11 questions to ask your clients

When financial advisors ask effective questions, they generate meaningful conversation, uncover clients’ motivations and inform the financial planning process.

Sybil Verch, senior wealth advisor and portfolio manager with Wealthy Life Group, Raymond James Ltd. in Victoria, works mostly with high-net-worth C-suite clients. But when she worked with smaller clients, she would ask this question:

• If you won $25 million in the lottery, what would you do with the money?

“Now, all of a sudden, they get rid of all the self-limiting beliefs … getting in their way of setting big ambitious goals, and they’re dreaming,” Verch said. “And that’s fun.”

For advisors to ask this question, however, they must “be prepared to help the client think of alternative ways to accomplish their goals and include financial planning as a core component of their value proposition,” Verch said. “This is way beyond just portfolio management.”

After helping clients record their responses to the question, “I show them ways they can accomplish everything they wanted to accomplish,” without needing to win the lottery, Verch said. For example, one of those ways could be making a big trip more affordable through a home exchange.

Earlier this year, Advisor.ca asked readers to share their favourite questions to generate effective client conversations.

Steve Bridge, a financial planner with Money Coaches Canada in North Vancouver, provided some of his favourites:

• Where are you at, and where would you like to get to?
• What motivated you to reach out now?
• What are your pressing financial concerns or questions?
• What would you like to accomplish from our work together?

“These questions and others help me understand clients’ ‘why’ (as Simon Sinek says) and create a plan aligned with their goals,” Bridge wrote in an email.

Typically, clients and prospects can readily answer such questions, he said: “Once someone has gone to the trouble of finding an [advice-only planner], contacting me, booking a call, etc., they have been thinking about financial and retirement planning a fair bit, including what they want to accomplish, as well as their ‘why.’”

Hash Assad, executive financial consultant, Assad Wealth Management, IG Private Wealth Management in Calgary, provided some sample “why” questions:

• I’m curious, why is it so important that your children have a university education?
• If I may ask, why are you so frustrated with your existing … ?

“The traditional salesperson focuses on ‘what’ the client wants to buy,” Assad wrote in an email. “The professional focuses on ‘why’ they want to buy,” which reveals motivation.

Assad also noted that effective client conversations require active listening. His favourite conversation prompt begins with “Tell me more about … ” and helps him dig deeper into topics with clients:

• Tell me more about how you created the wealth you have.
• Tell me more about what happened to your father when …

Christine Culbertson, account executive, group benefit and retirement savings, iA Financial Group in Toronto, suggested questions be “posed gently, as conversational and curious.” Direct, probing questions can send prospects into “alert mode” that they’re being sold to, Culbertson wrote in an email. Questions should also appeal to emotions, she said, and one of her favourites is: What keeps you up at night?

Another Culbertson favourite leads to a client’s “full engagement,” she said, addressing both the client’s emotional and analytical sides:

• If I could show you how to send fewer tax dollars to Ottawa and have more wealth in retirement, would you be interested in learning more?