22nd January 2024

How to ask great financial planning questions

Asking great financial planning questions is the foundation of creating a highly compelling plan for your client.

When your client can clearly see that their financial plan is going to be an essential part of getting what they most want then why wouldn’t they be excited about it?

Importantly, great financial planning questions also perform several other functions too. For instance, they:

*Help you to build trust, rapport, and credibility.

*Allow your clients to unburden themselves of their concerns and think more clearly.

*Explore meaning and create emotional engagement.

*Open up new choices and possibilities.

*Demonstrate your level of interest.

The conventional approach to questioning 

The most common approach to questions is to treat them as a technique. This means trying to memorise a question or series of questions and using them when the time is right.

But this approach has several limitations. The biggest being that the process can come across as unnatural or even misplaced.

I have had many practitioners share that they have tried using different and more searching questions with clients, but it has not worked very well. What happens then is that it is easy to revert to a product centred approach.

The missing link

There is something I call the iceberg illusion. As I am sure you know, it is only the tip of an iceberg that is visible above the water line. Most of the iceberg is invisible.

I use this analogy to explain where the power in a conversation comes from. The tip of the iceberg is our language, behaviour, and techniques which includes the questions we use. And because these things are visible to us, we conclude that this is where the power is.

Yet impact does not come from what is visible. Instead, it comes from what we cannot see, below the water line.

Human beings are not robots

Highly engaging conversations do not lend themselves to an intellectual approach. 

We all know that conversations, at their best and most impactful, are natural, flowing, and meaningful. This is compromised if we are speaking from our head rather than our heart.

You wouldn’t go out with your friends and have a bunch of memorised questions to ask them, would you? So, why do it in your client meetings?

In my work with financial planners in this area I help them move away from an intellectual approach. Instead, their questioning becomes effortless, intuitive, and conversational.

This makes a massive, positive difference to the experience your client has and, therefore, the impact of your work.

The art and science of asking great financial planning questions

The science of asking great questions is knowing the direction you want to go in and the questions that perform this function. 

The art is allowing this to become intuitive and natural rather than an intellectual process.

So, how do you accomplish this?

Have you ever noticed that when someone is excelling at something they are NOT thinking about it?

This can seem counter-intuitive, but is true, nevertheless. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi authored a book about this called, ‘Flow‘. He observed that:

“Flow is being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz.”

Of course, it can be useful to learn more about questions or discover new questions you can use, yet it is your state of mind that brings the process to life.

When your mind is quiet, you have everything you need to respond appropriately, insightfully, and intelligently – in that moment.

Techniques will often take you away from this because holding something in mind distracts you and drastically lowers your quality of presence and attention.

When I collaborate with financial planners who wants to improve their questioning skills, it is always, without exception, the mental aspect that makes the biggest difference.

P.S. If you want to discover new questions you can use then check out the ‘Financial Planning Power Questions’ card deck.

John Dashfield, Dashfield Coaching & Development Ltd, Business Development