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Strategy 5, 6 Eliciting the Floodgate Experiance

Number five. It’s just and ask some of the common good investment type questions, open-ended type questions but they are used to having advisers talk to them about. It might be, “what is the best investment you have ever made and why? What is the worst investment you have ever made and why? What is the one saying that if you could only accomplish, if you could only accomplish one financial goal would be your most important goal?”

And you just those still kind of dreamy open-ended type questions but directed very much towards their financial goals and objectives. What is it about money that sometimes keeps you up at night? How far would the market have to go down before you would be calling me up saying enough is enough and I will have to talk to turn off the ledge? You know those types of questions, which they have heard very frequently from other financial advisers and we will get some more in.

Then the next one is three hyper open ended questions that if you have read my books you know I suggest we teach our bankers to use and those are;

1. If you had a realistic magic wand and could change one thing about your overall financial situation. What would you change? What would you add or remove from your current financial picture?
2. What in your life you want your money to do for you that you haven’t addressed yet or haven’t addressed completely?
3. Third one is a two-part question. First one is on a scale of one to 10, 10 being perfection one being a train wreck, how do you feel about your overall financial situation today? And they are going to give us whatever they give us in today’s financial situation we are probably going to get a lot of fours, fives and sixes.

we get fours, fives and sixes when markets are a little better we get a lot of six, seven and eights but the second part of the question is, what could we here at Wachovia one of the most powerful financial services companies on the planet do to help move you toward a 10?

And those three questions are also very powerful because of the fact that in the question itself we are presuming that there is a gap between where they are and where they want to be.

And again it is kind of communicating to their unconscious mind that, “look let’s be real. I know things aren’t perfect view right now. They’re not perfect to anybody. You were here for a reason. What is the most important reason what is the thing that you want to work on most Next?”

And I honestly cannot think of anybody who has ever come back to me and said, “I have tried all six are various and they have failed.” If you did what I would do at this point is I would pull out an envision questionnaire. And start going through the financial process and say something to the effect of, “well before I get started let me get a little background information from you.”

And normally what you get is just the beginning of where it is that they want to go.