The Financial Planner's Guide to Client Consideration

Advisors who attempt to put their clients' interest ahead of their own have integrity; advisors who understand that their clients' interest is their interest have wisdom. Surprisingly, honesty and good service don't set you apart; they are entry-level expectations for a financial advisory practice. This guide goes far beyond these basic expectations, showing advisors how to differentiate themselves by doing things for their clients that other advisors in their area aren't doing.

The Financial Planner's Guide to Client Consideration shows financial advisors how to take better care of their clients. A step-by-step manual with concepts and practical applications including a detailed list of 42 actionable considerations, it includes specific data gathering tools that provide little used but highly effective techniques and strategies advisors can provide their clients. It includes practical, relevant annuity and life insurance analysis worksheets that show advisors how to uncover and prevent hidden pitfalls other advisors don't even know exist.

The financial industry teaches advisors how to "build relationships and sell products", "marketing", "sales ideas", and "practice management", things that are about advisors. This book is for planners, but about clients. It says, "A financial advisor can't improve his or her practice without doing something more or better for his or her clients". This book says that the reflection of "selling" is "resistance"; quit selling and resistance disappears.

Advisors will learn asset categorization strategies that leave clients saying, "So, how do we fix this?" before the advisor even makes a suggestion or a recommendation. Advisors will learn how to considerately assist clients to "fire" their current advisor. In some cases, "dismissed" advisors won't even resist because they will know they have been outclassed. The financial industry appropriately prohibits speaking and writing in terms of "absolutes". Some things are not controllable, but some things are; probate, at $350 - $400/hour for 6 - 18 months is avoidable. This guide provides step-by-step procedures, implemented on a line item basis, which can prevent the need for probate. He shows you how custom designed Beneficiary Designation forms can help prevent unintended heirs.

As advisors take specific steps that deliver client benefits, their competence and confidence grows exponentially. An advisor who did exceptional things for his or her last client has a new level of self-confidence when meeting with the next high-net-worth potential client. This book includes esoteric concepts coupled with practical steps which give advisors the foundation for understanding why certain things work the way they do and the real-world skills to put them into practice. Clients verbally reinforce the use of the strategies covered in this guide when they say to their advisor: "No one ever asked me this before" and "Why didn't my advisor tell me this could happen?"

While this book was written for financial advisors, consumers can use it as a benchmark by which to measure their current financial advisor relationship or to evaluate a potential new advisor. The Financial Planner's Guide to Client Consideration could become the new standard in the financial industry to which all financial advisors aspire!