Yes, you go when you’re ready and start then.
Welcome everyone, Paul Crane, business coach. Welcome to the GAF. I’m going to take you quickly through the six steps.
This is a great communication and meeting framework. Use at every client meeting you have. I can do it in a sales context. You can use this even at meetings internally. It’s a great framework that creates consistency in the way we approach meetings. I’ll go through quickly, the quick six steps.
First step is probably the most important, it’s called the agenda. As we talk about, a lot of people go into meetings with their own agenda. The key to this is to work out what is the client’s agenda. And sometimes this takes a bit of work. Sometimes clients come in thinking they know what they want and the danger is we grab what we call the global agenda, which is what they think they want to talk about. And try go straight into step three, which is fact-finding.
It takes a bit of discipline to write down whatever their global agenda is. It may be, look, I really want some tax advice. I really think I need some structuring. And before we dive into the fact find we then work out the specific agenda.
The specific agenda is look, we got 45 minutes to an hour, what would make this meeting of real value to you? Just out of interest, while you’re doing the structuring and what you might find out is a whole bunch of other things that are a lot more pressing and relevant now to talk about.
This is also when you may have even called the meeting and you have an agenda again, the third-party language for the first three steps is really useful. So rather than diving into your agenda, it’s asking, look, before we go through the documents that we’ve got, it might be the end of year numbers before we go through that, is there any top of your minds, is there anything that you’d like to talk about at this meeting?
You may find out they’ve got a whole bunch of things they’ve been really needing help with. It could be they’ve got debtor issues, cashflow issues. The key, the agenda is really managing expectations. It’s also fantastic to keep the meeting on track.
If the meeting goes off track, you can actually use the agenda to bring it back on track by just saying, for instance, “Look, I’ve just noticed we’re talking about something that wasn’t on the agenda that you set at the start. Do you want to put that on the agenda or… I’m just aware of your time?”
It’s a really nice way to keep them focused rather than going off track because some meetings can go a lot longer than they need to. The other thing to remember is it’s their agenda, not yours. Just a good reminder go in with a blank sheet of paper sometimes.
Step two is also really important for, say positioning is making sure they’re clear, if it’s the first meeting, on who you are, what you do. This is where you’ve got to be clear on your value proposition. It’s around not only them setting expectations of you, but it’s the opportunity for you to set expectations of how you want to work together. That’s working out are we a match.
With a second or third meeting, it’s just checking in, could be a simple question like, “Has anything changed since we last spoke?” Or it could be, “Are we on track?” You want to make sure there’s still what we call pre-sold is still well positioned with you.
Positioning and an agenda are the two critical steps of this, because the rest of this most people do. Once we’ve got positioning clear, they understand your value proposition, they are clear on who you are and what you do. Another good question, just if they are a new client is to ask how they found out about you, it’s great information to know. And also if they were referred, what did that referrer say about you. Critical information, which we’ll mention at the later steps in the six steps.
Fact-finding most of us do that, I guess the key here and I’ve written in green what I call just a reminder around what the most important part of that it is. It’s really listening. We also call the fact find the opportunity sometimes if it’s relevant to work out the feel find. For a lot of people who are dealing with businesses, money, family, that there often is some emotion around that.
So again, you wouldn’t ask someone directly how you’re feeling, that’s going to probably make them feel uncomfortable. It would be third party. Look, a lot of people when they’re going through a succession, for instance, it can bring up a lot of emotion for people. For some it’s exciting, they’re seeing family members coming through or new people coming through. For a lot of people it’s nervousness, some people sadness, finally having to let go of something that they’ve taken their whole life to build.
If we don’t have that feel find, that opportunity to really connect and show some empathy with a client. It’s really a great opportunity to actually connect even deeper with the client. So what we’re finding… also try and work out there is what is the most important thing to them? What is their anchor? It could be a husband and wife at a meeting and they may have slightly different anchors around the financial plan.
For the husband or one of the partners it may be around succession in their business. For the other partner, it may be about their kids and making sure that they’re okay and that we’ve got our estate planning and wills and all those sorted and in place. If we don’t work out what their anchor is that sometimes can make you walk out feeling like you haven’t really listened to them. So again, great tip there is to listen, really listen, and to learn to pause and you’ll be amazed what more you’ll learn from your clients.
Step four, once you’ve done the fact find, by the way, there may be other agenda items come out at either of these steps. This is not step by step, this is kind of a framework to guide you. Presentation is now where we’re giving advice back. This is where you can actually tick off agenda items as you go to make sure we’ve given advice around particular areas that they need help with. Making sure we do cover their anchor so they do feel like you’ve actually understood what they want.
The language now has to be direct because you’re now giving them confidence you can help them. So we often say, this is not where you are the suggester, you’re the advisor. So speak with confidence and be more direct. Hardest part for a lot of people is learning to pause, to stop. The reason for that is it makes the client feel like they’ve got time to reflect. There may be other questions come up. It’s really important not to feel like you’re pressuring them into coming to a close, which is what some people try and do.
It also allows them to take all that information in. It may be a diagram or a picture they’re looking at. And hopefully they’ll, if you’ve done the presentation and answered their anchor, they will often go, “Okay, where to from here? What’s next?” Which leads really well into step five, which is summary.
Summary would be, if it’s a new client, explaining the process, the engagement process. Talk about fees with confidence, which shouldn’t be a surprise if you’ve done your value proposition up early, really clearly. There should be no surprises and close the loop if they were referred or you’re simply asking to do here is call a referrer. “Do you mind just calling so-and-so, let them know we caught up and thank them for guiding towards us.” Very simple thing but it’s a great piece. When I refer, I like to know how it all went.
I like to hear from the person I referred. It’s also nice to hear from the person who’s referred you as well. And the last step is open. Making sure they’re clear on the next step. We call that getting agreement. Most people have diaries on their phones and lock in the next date if you need to do that. It’s a really good way sometimes to get something sent back from them, get them involved, get them to have to do something and let them know clearly what you’re going to do next.
Just quick summary, the key, probably the two most important steps is the first two, getting the global and specific agenda out and making sure you do the positioning really clearly and making sure they’re very clear on who you are, what you do and managing expectations. Thank you.