Getting to know your customers is of utmost importance in financial planning. It goes beyond offering policies with reasonable premiums. It is essential to be cutting edge with your competitors and, at the same time, addressing the real needs and desires of your clients. 

In today’s episode, we talk about life planning and how it is different from the traditional way of offering financial plans. We are joined by Devan King, who gives his valuable insights on life planning and its advantages. 

If you want to know more about financial planning and position your offer such that clients will significantly benefit from it, tune in to this podcast! 

About Our Guest

Devan King is a senior financial planner for Sentinel Wealth. He has been a financial adviser for over ten years. Also a cash flow strategist and financial coach, he helps people define their life vision, understand their beliefs and motivations and facilitate a better relationship with money. 

How To Do Goals-Based Life Planning  A Life Planner’s Role 

• Financial advisers should be offering more value than what clients typically receive. 
• They should know their clients well, and it should go beyond offering an insurance policy. 
• Financial planning should always start with your client’s goals. 
• Life planning should be incorporated to get deeper into what customers want. 

What Is Life Planning

• Life planning is connecting the dots between your financial means and the life that you want to live. 
• Instead of planning things in your life, it’s more about designing your life, and then working out how you can achieve that with your current financial situation.

The Process of Life Planning 

• First, start with a visioning meeting. Take people to a detailed exercise of determining their money beliefs. Their money beliefs significantly affect their actions, their financial means and how they plan things. After you have identified their money beliefs and biases, use the ones that are potentially helpful and address the ones that are limiting or sabotaging.
• Second, ensure that a deep motivator anchors their goals. Identify the things that motivate your clients, things which they need to achieve to feel fulfilled and happy.
• Third, write a life vision. Write a life vision for your clients based on the data that you have gathered from your initial sessions. 

Scenario Planning

• It targets clients who work long hours and earn a lot but do not feel fulfilled in their life.
• In this process, Daven’s team creates different scenarios and lets the clients choose what is ideal for them.
• After this, they base their financial planning on that scenario. 

Conducting a Visioning Meeting 

• It lasts for 2 hours. 
• Most of the clients already have goals. 
• The purpose of the vision is to link their goals to the vision. 
• It is a collaboration between Daven’s team and the client to determine the specific goals and milestones they need. 
• The process is personalized. 
• It is essential to record the meeting (sound file) in order not to miss certain things. 

Conducting Strategic Pathways

• It is generally an hour and a half. 
• It is followed by a plan presentation, which also lasts for an hour and a half. 
• Typically, there are three to five meetings for complicated clients.
• The process is personalized.

Having Fee Conversation 

• They conduct a feasibility meeting.
• They do it before the visioning meeting. 
• During the canvas conversation, they write down all the problems that their clients need to solve and discuss how they can potentially help them in solving their problems. 
• Afterwards, they get the buy-in of the fees and discuss everything.

Importance of a Feasibility Meeting

• It is critical that you feel you can work with your client well. 
• You must be able to add value to them. If Daven’s team feels that the client is not a good fit, they most likely won’t work with the potential client. In that case, they will advise and refer them to planners who are better suited to that person’s profile. 

Determining the Appropriate Fee 

• They have a pricing tool and employ a fee-based commission. 
• They do not have a flat fee. Instead, they have a calculator that helps them compute based on the person’s portfolio and profile. 

Finding New Clients 

• Since they have a good reputation, they have a secure flow of clients contacting them.
• Also, existing members bring in a new client. 
• They also get many referrals. 

Giving Financial Advice

• For customers, financial planning is personal. 
• It would be best if you had a good rapport with the person you are dealing with 
• The qualification and reputation of your financial adviser should be stellar. 

Tips for Advisers This 2020

• Have fee-based advice. 
• Focus on value. It is difficult to charge a fee if you cannot prove the value that you can offer. 

To know more about life planning, check out Sentinel Wealth’s website. You may also connect with Devan on LinkedIn.

Listen to more conversations with pioneers of the new world of financial advice at Goals-Based Advice Podcast. You can also listen to the show on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Follow our Facebook page for updates. 

If you have more questions, don't forget to reach out to me on LinkedIn and to send an email at [email protected]

Thanks for tuning in!