“We just want flexibility.”
“We’d like some options.”
“We haven’t really thought about the details yet.”
Advice teams have heard versions of these responses from hundreds of clients, probably hundreds of times.
And if you’re like most advice teams, you’ve accepted them.
Last week, my team reviewed a recorded discovery meeting between two advisers – let’s call them Sarah and Matt – and their clients, Greg and Lisa.
Sarah got the value conversation started by asking Greg: “Is there anything pressing you want to make sure we cover off today?
Like thousands of others, Greg responded.
“From a personal perspective, I guess the main thing is to ensure we’re moving towards being in the best position we can by the time we look to retire.”
Sarah had a great follow-up probe.
“Tell us more about what retirement looks like for you?”
Here’s Greg’s answer.
It was loaded.
“It’s probably five or six years away, when I’m about 65. I’m not 100% sure. I just really hope to have the flexibility to make a choice on my situation as the time gets closer. I enjoy my work – it’s not that I have to retire. I’m a principal in an architecture firm. I enjoy my work.”
Adviser Matt picked up on part of it: “So, whether you retire or continue to work, the choice is a financial one as opposed to being sick of your work?”
Good probe.
Greg clarified further.
“I don’t want the decision to retire, semi-retire or continue to work to be primarily based on our financial situation. At the moment, I’d like to work to that timeframe, but it may change.”
Sarah then said.
“OK, work towards 65. What about you, Lisa – you’re working part-time, aren’t you? When do you hope to wind down?”
And just like that, advisers Matt and Sarah had commoditised Greg’s value proposition to be like millions of other Australian workers.
Worse, they completely failed to position their roles, their advice, and what their fee will be, on what Greg really values.
THE MISS
What was missed?
Heaps.
In that short exchange, Greg revealed at least five things that a skilled principal advice team would not miss.
He’s a principal in a firm – so there are partnership implications, succession questions, and business value considerations between now and his retirement.
He used the word “hope” twice.
He said his plans “may change”.
He specifically separated financial necessity from personal choice – a distinction most clients never articulate that clearly.
But the biggest miss?
They completely failed to understand the unique details of what Greg hopes for in a valuable retirement.
Greg was moments away from sharing the details that would have anchored the value and fees of the entire advice relationship, yet Sarah and Matt were stuck on their traditional fact-finding approach and agenda.
The value was right there to be discovered, just moments underneath the surface conversation, but once they heard a retirement age, they stopped digging.
In Certainty Advice terminology, Greg and Sarah failed to recognise a classic and common discovery gate that occurs in initial (and ongoing) Discovery conversations between advice teams and clients.
A Discovery Gate is an imaginary gate in the conversation that initially looks like an ending point in a conversational path.
But with the right skills, empathy, respect and positioning, it’s not an endpoint in a Discovery Conversation, but actually the opposite, an opening point.
Sarah didn’t miss it because she’s a bad adviser.
She missed it because most advisers are trained to collect responses, not to explore the ones potentially containing the deep value.
WHY DISCOVERY GATES ARE MISSED
Daniel Goleman, the psychologist who contributed significantly to much of today’s understanding of emotional intelligence, identified empathy as one of its core domains.
He refers to cognitive empathy as the ability to understand how someone else thinks or feels and to use that understanding to professionally and respectfully guide conversations productively.
This is exactly the skill that separates a principal adviser from a competent one.
It’s not that clients have nothing to say beyond discovery gates.
They don’t explore them, because advice teams don’t recognise and respectfully probe them, leaving them invisible, hidden, and dismissed as irrelevant.
Traditional discovery meetings miss them because advice teams are skilled at understanding a client’s circumstances, facts, and issues.
They are less trained, familiar or skilled to deeply explore options, opportunities, hopes, dreams, as well as the complexities they believe are hindering them.
Quite often, clients are also afraid.
Afraid they’ll look silly for chasing a hope they can’t articulate, or they believe has little chance of ever obtaining.
They can also fear igniting tensions with a life partner who might not agree, or worse, might clash as they value something very different, and how often does that occur between couples?
Without positioning, discovery gates will always be missed.
Greg’s answer wasn’t vague.
It was loaded.
And the role of a principal adviser is to respectfully and productively reposition the conversation, to explain why the details matter, and then probe past the guard.
“Greg, when you say flexibility to make a choice, tell us more about what your retirement hopefully looks like if money wasn’t the deciding factor?”
That one question would have probably opened a gate to valuable minutes of conversation that become the fuel, the gold, the unique detail upon which Greg will value as the driving aim of the entire advice relationship.
And the same for Lisa. Separately. But the same approach.
The details of their hopes are where value lives.
Not in the plan.
Not in the products.
Value is never shallow.
Value is deep.
But only with the skills and the frameworks to go there.
Jim
P.S. When we review transcripts like Sarah and Matt’s, the missed conversational gates become obvious. The harder question is: how much value is being missed by you and your team every week?