Ideal Planning Candidates
How can you tell before you begin the planning process with candidates (clients and prospects), if they will become engaged in it? Advisors primarily use wealth as a means of "screening" for "ideal" planning candidates. But wealth should not be the sole screening criterion, especially because of inherited wealth. The financial attitudes of Accountability, Participation, and Learning provide important insights.
Engaging Candidates
Here's how we suggest that you market life planning.
Imagine you are talking with a pharmacist (doctor, dentist, lawyer, business owner...). You make three statements and ask two simple questions: "At some point, you decided to become a pharmacist. When you made that decision, you did what you needed to do. I know this because today you are a pharmacist. Let me ask you two questions. Are you equally as clear about your lifestyle wants? Are you acting effectively to achieve them?"
As clients reflect on these questions, explain that this is the purpose of life planning: To help them clarify their vision of life and discover how to achieve that vision.
We do not suggest that you invite clients to complete the life-planning process. Instead, offer to do a webinar and use MyVisionOfLife.ca to introduce them to life planning (see the VW Web page). We like to use the analogy of buying a car. We do our research by reading articles and so on. But before we make a final decision, we always take a car for a "test drive." Clients will "test drive" the life-planning process when they create their vision of life. Based on their experience of the process, they will see value and choose to proceed or they will not.