Persuading Potential Clients to Do Life Resource Planning
February 18, 2019 | by the National Care Planning Council
When you make an appointment with a potential candidate lead for planning, it is important that you maintain a mindset of helping this candidate identify and solve the various challenges that are being faced in the final years of life. It is important to avoid the trap of falling into a product sale too soon, before the planning process is complete. When you do this sort of planning which we call Life Resource Planning you will be working with the children or other younger loved ones of aging seniors to do the planning for those older people.
Yes, your objective is to sell your products and services eventually. You have to keep reminding yourself that the planning process is important to your potential client. Sure, if all they want is product, then fine, sell it to them. But even then, you should talk them into planning first because most of these people have no clue as to how to approach the various challenges that the aging seniors are facing. Many of them don’t even know that the challenges exist because those issues haven’t shown up yet.
We speak from experience, not only from face-to-face planning over the years, but each day we receive numerous calls at the National Care Planning Council home office from people all over the country who are making requests for products or services that might not even fit the situation they are facing. We always take the time to ask them details about the reason they are calling and to tell us their "story" before we even attempt to make recommendations. In many cases, what they are asking for is not what they really need.
One of the best ways to talk people into trying your approach is to use stories. You can talk about previous cases without naming names and talk about how these people had no clue as to what they were facing. Typically these were people who were previous clients or who were referrals from other senior service providers. You can relate how the planning uncovered issues that you helped solve. You can relate how you helped them avoid the heartache or conflict or frustration that they could have faced not dealing with those issues. You can also give them specific examples of how the planning actually led to a successful outcome.
Once you have their attention, you can show them the paper survey questionnaire and explain how it will uncover up to 29 different issues that they might face in their later years. This then leads to showing them a sample survey report that contains all 29 issues and you can point out that these 29 issues are grouped into 5 or 6 planning categories. Then you would show them an actual sample survey with perhaps 10 to 15 issues that have been identified. You will explain to them how that sample survey would led to various planning recommendations. By this time, they are either anxious to proceed or they have no interest. Ideally the ratio of those who are interested should far outweigh those who are not.
As part of the explanation, you will also indicate that you work with a network of other senior care advisers and providers and iterate the particular specialties of these practitioners. You can emphasize that because you work together as a group, you represent a one-stop shopping service for all of the solutions that your potential planning candidates will require. This particular argument has a strong appeal since very few people in the community are using this approach to help aging seniors.
Once you have done the planning, you now have an opportunity to work with the family members who contacted you in the first place. Remember, that you are almost always working with the children or younger healthier members of the family who are dealing with the issues of their aging loved ones. The planning process should have convinced this younger generation that you can help them as well. At this point, you will show them the Retirement Survey Planning approach to help them with their own issues in retirement. For the most part, many of them will agree to this additional opportunity to identify solutions for issues in their later life.
To learn more about our planning system called Life Resource Planning please go to the following link, longtermcarelink.net/LRP/index.htm.
