How to Present a Retirement Planning Survey to Your Clients

August 14, 2018 | by the National Care Planning Council

Our Life Resource Planning System produces 2 different surveys. The first survey is called a "Life Resource Survey." The second report is called a "Retirement Planning Survey." In this article we will discuss how to present a Retirement Planning Survey. In a former article we discussed how to present a Life Resource Survey.

Your opportunity to do retirement planning is based on the planning that you did originally with the aging parents of your clients. Once you have solved the problems of their parents, you now have the opportunity to work with the children who are typically close to retirement or have recently retired. This represents a 2-for-1 marketing opportunity for you where you can work with two generations.

The most important thing to keep in mind when you present either of these 2 surveys is to avoid a typical sales approach. You should not bring up specific products that you offer in the presentation, nor must you hammer away at your clients if they don't agree to your assessment of their problems and your potential solutions. In other words if your solutions include your products and services – even though you don't mention them – please don't try and force them into a decision that you think they should make. Give them enough information and give them good reasons why they should adopt your solutions, but don't employ typical closing strategies to make them do it.

If you are firmly convinced that they need a solution that uses your products and services, then you should have such convincing evidence and such a convincing knowledge of the subject that the only argument they can give you is it doesn't "feel right." What this means is you must be the consummate expert in this area and leave them with such an overriding impression of your knowledge that they will adopt your way of doing it. Understand elder issues thoroughly.

Use a Professional Binder or Cover with Abundant Learning Support Materials

Presenting your Retirement Planning Survey in a professional manner with supporting learning resource documents in a binder or in a professional looking cover will greatly enhance your relationship with your planning clients. We call these supporting documents "learning pieces."

Most of our new planners ask the question, "Why should there be so much?" Meaning, why should there be over 70 pages of planning pages and learning pieces in one option or 330 pages inserted into a three ring binder in another option? Would it not be much better to provide less information and not overwhelm the client? Besides, the client will never read or even understand all of this material.

Our purpose is deliberate. We have learned it over many years doing this kind of planning.

None of the learning piece material we provide is irrelevant, and if the client or more likely the client's children really wanted to read it all – which some actually do – it provides valuable information. But that is not our only purpose. We want the client to believe that we have devoted a great amount of time and effort into producing this planning report with its learning pieces and that it is unique to our client. This is basic psychology. The more valuable it looks to the client, the more likely a client will develop trust in you. And this trust carries over to the recommendations that you make. The more impressed the client is, the more likely he or she will implement your recommendations.

After having done a few plans, most of our planners are surprised that their clients treat the planning report as a valuable possession and will share it with other members of the family to proudly show what they have accomplished.

Put Together a Binder with Filler Materials

We recommend that you purchase a nice three ring binder and insert the planning survey in the front. Behind that you can put either of two learning pieces. The first of these would be less expensive for you as it comprises about 60 pages. It is found on your personalized homepage of the planning system and is entitled "Dealing with the Challenges of an Aging Body." The second option for filler material is also found on your home page and is entitled "How to Deal with 21 Critical Issues Facing Aging Seniors." This is a more expensive option but is also a more comprehensive approach to retirement. This piece is 310 pages of printed material.

Make Sure You Have the Knowledge to Discuss the Issues Found in the Survey Report

One sure way to impress your planning clients is to have a thorough knowledge of the issues that they are facing. The planning system comes with a textbook entitled "How to Deal with 21 Critical Issues Facing Aging Seniors." If you have any questions about any of the recommendations in the planning survey, please look them up in the textbook and be prepared. If you have the proper knowledge, your clients will be impressed and they will likely follow your advice. If you appear not to have the proper knowledge, just the opposite will occur. They will not see you as credible and they will likely not follow your lead.

Put on Your Planning Hat and Be Objective

As we have mentioned many times before, don't be trapped into talking about products or services that you provide. Give your clients an objective assessment of where they stand. Impress them with your knowledge of the various issues. Help them to understand the challenges they are facing.

By taking a solution-based, planning approach instead of a product or service oriented approach, you will gain your clients' respect, you will develop a rapport with them and they will trust you. Then when you want to talk about products and services after the planning phase is completed, they will listen to you.

A typical survey might include 10 to 15 different recommendations and strategies for discussion. This is probably an overwhelming number to handle and could be confusing to your clients. We want to point out that these recommendations and strategies are really parts of certain key categories. You want to point this out to your clients as well. By doing it this way, you can concentrate on a few of the issues that need to be addressed in each category and leave some of the other issues for a later time. Create a checklist to address the most important issues. This is also an important strategy for getting them to implement your solutions. Here are the issues addressed in a retirement planning survey.

1. Deciding When to Retire
2. Experiencing Changes in Lifestyle
3. Using the Equity in Your Home
4. Living on Less, Budgeting and Downsizing
5. Seeking a New Place to Live in Retirement
6. Taking Social Security
7. Planning for Long-Term Care
8. Taking Advantage of Retirement Savings and Employer 401(k) Plans
9. Choosing Pre-Retirement Asset Allocation Strategies
10. Choosing Post-Retirement Asset Allocation Strategies
11. Understanding Employer Pension Plan Options
12. Constructing Income from Retirement Savings
13. Obtaining Veterans Benefits
14. Planning for Taxes with Tax-Advantaged Savings Plans
15. Signing up for Medicare and Medicare Supplement Plans
16. Needing Health Insurance
17. Understanding Estate Planning and Legal Issues
18. Creating Estate Planning Documents
19. Experiencing the Death of a Spouse or Partner
20. Providing for a Funeral and Burial
21. Understanding Medicaid Impoverishment Rules
22. Implementing Medicaid Asset Preservation Strategies

Here are the categories for these issues.

1. Deciding When to Retire and Where to Live
2. Understanding Sources of Income in Retirement
3. Understanding Financial Planning for Retirement
4. Understanding Health Insurance Needs in Retirement
5. Understanding Legal Issues and Creating Legal Documents
6. Planning for Long-Term Care
7. Dealing with Death
8. Understanding Medicaid Planning Issues

Allow Your Clients to Prioritize the Various Recommendations and Strategies

We also employ a unique approach to making the recommended solutions. It is our experience that most planners not using our system summarize their recommendations or strategies on a single page or two in the form of an outline or a checklist. Our approach is a little different. A typical retirement planning questionnaire might result in 10 or 15 recommendations or strategies. The recommendations are also presented as paragraphs that not only provide a possible course of action but also include education on why they should take that course of action. Please understand that we only make recommendations that as a result of the questionnaire, apply to the client in some way.

This recommendation solution strategy is also basic psychology. By giving them a large number of choices, they can pick out those ones they feel are important. The concept here is to impress upon your clients that given a list of various choices, they must make some decision as to which of those choices they should take. It forces them to make decisions as they know they cannot reject everything you give them.

This planning process allows them to make the decisions themselves instead of your trying to make those decisions for them. This strategy also makes them personally involved in the planning and creates more trust in your recommendations. Instead of your dictating to them, they are cooperating in the outcome. The end result of this strategy is that they will almost always follow a certain number – but not all of – the presentation recommendations and feel good about it.

Once they have decided the priority of the recommendations, you will make a checklist for them and follow up to make sure that everything has been implemented.

Make Appointments with the Appropriate Providers or Advisers

One advantage to your taking a comprehensive planning approach to help seniors with the challenges they are facing is that you can provide a one-stop shopping service for all of the solutions that they need to solve their problems. To provide this service, you need to develop a network of senior service providers and advisers in your local community who can step in and provide the appropriate services or advice.

You can either make this a formal network by adopting our local planning Council system supported by the National Care Planning Council, or you can utilize an informal network of providers or advisers. For more about a local planning Council contact us at 800-989-8137

Whichever approach you take, you need to be proactive in helping your clients get together with this network of practitioners. We suggest that you actually make the appointment with the appropriate practitioner after you have finished up with the planning but before you launch into selling your products and services. Set up a time for the family member and the provider to meet. If proper arrangements cannot be made at that time get some appropriate dates and times from your client and set up an appointment later.

You might argue that it is much easier for you simply to provide the referral and the contact information for the network provider. There is a reason for being proactive. If you can get appointments with members of your network that result in new business for these members, these practitioners will reciprocate and provide you referrals for your planning approach. This is an important source of new business for you as well.

Take off Your Planning Hat and Put on Your Sales Hat for Providing Your Solutions

If certain products or services are to be recommended to your client by you, you must make this a separate process from the planning activities and presentation. This is necessary in order to avoid a conflict of interest especially in those instances where you are selling insurance products or investment products to your client as part of the solution to the planning process.

You should not make any insurance or investment sales a part of the survey itself, because in these cases you may be violating some sort of federal or state code. Offer these products by wearing a different hat other than the planning hat. By avoiding the sale of products during the planning phase, you are demonstrating your professionalism and ethical behavior to your clients and they will have that much more respect for you. If you are not already doing this, you will be surprised at how impressed they are by your upstanding behavior.

You could do the selling right after the same session in which you present the plan as long as you make it clear to your client that you are no longer doing the planning and you are wearing a different practitioner "hat." In order to identify that you are wearing a different hat, we recommend that you provide full disclosure as to what you are doing with the product or service recommendations. This means revealing that fees or commissions are involved, that they do not have to buy these products or services from you and that they have every right to engage someone else for these products or services.

You will also emphasize that the receipt of fees or commissions is not the important issue and the size of your renumeration is irrelevant to making sure your client is satisfied. You will also mention that no matter whom they might use, those same commissions or fees will be involved, and you will be able to get the same products or services for them. It will probably surprise you that with this approach, virtually none of your clients will go to anyone else for products or services.