to think clearly about the material and then put it to use in the “real world” — think beyond exam questions and anticipate the issues the “real world” will present them.
What’s true in the field of education is also true in our work with clients: the type and style of questions we use matters deeply. Our questions determine which issues our clients think about, and then drive the way they think about, those issues.
If our questions are analytical and numbers-oriented, our clients will think analytically and will focus on the numbers. And if our questions are more intuitive and visionary, our clients will be more reflective and more thoughtful about the future they are creating for themselves and those affected by their planning.
The best planners are comfortable working in both sides of the brain, and are skilful in getting their clients to do the same.
In her magnificent book, I Will Not Die an Unlived Life,” Dawna Markova writes:
The brain has both analytic and intuitive ways of processing information. They are meant to work hand in hand, but usually end up in an arm wrestle. If we analyze only as we have been taught to do in most schools, snapping at the first answer that comes along, then judging it good or bad, right or wrong, the shy intuitive mind, not unlike a prairie dog, runs for cover. Analysis, when improperly done, causes paralysis. It creates a world “out there,” of which we are only spectators and in which we do not live. It is commonly called objectivity.
If, on the other hand, the analytic mind asks open questions of discernment — “I wonder how this would work. . . . What would it look like if this were really possible? . . .” the intuitive mind begins to explore many possibilities, weaving its way through the trees until it has a sense of the whole forest and its meaning in nature’s scheme of things. Pop!
This wandering and wondering are not useful when one is dealing with issues such as the computation of income taxes. But the exploration of purpose and passion requires us to uncover patterns and understand the relatedness between things, and then synthesize them into a new whole. This is the terrain of intuitive processing. Personal truth can not be found in either analytic thinking or intuitive thinking alone. It can only be uncovered in an open inquiry between them.
Because most of us work in a presumptively analytical world, it is not always easy to inspire ourselves or our clients to operate concurrently in the intuitive world. It sometimes feels awkward or invasive. And yet, if we fail to go there, we are stuck in the shallow waters of “the computation of income taxes” and similar tasks, ending often in “analysis paralysis.”
So what is the secret to moving comfortably and confidently into the deep waters of real thinking about the issues that should underpin and overlay great planning? From my three decades in the planning professions, my answer is to ask what I call “story-leading questions.”
Stories are our native language, and everyone, including our most analytical clients, has a story to tell. Stories are a right-brain, intuitive activity that naturally invites the “wandering and wondering” and the “exploration of purpose and passion” Markova writes about. In the hands of an artful advisor, story-leading questions and the stories they spark beckon clients (and also advisors) to “uncover patterns and understand the relatedness between things, and then synthesize them into a new whole.”
The result is a masterful, thoughtful blend of solid numbers and bottom-line analysis, together with deep, rich, and meaningful insight into the client’s purposes and passions. The hard realities of the tax code and the stock market are woven seamlessly with the heart and soul and vision of the human beings for whom we are planning. Literally, a new world, the future world our clients are seeking, is created.
The key to this beautiful and powerful approach to planning is the art of the story-leading question. It unlocks the door to what I believe is the best possible planning on the planet: story-based planning.
If you enjoyed this blog please send Scott a comment.
March 2010
The Power of Story-based Planning Part 4;
The Art of the Story-leading Question?
In “The Power of Story-based Planning, Part 3” I wrote that “the best way to genuinely understand our clients and their values is to
ask them thoughtful and insightful story-leading questions in an appropriate setting and then settle back and listen to their answers with all the love and attention and encouragement we can muster. I have learned that who they are and what they deeply value are woven into the stories they tell and can be discovered by a caring advisor.”
So what are story-leading questions? Simply put, they are questions that invite the other person to answer with a narrative. They open the door to a story.
I have found that good story-leading questions exhibit a warm and welcoming interest in the life of another. Good story-leading questions are appropriate to the level of trust and intimacy between those conversing. They don’t put the other person on the spot, nor feel judgmental.
Good story-leading questions also allow the person answering a number of ways to answer the question, rather than leaving them only one possible option.
Story-leading questions are like wizard’s matches: they ignite a warm, crackling exchange of life-experiences and life-lessons. Sometimes, they even kindle bonfires of story sharing. A good story-leading question naturally and comfortably invites the other person to recall and share a little bit of their life with the person posing the question.
Most of us already have a wide array of story-leading questions that we use but most of us are not mindful of them or how powerful they can be,
especially when we remember to ask them “in an appropriate setting and then settle back and listen to the answers with all the love and attention and encouragement we can muster,” to quote myself.
Here’s an experiment you can try. When you go home this evening and when the time is right, try out this simple story-leading question with someone you love: “So what was interesting or unusual about your day today?”
Or ask a young parent: “What has your child learned to do lately?”
Or ask a child: “What’s something you’ve discovered lately that makes you happy?”
Or ask an older person: “What’s happening with your grandchildren?”
Or ask a friend: “What’ve you been up to since the last time we talked?”
Then listen, really listen. Show with your countenance and your body language that you deeply want to hear the answer. Don’t rush, don’t compete, don’t minimize or infantilize in any way what they say. Just listen.
I promise if you do, you will discover — or rediscover — magic.
This same approach works in our professional lives. Story-leading questions and attentive, caring listening can transform the planning process.
Our clients safeguard a treasure trove of information about themselves, their lives, their loved ones, and their visions for the future behind a heavy locked door. Opening the door requires two sets of keys. One set is the questions and the other is the listening. Accessing this valuable cache of information can lead to the creation of elegant and appropriate planning for these clients.
Great story-leading questions and attentive, respectful listening are the keys.
If you enjoyed this blog please send Scott a comment.
February 2010
The Power of Story-based Planning Part 3;
“The Siren Call of the Questionnaire”
In an earlier post I wrote that “values-based planning” is founded on the notion that each client has a personal set of values that should be ascertained early in the planning process and then used to fashion a financial plan or estate plan unique to that client. Most enlightened planners today would concur that financial and estate plans based on client values are far superior to the “one-size-fits-all” cookie-cutter plans that many of us grew up doing.
The question with regard to values-based planning is not whether we should create plans based on client values. The answer to that one is duh-obvious: Yes. The issue is not
WHETHER we should do values-based planning, but rather
HOW to do it so that it actually works.
In other words,
how do we respectfully and accurately ascertain each client’s unique and deeply-held values upon which their planning will be based? What methodology will allow us – and our clients – to look into their hearts, to see there what truly matters, and to then discern how to create a plan with them based on what we have discovered?
Unfortunately, the widely-heralded “values-based planning revolution” has been in my view a case of one step forward, two steps back. This is largely because in nearly every instance what started out to be “values-based planning” quickly morphed into what I call “questionnaire-based planning.” Indeed, with a few notable exceptions, virtually every so-called “values-based” approach is designed to be implemented by means of a cleverly designed, carefully worded questionnaire.
I think that is a tragic turn of events, and here’s why:
A. Questionnaires are blunt instruments that deliver cut-and-dried, categorical answers. As a result, they seduce planners into seeing clients as cut and dried and categorical. But that’s not the way we humans are, especially when we drill down to a values level. We are not pegs to be pushed into differently shaped holes, or colored bobbles to be sorted into different boxes. We are each unique. We are full of nuances, contradictions, uncertainties, and places where the lines are blurred. We don’t fit into four or five neat categories, as most questionnaires require.
Some would argue that being able to offer clients a plan based on which one of several categories they fall into, as determined by their questionnaire responses, is substantially better than the old “one-size-fits-all” method of planning. While it may be an improvement, it is not true values-based planning. Offering clients a choice of cookie cutters is still cookie-cutter planning.
B. Questionnaires have built-in biases, which are based on the assumptions and prejudices of their creators. Regardless of whether these biases are accidental or intentional, a biased questionnaire skews the results away from the client’s true values. When you start with untrue assumptions, you always end up with incorrect conclusions.
I have seen long, beautiful, and well-worded questionnaires that were supposed to assess a client’s values and direct the planner to the type of plan the client needed. Oddly, it seemed that nearly everyone using that questionnaire was steered toward essentially the same plan, one that favored the aims and products promoted by the questionnaire designer. It seems to me that when everyone gets the same answer, maybe the questionnaire is asking the wrong questions.
C. Questionnaires can be “gamed” by clever clients. The process of answering questions in a questionnaire invites clients to consider not just their answers, but the impact of their answers on the planner and the planning process. “Will this answer raise or lower the fee?” “Will this answer make me seem more wealthy or less wealthy?” “Will this answer cast me in a negative light?” “Will I appear miserly, judgmental, prejudiced, immature, or short-sighted if I answer that way?” “Will I be exposing my weaknesses, and will that allow her to take advantage of me in some way?”
Human nature being what it is, the odds are high that clients’ responses will be less than candid and unguarded. Consequently, there is a high probability that questionnaire answers will be scrubbed, distorted, shaded, or flat-out wrong. This makes the results of a questionnaire unreliable as a basis for serious values-based planning.
D. Questionnaires lead to dull, inattentive planners. Questionnaire-based planning doesn’t require planners to listen deeply and attentively to clients, to ask insightful questions, or to employ judgment and wisdom to discern how to weave the client’s life-lessons into the plan. The “correct answers” or the client’s “categories” just “magically” pop out from the responses. Yeah, right.
True values discovery requires careful and attentive listening. Each client and the stories they tell are alive with insight and meaning. They are full of clues and pieces of answers. Real people living real lives are like that. The right answers don’t just pop out; they have to be teased out and then pieced together like a jigsaw puzzle. But when you make a commitment to discover for yourself – and for the client – a clear and complete understanding of what’s really in their heart, their deepest purposes for planning, you discover that the results are unquestionably worth the effort.
E. Questionnaires don’t lead to values-based planning.
Questionnaire-based planning is neat, clean, analytical, and easy, but it is incapable of drilling all the way down to the values-bearing strata deep inside the client. No matter how cleverly worded, a questionnaire can never respectfully and accurately ascertain each client’s uniquely personal values. The results are too shallow and mechanical. The intention may be right but the methodology is wrong.
Thus, whenever planning becomes questionnaire-based, it ceases to be truly values-based. I call it “faux values-based planning.”
Please understand that I believe there is an appropriate role for questionnaires in the financial planning and estate planning process, which is to help gather data. I have no problem using questionnaires as fact finders. They just don’t work to discover and discern significant client values.
So What?
“So what’s the harm,” you may ask, “in doing questionnaire-based planning? It’s definitely a lot better than the old way we used to do it.”
The most significant harm is that when financial planners and estate planners – even smart, sincere, and well-intentioned planners – think they are doing values-based planning but are only doing faux values-based planning, they stop seeking the real thing. They become enamored with zirconium and fail to find the acres of diamonds just over the next hill. They take the shortcut and never realize they just missed the best part of the journey. As a result, they rob themselves and their clients of the magnificent experience of true values-based planning.
Good is the enemy of great.
The moment earnest planners apply the label “values-based planning” to something that is not and once they start to believe they are doing “values-based planning,” even though it is really only the “faux” variety, they lose the sense of urgency to discover the real thing and are unable to see the need to do more. Once they get locked in, it is nearly impossible to unlock them. As a wise person once said in another context,
“the problem is not what they don’t know. It’s what they do know that just ain’t so.”
Values on the cheap vs. paying the price
While questionnaire-based planning may appear neat, clean, analytical, and easy, it is really only values-based planning on the cheap. The real process of values discovery – like virtually every other authentically meaningful human endeavor such as nurturing a fulfilling marriage, raising independent children, growing a beautiful garden, or building a success business – can be disorderly, messy, intuitive, and sometimes challenging. It requires real work. It requires that we pay the price to come to know, really know, our clients. It cannot be achieved with clever techniques.
The Solution
To move into the beautiful new world of true values-based planning, the solution is not to try to come up with a more artful questionnaire. The solution is to recognize that their stories -- the oldest and most natural form of human communication – are rich and ripe with the unvarnished truth about our clients’ values. We just need to ask the right questions and then listen, really listen.
I have found that the best way to genuinely understand our clients and their values is to ask them thoughtful and insightful story-leading questions in an appropriate setting and then settle back and listen to their answers with all the love and attention and encouragement we can muster. I have learned that who they are and what they deeply value are woven into the stories they tell and can be discovered by a caring advisor. That is the essence of what I call “Story-based Planning in a Thinking Environment.”
How to do that gracefully, effectively, and affordably is the subject of my next post.
If you enjoyed this blog please send Scott a comment.
January 2010
Give Yourself More Time to Think
If you didn’t get everything you wanted this Christmas—or even if you did—I want to suggest something you should give yourself as a new year’s gift: more time to think. No, I haven’t discovered how to squeeze more than 168 hours into a week, but it’s probably the next best thing.
If it is true that the quality of everything we do depends on the quality of the thinking we do first, then the key to a high-quality 2010 is for us to think better. Fortunately, Nancy Kline has already figured out how to do that and has shared those insights in her newly-released book,
More Time to Think.
Among the many delicacies I savor in Nancy’s work are the dozens of paradoxes she has uncovered. One of those is that
taking time to elicit everyone’s independent, fresh thinking up front actually
saves time in the long run. Along the same lines as John Wooden’s piercing question, “If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?” I have found Nancy’s assertion to be absolutely true:
In the Thinking Environment we think so well in the time we have that the time we have increases.
So before you rush off to begin making this year better than the last, let me offer you the best piece of advice I could give you: Go to
www.amazon.co.uk and order
More Time to Think. (Nancy’s book is published in England and is not yet sold in the United States, notwithstanding my incessant “inveigling” her—Nancy’s word, not mine—to make her materials more accessible to the American market.) You’ll find that the British version of Amazon is no harder to use than the U.S. based Amazon, it just takes a few days longer for the book to travel across “the pond.”
When
More Time to Think arrives, read it thoughtfully cover to cover. Put its wisdom into practice. Apply its principles in your business, in your meetings, in your relationships, and in your life. Then get ready to have the best year ever!
Nancy’s work has had a long and lasting impact of me, so I was happy to provide her my testimonial, which she included on the back cover of the book:
When you change the way you think, you change everything. In my work and my life, the Thinking Environment has made all the difference.
Nancy’s new book makes the big picture and the minute details of the Thinking Environment accessible to all. Whether you are brand new to Time to Think or you have spent dozens and dozens of days studying with Nancy as I have,
More Time to Think will challenge you, inspire you, and invite you to seek everyone’s independent, fresh thinking. It will, without exaggeration, change your work and your life.
Here’s the complete link to order the book:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/More-Time-Think-Being-World/dp/1906377103/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1262186287&sr=1-1
To learn more about Time to Think, including programs taught by me in the United States, visit
www.TimetoThink.com.
To learn more about how SunBridge helps caring professional advisors touch hearts and change lives, visit
www.SunBridgeNetwork.com.
If you enjoyed this blog please send Scott a comment.
December 2009
This Christmas, give the gift of story
During this hectic time of year, we hope you will take the time to share stories with those you love.
We think sharing stories is the perfect gift. Stories are affordable, non-fattening, and you can never have too many of them. You don't have to worry about size and color, the hassle of wrapping, losing sales receipts, or long lines at the mall.
Most people really don't need a new toy or a new tie, but we all have stories ("To be a person is to have a story to tell" Isak Dinesen) and we all need to be able to share our stories ("There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside of you" Maya Angelou).
Long after the batteries have gone dead and the luster has faded from other gifts, stories will live on. "Tell me a fact and I will learn; Tell me a truth and I will believe: Tell me a story and it will live in my heart forever" (Steve Sabo).
Sharing stories successfully doesn't take much - a few thoughtful story-leading questions, an authentic interest and curiosity, and a few minutes of ease. Throw in a digital recorder or a video camera and you have a gift that you can share again and again and again.
This season is custom-made for remembering and recounting stories. Just ask anyone, young or old, to recall their most memorable Christmas, the best gift they ever received, the most thoughtful gift they ever
gave, their loneliest holiday, the time they felt closest to the true spirit of Christmas.
Ask the questions and then sit back and enjoy their answers. Share your own. Watch their eyes sparkle. Notice how their cheeks glow. Feel the power of real human connection. This is the best way to enjoy the holidays.
We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy, story-filled New Year.
If you enjoyed this blog please send Scott a comment.
“Is that all?”
Both were born severely autistic. Can you picture the challenge of brand-new parents caring for twins? Or can you imagine the even greater challenge of brand-new parents caring for a severely autistic child? Now can you comprehend the difficulty of brand-new parents caring for severely autistic twins? Tears trickled down Neil’s cheeks as he described the love they discovered and the insights they gained during their grueling and ongoing struggle to raise those boys.
“I would not give a fig for the simplicity this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes 
I see this empty space as an opportunity rather than an obligation. We planners are not responsible for our clients’ happiness — that would infantilize them and unfairly burden us. But visionary advisors may want to consider the potential of building their practices by helping clients deal with the complexity resulting their own planning and that of other advisors. I think it makes good business sense to do so.
Some time ago I conducted a Priceless Conversation with a man whose father and grandfather had both been highly successful, professionally and financially. He shared with me the swirl of growing up with virtually every possible option in the world open to him. He said his whole life felt like drinking from a fire hydrant, and he like the hyperactive cavalryman who “jumped on his horse and rode off in all directions.” He asked me to help him narrow the range of potential choices, so that things that were more important to him weren’t pushed aside by things that were less important. He wanted me to help him find his bearings in a tsunami of possibilities.
Sometimes clients and donors initiate the process. They approach you seeking assistance in accomplishing the next big thing they crave for their life, their marriage, their family, their business, their giving, or their legacy. At other times, the life-review aspects of
The Meaning of Success Priceless Conversation, or some similar process draws a compelling craving to the surface and make it clear to them they must do something about it right away.
In the hands of a Master Planner,
The Meaning of Success Priceless Conversation uses clients’ or donors’ own words, thoughts, insights, and stories to discover and clarify how they see life, what they value in life, and what ultimately they want from life.
We all know what an expert is, don’t we? That’s a person who knows a lot and gets paid to deliver brilliant answers. The essence of what he does is talk, right?
customers understand that you are
experienced, that you understand people like them, and that you know
how to solve their problems. They see that you are thoughtful and
systematic. They recognize that you will find appropriate solutions
to their unique set of problems. They perceive added value in your
approach because they have a clear understanding of how you work.