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What Do You Say After You Say, “Hello”?
Angus Donald McQueen, Dip CII, Dip PFS
“It won’t work, this idea is sheer inertia!”
This is what the senior executive at the bank said to us.
We had approached him with the idea of the bank supporting our new business—a new licensee business in Australia
in 1999. We had a goal; we would grow the group to 50
advisors. For the first three years, all we wanted the bank
to do was to buy half the group off us now. However, we
had only two advisors in and eight who had committed by
handshake. But we had a goal. We had passion. We didn’t
listen to the senior executive. “It won’t work, this idea is
shear inertia.” It would have been easy to stop right there.
But we kept going; we reached our goal, and in fact we reassessed and doubled our goal. Then some ten years later, we
had an offer to merge and be floated onto the Australian
securities exchange. It’s a story that could have easily not
gone any further. But we had a goal, and we planned it and
talked to each other and helped each other do it. My mentor
and friend of 25 years, MDRT member Kevin Owen and I
first met at a conference in 1993, and we have spoken almost
every day since, pushing each other and talking about our
businesses. One of the best ways to grow is to have a mentor
who has done it before you.
They say that the events of your life shape your approach
to doing things. You see, we could have been talked out of
ever starting that business.
What do you say after you say, “hello”?
People are scared about telling other people their goals—
in case the others laugh or say it’s unrealistic, or it’s silly, or
they say the words “It will never work; that idea is sheer inertia.” Would a goal have a better success rate if it were constantly talked about with a third party who encourages you?
What do you say after you say, “hello”?
In our market there are three compulsory documents that
most advisors launch straight into at meeting one: (a) a risk
profile, which assesses the client’s attitude to risk aversion
with investment; (b) the client questionnaire, which captures name, age, date of birth, address, if the client smokes,
assets liabilities, income and expenses, and compliance; and
(c) the financial services guide, which is what occurs, who to
complain to if this doesn’t work out, and so on.
There is no engagement! In fact, you could not design
three worse documents to build rapport with! I know that
we must complete and issue these documents upfront, but
they create no engagement.
We have to do better than that; that’s what everyone does.
What happens if you do everything the same as everyone
else? You compete on price to win deals; you commoditize
your offering.
What everyone doesn’t do is to engage immediately on
the prospect’s goals.
I don’t mean motherhood stuff, such as “I want a Ferrari,
a mansion to live in, oh, and to win the lotto.” I mean goals
that are getting people out of bed in the morning, giving
people a plan, giving people happiness and motivation in
their lives. Help extract goals from people—their innermost
plans, which are unique to them and are as different as a
person’s own DNA. As Napoleon Hill said:
• “Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it
can achieve.”
• “We are the Masters of our Fate.”
• Have a “definitiveness of purpose . . . and a desire to possess it.”
Angus Donald McQueen, Dip CII, Dip PFS,
McQueen is a 15-year MDRT member with one Court of the Table and 12 Top of the Table honors, the
first of which he received at age 26. He has served on six MDRT committees and is chairman of McQueen
Wealth Management, which has 15 staff members operating in the provision of holistic financial advice,
financial modeling, estate planning, product innovation, protection strategies, and business succession
plans for business owners. In 1999, McQueen and a group of other advisors set up TFS, which grew to
90 financial advisors, and was merged and floated onto the Australian Securities Exchange in 2010.
McQueen Wealth Management
Level 4, 437 St. Kilda Road, Melbourne, VIC 3004, Australia
phone: +61 3 98658111 email: [email protected]
Order a copy of the presentation on www.mdrtpowercenter.org: MP3: MP1366 CD: C1366
©Million Dollar Round Table
Annual Meeting Proceedings | 2013
410
Focus Sessions: Wealth Management/Retirement Planning
I say to clients, “This meeting is possibly the best chance you
will ever have of achieving your goals that require money and
planning. We are going to talk about your goals that require
money and planning, and put a long-term plan in place to
monitor your progress and let you know what you need to do
to achieve them. This is possibly the best chance you will ever
have of achieving your goals that require money and planning.”
Goal setting requiring money and planning and the
transformation from thought to paper to now being a plan
moves it a considerable distance—we put life into it. We talk
about it. Bill Bachrach is an expert in this.
Goals Table
Date: ___________
Client Name: ___________
Client Adviser: ___________
Goal
Target
Date
Money
Required
2-3 words describing the
feelings and thoughts I will
have when this goal is reached
Priority
I ask clients: “So what goals do you have that require
money and planning? When would you like this goal to
occur? What year? What month? What day? Now give me
two words that describe how you would be feeling when you
have reached that goal.”
Do it now. Write it down. It’s too good not to do it yourself now. Have you cut through the “small talk” and gotten
to the important things in your prospect’s life?
How often do you hear people say, “I want a Ferrari, a
mansion, and to win the lotto.” Very rarely are these desires
people’s actual goals.
As Walter Bond said in his Opening Address at the
2010 Annual Meeting, “Stop communicating AND start
connecting!”
This is how I connect.
If you wish to expand your business, your first meeting engagement must be an outstanding experience, and
different.
I’m a big believer in the magic of goal setting. In 1994, I
read the book Think and Grow Rich for the third time. I then
wrote down my life goals; I was 21. They included:
Annual Meeting Proceedings | 2013
• To become a Top of the Table MDRT member by age 40
• To earn $1 million pa by August 29, 2002
• To become a household name in Australia
I thought these were big goals for me at age 21. I reached
Top of the Table five years later at age 26. I missed the target
date on the second goal of earning $1 million by 16 months.
It came 16 months after my target date of August 2002.
Remember, this was in 1994. So what’s the point?
Does it work? Would it have happened anyway? Or as the
doubters would say, “You were just lucky, Gus!” Or was it the
goal setting that started a chain reaction of events and steps
in me that made it happen?
Repeat the client’s goal constantly, and get her or him to
do so also—it’s the client’s goal! Help the client start to feel
it, live it, dream it, imagine it, and touch it.
It is engagement: “If you do what everyone also does it’s
hard to stand out from the crowd,” as Bruce Etherington
would say.
But don’t take it from just me about this stuff. I recently
caught up with the great Bruce Etherington, who in my
opinion is the best I have ever seen. In his amazing book
Reflect & Prepare, he talks about one regret, which is that
he never crafted his dreams and plans carefully nor wrote
them down.
What do you say after you say, “hello”?
Few sacrifices are made unless someone can clearly see the
benefit of that sacrifice.
You can get hired and fired over returns and policy price.
It is very hard to get fired when you are regularly reporting
on the goals.
I want you to shift to the big picture. We will look at all
the details, but this is the summary of the rest of your life
financially. [visual] Like what you see? Are your goals going to
occur? We are now looking after all your assets in this picture.
Asking people to tell you their goals can sometimes sound
patronizing, so we ask, “What are your most important goals
that will require money and planning in the future?”
This is what we say after we say, “hello”:
“When would you like to achieve that by? What date?
Can you give me two words to describe how that would
make you feel?”
After you say, “hello,” start talking about goals that will
require money and planning. Don’t forget your own goals.
Remember Bruce’s regret of not having proper goals earlier
in his life, not writing them down and honing in on them.
Your clients need you to help them with their goals. Who
else can do this?
©Million Dollar Round Table