Tell Me Where It Hurts: 10 Questions For Business Planning With Financial Advisors

Business planning for the year ahead is in full swing for most wholesalers.

Are you holding business planning meetings with your best clients?

Plan now to plan for next year.

The holiday season represents an excellent time to have meaningful sit-downs with the top brokers in your region.

It’s the time where you will explore what the broker expects from your partnership and what you need to deliver on.

In return, it represents the best time to get business commitments in plain dollars and cents.

Yes, you need to get those commitments in firm dollars.

Alternately, you can tell them how much you need from them in order for the partnership to be mutually successful.

On a recent Wholesaler Mastermind call we discussed the importance of ‘finding out where it hurts’.

As you begin your planning session with your clients, think about asking important ‘where does it hurt?’ questions.

Questions like:

As you think back on the past year, in what areas did you need your business to improve?
Are your model portfolios behaving as you had expected?
Are you net positive or net negative clients versus last year?
Did the meltdown help or hurt your business? Why?
What product provider changes are you thinking about making in the year ahead? By asset class? By carrier?
What events do you have planned to reach your existing book of business?
If you could hire a consultant to help you with one dimension of your business what would that consultant specialize in?
What are your plans for acquiring new clients?
Do you have thoughts about integrating social media into your business?
Who is the best wholesaler that called on you this past year? Why?

All of these questions are designed in some way to get at the ‘what hurts’.

Once you know what ails them you can begin to prescribe remedies that will deepen the relationships that you have with producers.

Frequently we offer solutions for pains they don’t have.

Or we simply ignore the symptoms they are displaying.

Take the guess work out – simply ask ‘where does it hurt?’

Are you getting enough great ideas from your managers or peers?