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Strategy 4 Eliciting the Floodgate experiance

Strategy number four is the big gun, of getting to what it is that they’re really looking to accomplish. And I don’t use it first because if I haven’t used it then I’ve still got it in reserve and I can always come back and use it later. And it works better if it’s not the first thing out of your mouth; you know you’re priming the pump with these three initial ways.

If that still doesn’t work, if you’ve got somebody who is not quite there yet now we are going to bring up the big gun. And this is a question called be R factor question, which is the relationship factor question. And what we are going to do with this one, and this is one of the few things that I teach that I actually recommend that you learn how to do it word for word.

The R factor question is one that is worth getting to know very, very well. And the R fact question begins with, “so you know we have said all that I do is custom work. Why don’t you tell me a little bit about what it is you are trying to accomplish and where you want to go from here?” And you know they are still kind of, “well you know. I don’t really know. I guess I am looking for you know better rates. I don’t want things to go down and blah, blah, blah, blah.” They’re just being very general, very reflexive surface type questions when you are sitting there thinking to yourself, “okay I’m not getting anywhere here.”

So now boom let me bring up the big gun. And the big gun is the R factor type questions. So now we are going to give them something very specific that we would like them to think about in a specific context. And see if we can guide their unconscious mind to a little bit more of a significant deeper more profound response. So the R fact question is:

If we were to begin to work together what would have to have happened for us to be sitting here a year from today (and that’s the only part that is not really super important, the timeframe, it can be three months, six months, nine months, whatever seems like it is appropriate in the conversation. But with financial advisers clients are pretty conditioned to believe that once a year is kind of the amount of time that you should be getting together to review. And to say:

have to you have happened so that we could be sitting back here in 90 days from today. And for you to look back and think to yourself that this has been an absolutely wonderful investment of my time, my energy and my assets? And see what he says. So I will do the question without all of the sidebars in there. If we were to begin working together, what would have to have happened for us to be sitting back here in this office a year from today reviewing this success of our accounts in our first year together for you to look back and think to yourself. This has been an absolutely wonderful investment of my time, my energy and my assets. And then boom see where they go. And it may take them a little while to think about that because that is the question that in all likelihood they have never heard before and it is getting them to think on their much deeper level. Not that surface level of you know, “I want the better returns on my mutual funds.”

This is a deeper level and it’s a deeper level about the relationship and working together. And if you look back at that question you will see that there is an awful lot going on there. The first thing is, if we were to begin working together and that is actually an unconscious mental technique to get their critical mind not to, get too defensive. Not to put the shields up. This is to do the exact opposite you know; we’re asking a hypothetical question so it is not a real question. It’s a hypothetical question that we are just looking to get some information so it actually, rather than saying we are about to do battle its telling the unconscious mind, “no reason to get alarmed” we are just asking a hypothetical question here. So we are doing that then. So if we were to begin working together what would have to have happened, now that is grammatically a little bit awkward but it is worth doing it just that way because actually what you are asking them to do, that is called the future perfect tense, and you’re asking them to project themselves out in the future and really recall this as there is a memory. So even though we are starting off by saying, “hey just a hypothetical question. No big deal” we are all so unconsciously communicating to then, “but while you’re thinking about this do me a favor and code it as a memory not as a dream.”

So if we were to begin to work together what would have to have happened for us to be sitting here a year from today reviewing the success the our account, so now we are planting the seeds that we are working together and that we are working together successfully. For you to look back and think this has been a wonderful investment of my time, my energy and my assets.

So in essence what we are doing is projecting them out into the future and asking them to build their mental happiness cake. Or their mental financial dream home, you know their sky castle. Whatever you want to call it. And then we are asking them for the recipe, or for the blueprints, so we know exactly where it is to go that they want to go. And you may, people sometimes need to think about this for a little bit because it is a different question and it is one that they have never been asked before. So it is asking them to go deeper than anybody has asked them to go. But if you position in forth as we have been talking about then you have kind of warm to them up enough, that you will get another big lot of responses.

Typically another quarter to another third of our overall group. So we started with 10-12, then when challenged we added another 5-10, then with the ultimate value proposition we got in another third, here we are going to get another quarter to a third so we are up to about 80% of the people.