Creating a financial profile that includes a budget, risk tolerance test and attitudes on money will shape the strategies, tactics and plan designs of your clients. There’s no cookie cutter, one size fits all. So, you have to go through a discovery process to determine their value system and not impose your beliefs on them. You are not your client. Your beliefs are irrelevant and attempting to imprint your mindset on a prospect or client can derail the relationship.
Value selling is based on the moral understanding of the client’s financial obligations to their family, business partners and charities they donate to. If the family’s bread winner doesn’t “believe” the fundamental necessity of owning life insurance to protect his family, all the math in the world will be insufficient logic to him. He makes choices based on his beliefs and his gut feelings, not math or reason. Best practices in this situation is to have him sign a disclosure form that you offered life insurance and he refused.
Once last thought: You may believe in the long-term profitability of the market confirmed by the Ibbotson “Mountain” Chart. But if your client is conservative, can’t take losses and has insomnia over the market corrections, it will be psychological meltdown for him to experience a bear market or a swan event. You may have Vulcan rational to consider equities, but it will fall on deaf ears. Fearful emotions are sometimes the basis for an aversion towards equities and you have to sell and plan accordingly.
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