Financial Advisor First Meeting Script Ideas & Examples
As a financial services provider, meetings are part of your everyday routine. Meetings are embedded in everything you do, from your sales processes and client consultations to your financial advisor marketing efforts.
Whether you’re having a phone call, Zoom session, or an in-person meeting, the first meeting between a certified financial planner (CFP) and a new client is important. First impressions matter. And the first client meeting is when both parties decide whether they’re a good fit and should continue working together.
Why Financial Advisors Use Meeting Scripts & Agenda Templates
Without specific goals in mind, the time spent during a first meeting may pass aimlessly.
Even if you share a lovely conversation, neither of you will have learned anything useful about the other if you don’t have a goal in mind. To make the conversation worth it, the prospective client should be aware of how you can help them. And you, the financial advisor, should know what they need help with and whether you can help in the first place.
That’s why it’s important to have a script or talking points to follow when doing a prospect meeting. When we say ‘script,’ what we mean is an adaptable template that consists of talking points instead of rigid templates.
In this article, we’ll cover how to create a first meeting script and provide an example you can use to get started.
How to Create Your First Meeting Script
Before creating your own first meeting script, make sure to pay attention to a few things:
Don’t be too stiff with the script. Make it sound as natural as possible as opposed to a canned script.
Respect your time and your client’s time. Being thorough is a good thing, but that doesn’t mean your questions should probe too deeply into your client’s financial situation, especially for a first meeting, which might lead to a meeting running too long.
Convey your ideas clearly. The financial field makes use of many technical jargons that can confuse most people. Unless your client is also a financial advisor, make sure to keep technical financial jargon at a minimum. If you find that it’s hard to continue the discussion without the help of jargon, you need to make sure that your clients know what these mean and that you’re still on the same page.
Add A Personal Touch
With creating scripts, sometimes we go overboard, and the end result sounds too much like a template — stiff, full of fake enthusiasm, and devoid of connection.
This is not a good script.
First meeting scripts are meant to be used as a set of guidelines — what you need to find out, how to ask them, how to reply when clients ask certain questions, and how to broach slightly sensitive subjects. It’s not meant to be followed to the letter.
What’s important during a first meeting is creating a connection with your client and building rapport so they can trust you.
To achieve this, make sure that you’re not too stiff with your script that it feels like they’re talking to a chatbot. Some ideas to make the conversation more interesting include talking about your personal experiences or referencing people you both know to find common ground.
Determine a Timeline
At the beginning of the meeting, ask your prospective clients how much time they’ve allotted for this meeting, and be sure to respect that timing. Briefly lay out the agenda for the meeting to the prospect, what you’re going to cover, and such.
This shows clients that you’ve prepared for this meeting in advance.
On top of that, this can serve as a roadmap for you to stick to and give your prospective clients some breathing room so they can prepare what they should tell you during the meeting, especially those who have never had a financial relationship before.
If the allotted time is shorter than expected, make sure to pay attention to the time while steering the conversation and aim to get as much information as necessary out of the client. For times like this, having a priority list for questions memorized can come in handy.
Don’t Forget Financial Goals
In a first meeting, discovering your prospective client’s financial goals and getting a rough sketch of their financial situation is the top priority.
Make sure that your clients know that what you’re informing them is relevant to their goals. You can do this by tying this information to their specific goals and circumstances. You want to come back to their goals throughout the meeting, especially when you explain how you can help them.
Create a Clear Presentation
It’s important to be clear when presenting information to ensure your prospect’s questions are answered and all the necessary information is explained.
To approach this systematically, you can use the Purpose, Benefit, Check method to set the stage for your meeting. If you’re unfamiliar with this, here’s a brief explanation:
Purpose: State clearly the purpose of the meeting. For example, “The purpose of our meeting today is …”
Benefit: Explain to clients what they will gain by following your proposed strategy. For example, “Through this process, we will…”
Check: Check whether things are all right with your clients, such as checking to see if they follow your explanation or ask for their feedback on your proposal. For example, “So, how does that sound?”
Provide An Opportunity for Feedback
Make sure you give prospective clients enough space for them to give you feedback. Even if they end up not requesting a second meeting, listening to feedback and taking action on them will help you grow your advisory business and your skills as a financial advisor.
Feedback might even give you some insight into your ideal target market, not just that particular client. In addition, asking for feedback also makes your client feel heard and valued, which will help in rapport building.
A Financial Advisor’s First Meeting Script Example
If you’re new to creating scripts, here is a general example that you can follow. Make sure to merely use it as a base and add your own personal touches and tweaks to make it yours.
You don’t have to have a riveting conversation to build rapport (although that helps). You can start by making sure that they know that they can depend on you as a professional. For example, this can be done by leading the conversation and outlining what you’ll be discussing today. This may look something like:
Thanks for meeting me today. So, the purpose of this meeting is to better understand what your goals for financial planning are, tell you a little bit about how we work with clients, answer any questions you might have, and then we’ll talk about the next steps from there. Is that okay with you?
To start with, you’d want to discover the problems and concerns they have. If you can uncover their most pressing problems at this point, directing the conversation and future communications should be much easier.
We don’t have a script for this, as it depends on what you do. For example, discovery questions for someone who offers wealth management services to high-net-worth individuals will be different from those you should ask small business owners.
Here’s an example of a few powerful questions you might want to ask:
What is it that caused you to reach out?
What was it that made you decide it’s time to find a financial advisor?
What are some of your short-term and long-term financial goals?
Are there any major life changes you predict for the future?
What does retirement look like to you?
After they state their concerns or goals, you’ll want to dig a bit deeper to get a better understanding of their financial goals and current concerns. Use your expertise to identify possible concerns and see if they’re having similar problems.
At this point, you’d want to connect their problem to a solution — this is the part you should already be good at. There’s not really a set script for this one because it’s heavily dependent on their current financial concerns and goals.
Depending on how your meeting goes, you can wrap up the meeting differently. If you’re serving this client as part of a long-term engagement, you can propose a new meeting time for a follow-up and make sure they know what steps they should take next. For one-off consultations, you can summarize the meeting and then see if the initiatives you proposed resonate with them. For example, you could say something along the lines of:
Thank you for coming in. I hope this has been insightful and helped you clarify your concern. Do you have any questions before we wrap up?
Conduct Your Meeting with Confidence Using Asset-Map
Ultimately, the best result of a first meeting is a second one. This can happen if the client finds that they had a sufficiently engaging discussion with you and finds you a good match to assist them with improving their financial life.
While they might not warm up to you straight away, a great first meeting, whether it’s with new clients or potential clients, moves the needle when they’re deciding between using your service or moving to another provider.
Asset-Map helps financial advisors like you make client meetings simpler and more enjoyable for both parties. With the help of our visual platform, you can direct your discussions to zoom in on what matters to the client instead of getting carried away with the technical details.
Have more productive discussions during client meetings. Schedule your demo today to see how Asset-Map can help you streamline your processes for more effective meetings.