Why Income Protection Conversations Fall Apart and How to Fix Them

Why do so many income protection conversations fall apart before they’ve even begun?

In this episode of Let’s Talk IP, Stevie and Matt dig into the real reasons IP discussions stall, and it’s rarely about product or price. Instead, they explore the psychology behind effective conversations, from mindset and framing to expectation-setting and sequencing.

Using real-world examples, they show how goal-based advice, income resilience, and better conversation structure can completely change how IP lands with clients. The result is clearer, more confident discussions that feel natural, valuable, and genuinely helpful.

If income protection still feels awkward, clunky, or like the part of the meeting that clients resist, this episode will help you reset the way you approach it.

📣 For More Education, Collaboration and Insight:

IPTF Website
IPTF on LinkedIn
IPTF on YouTube
IP Task Force on Instagram
IPTF on TikTok

Produced and edited by SEA Studios

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

So, Matt, why do many income protection conversations just die? You mentioned it, the client stiffens, price comes up too early, and suddenly you're backing out with something small and apologetic.

SPEAKER_01 0:18

Good question. And that's because advisors predominantly are just selling an insurance product. They're not protecting someone's livelihood and what matters most to them.

SPEAKER_00 0:30

This is Let's Talk Income Protection, practical conversations for advisors who want better income protection conversations, not more product chat. Today's episode is about why IP conversations fall apart, often before they've even started properly. We're not talking about product today, we're talking mindset, framing, and sequencing. Because when IP gets treated like that bolton or commodity, clients respond like it's optional. So I'll be bringing the client lens to this conversation and challenge how this actually lands. And Matt's here to coach us through what works when the conversation really matters.

SPEAKER_01 1:15

Indeed, we are. And what we're going to be looking at today is the basic psychology as to how customers can really buy into your income protection recommendations and how we can frame it as one of the most essential products people need in their lives.

Goals, Not Mortgages

SPEAKER_00 1:27

Fantastic, Matt. Let's jump straight into this, Matt. I mean, why do IP conversations die so quickly compared to, you know, other protection conversations?

Setting Expectations Early

SPEAKER_01 1:39

I'm not sure that they do or that they have to, but I think what happens is, Stevie, is that most advisors seeing competition as just one of the products that they've got in their arsenal of solutions. And often it pegs down the list a little bit, a bit lower than we'd like, put it that way. Um, I think there's loads of challenges that advisors have, you know, whether it's prioritization, you know, why should income protection come first? Why is it so crucial? But I think half the problem is that in most cases, advisors are talking product. They've not yet truly understood what the client's motivations are, and they're really just looking at, okay, well, I want to introduce some protection solution. And we see this play out most commonly in, say, the mortgage advice conversation because when you're looking at is someone comes to buy a house, they're looking to get a mortgage, or at least that's what the advisor thinks they're looking to do, but the real goal is never the mortgage. And this is where we get horribly wrong. Like we kind of see income protection as being a product that we should be selling people because it goes nicely alongside arranging a mortgage, or you know, we're arranging some sort of financial plan and we should be speaking to them about it, or we've just spoken to the client about an insurance conversation, and it seems like, well, we ought to be talking to them about their income. But we all forget how fundamental income is to us. Income is the very be all and end all. It's the very reason we get up and go to work, it's the reason we sell a third of our lives to our employers or in the pursuit of income. And I think we forget that actually you can't get a mortgage without an income, Stevie. It's really important to remember this because I think we often forget that. The truth is you don't want a mortgage, do you? You don't actually want a mortgage. If you had the cash, you'd have bought your home or your property without the mortgage. Why would you want to pay two and a half times the value of the property back in interest, right? So nobody actually wants the debt. Nobody actually wants a pension. Nobody actually wants any financial product. What they want is to achieve an innate financial goal. Maybe it's to get on the property ladder, maybe it's have an investment. I don't know what it is, but they should have been asking you those types of questions because when they do, it's very easy to start talking about goals-based advice where income protection naturally aligns itself to the attainment of the goal itself. Because without the income, you couldn't borrow. Without the income, you wouldn't have been able to actually repay the mortgage. And if something happens to you, forgive me, when something happens to you, you've got to make sure you've got income coming in to be able to support the goal that you came to the advisor for in the first place. So if we're all we're doing talking about mortgages or products, ultimately we're in doing half our goal. We're not really getting under the skin of what the motivator behind the client's decisions are, why they do what they're doing. And so what we'll be talking about today is some of the processes you can go through to do that. But I don't think IP conversations fall flat or die quickly compared to other products just because, you know, people aren't particularly adept at having them. I think there's not enough groundwork done at the beginning of the conversation to create the very need around having that income-based conversation.

SPEAKER_00 4:14

You've set this scenario here, and I think it's uh it's a good way to sort of jump into this because say I am this client, I'm going in, I'm going in for what I thought was a mortgage chat, and suddenly I'm being talked talked to about insurance and income protection. It's not something that I was expecting. My goal was mortgage, and I'm just thinking very, very much that way. So, you know, what can advisors be doing in those first few minutes of that introduction to a new client um to help them, you know, well, firstly to introduce it, but also to allow them not to switch off and instantly go, hold on a minute, I'm not, I don't want to, I'm not talking about insurance. I wanted to get a mortgage here.

The Income Stress Test

SPEAKER_01 4:53

Okay, there is so much at play there. So much at play. Um the first thing you're talking about is this idea that if if you bring it up too late in the conversation with no context, right, naturally you get something called persuasion resistance. Because what's happening is you're bringing up a subject matter, the customer doesn't understand the premise of why you're doing what you're doing, the value of what you're doing or how it relates to their goal. And so naturally, it feels like an additional sale. It feels like a bolt-on. It doesn't feel like advice anymore, it feels like a sale. The irony thing here is a lot of advisors say that they don't like doing this sort of stuff because it feels too salesy. They don't like writing protection business because it feels like a sale. But I'm saying the danger is that by doing what you just said, you actually end up making it feel like a sale for you and the client. So the way to get around this is to do with expectation management very early on. Now, the biggest weird thing that I can see when I'm training advisors is they kind of automatically assume the client's going to be turned off at the idea of discussing protection or insurances. But that's only because they don't know any different. And so the only time they get introduced to it is either through a mortgage transaction or some sort of other financial advice conversation. And the advisor is typically very poor at bringing up, so it feels like a sales conversation. That's where the negative bias comes from, not consumers, but the advice community. And we even talk about in this market study that the FCA is looking at, the sale of pure protection. But yet it's just arranging, just like any other advice product. It's it's still regulated advice. It's not a sales process, it's about underpinning people's goals and objectives. So the best thing that advisors can do early on in the process is to manage customers' expectations. The only time it becomes a problem is when the client feels ambushed or like they're being persuaded to do something where there's no context, they don't see the value, they don't understand how it benefits them. So, for example, in your situation, Stevie, I would have been saying to you very early on in the conversation, because you don't know what the advice process looks like. If you've never been through this before in particular, you have no idea what to expect from me. So I have the opportunity, a clean sheet, to actually outline what's going to happen. And I would be doing it along the lines of the very first thing we're going to do is talk to you about why you want this mortgage in the first place. So, why it's so important to you, why now you want to do this, and we'll get a good understanding of what that main objective of yours looks like in terms of home ownership. As part of that, what we will be doing is looking at how much you can borrow, the type of mortgage you'll be able to get. In addition, we will then need to carry out an income stress test. And the reason being is because in order to get you the mortgage, I'm taking your income sources and the deposit that you've generated, and I'll be leveraging that to get debt from the bank. So I need to understand how sustainable your income sources are in order for us to move forward towards your goal with a much greater degree of confidence.

SPEAKER_00 7:18

You talked about income stress tests. What's that? Yes.

SPEAKER_01 7:21

What we're really doing is assessing how sustainable someone's income sources are relative to the debt they're trying to take on. If we think about it, it's best practice. If we think about what consumer duty is there to do, consumer duty is there for us to identify customer goals and then make sure that we give advice that takes them towards those goals and helps them achieve them. So if you're just doing a mortgage and you're lumbering someone with the debt, you're only really doing half the job because what you're not doing at this point is assessing the sustainability or how able and capable they are of taking on that liability and repaying it. So if I only do that first bit and just make sure you can buy the house, that's only doing half the job because your goal is not to buy the house, is it, Steve? It's to keep the house as well, right? You didn't just buy your apartment to where it is you live just because you thought, wouldn't it be nice to have that title deed or to own something? It's because you want to live there as well, I assume, correct?

SPEAKER_00 8:08

Yeah, exactly. And the assumption is I'm going to be staying my job, my partner's going to be staying my job. So it's, you know, it's all well and good. And actually, we've we've probably been working hard towards this goal in our current roles to do to do that and get to a point of doing that or saving a you know, saving away. Precisely.

Linking Goals To Resilience

SPEAKER_01 8:26

So this is this is an inherent goal for you and your partner. It's it's a deeply personal one. And so I have to understand firstly what is driving and motivating you. What I'd be looking to do is understand how sustainable your income is, how capable you are financially relative to what it is we're looking to do. So for example, I'd be looking and saying, right, so now we're gonna carry an income stress test. We've assessed how much you might be able to borrow, might be able to borrow. So I've done an affordability calculation and I'm gonna say to you, but that's obviously based on a couple of assumptions. Your income's gonna stay where it is, your credit score's gonna be roughly where it is, and your deposit's gonna remain roughly where it is. However, lots could go wrong and a lot could stop that from happening. So before we go in to submit the application and arrange the liability, we need to carry an income stress test to make sure you're capable of taking it on and servicing it. Otherwise, your goal might not be achievable. And I'd normally replay back to you what your goal was that you said to me in your own words. And I'd say, so the income stress test works as follows. We just need to look at whether your income sources are guaranteed for the duration of the mortgage term we're looking at at least. So can you confirm is your income guaranteed for the duration of the mortgage you're looking at even when you can't work? And what are you gonna say to me? No, no, it's not. I understand. So in that case, what we'll be looking at doing is putting solutions in place to ring fence that just to make sure you can move forward with confidence. So later on, once we've looked at the mortgage in a bit more detail, I'll explain what solution is going to do that for you. It's gonna be super cost effective, it's gonna ring fence your income, it's gonna provide you with total financial security moving forward. So even when you can't work, for example, your income will carry on, and we know you can service the liability, come back, refinance it, and borrow again in the future. Okay, sound good? Now, what I did there was very simple, Stevie, because what I did was I agreed your goals with you, I then managed your expectations as what the advice process would look like. I reassured you that we're gonna deal with any discrepancies, gaps, or issues, and I got your agreement to move forward on that basis. Now, I've done this all at a point where I haven't yet given you what you think you want for me, because what you think you want for me is a mortgage. What you really want from me is the keys to the property and you want to get to keep them. So all I'm doing is connecting the dots for you. I'm showing you the relationship between your income and your ability to do what you want to do. And I'm not scaremongering you. I'm not trying to put pressure onto you. I'm simply allowing you to understand how crucial it is to always have money in the bank every month in order for you to be able to borrow, buy your house, get to keep it, and pay the bills so you can remain in it. And that's all I'm trying to do. And it's relative to your goal specifically. Now, another thing advisors can do, so I know we're we're kind of digging deep here, but this is really crucial stuff. From an expectation management perspective, mentally you hadn't budgeted for income protection. So you hadn't probably earmarked anything in your budget towards the mortgage or the property that you wanted to set aside to safeguard the income. So what I would be doing early on is one of two things, either creating some sort of total homeowner package budget for you, where you really ought to be setting aside 30 to 40% of your total household income, your net income, towards not just the mortgage, but any mandatory insurances you've got, essential cover you're going to need, and anything else you might want to put on top, managing expectations. Or I'd say something like typically, in terms of your financial resilience, we normally encourage clients to invest around 5% of their income to get a total package that's going to mean they've got financial resilience, they'll always be able to pay their liabilities and they'll have enough money to support themselves all the way through their lifetime. Now, that's just setting expectations. So when we come to it and I then present the product to you, I'm not going to sit there worrying that you're going to go, gosh, that's too expensive, Matt, because I'll be putting some context around it and go. The good news is, Stevie, this is coming at 3% of your income and you're expecting five. So I've set a reasonable benchmark in which I as an advisor can operate to provide you with the types of recommendations you're going to need, having already set the benchmark and manage your expectations well early on.

SPEAKER_00 11:57

That makes yeah, makes tons of sense. I think making it goals focused would, you know, I I'm already feeling as the as the client, okay, you know, you're you're thinking about a much wide the much wider context that I may have not been thinking about. So that's yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

SPEAKER_01 12:17

Because typically typically, Stevie, most customers perceive what they want is a mortgage. And until someone says to me, you don't want a mortgage, nobody wants a bloody mortgage, like I did to you a minute ago. Until someone actually prompts you to think that way, you realize actually a mortgage is no more important than a life insurance product or an income protection product or anything else. It's just a facilitator of a goal. Now, a lot of advisors, I think, and I think this is, and again, forgive me, they do the right things in terms of they're trying to understand what the customer's trying to achieve, but maybe they don't quite go deep enough into the customer's goals for it to feel like this is personalized advice. A lot of mortgage brokers in particular downplay their importance. They feel like they're just processing mortgage applications. Whereas what they should be understanding is they're facilitating customers to go and live these really crucial milestone dreams and aspirations that they've had for a long time. As you say, people work very hard accumulating savings and getting themselves into a good place to be able to get onto the property ladder. It's often a monumental thing in most people's lives. And so when the customer comes to them, they almost just go through the motions. Whereas if you just spent just 30, 40 seconds just really digging deeper into the customer's primary goals, drivers, and motivations, it makes everything you do thereafter feel so much more valuable because it's very much aligned to them and what they want from the conversation.

Budget Framing That Works

SPEAKER_00 13:34

Fantastic. Okay, well, that's setting the the intro and the sort of idea of how you need to approach the meetings, you know, incredibly well. Uh, I wanted to touch upon income resilience. You know, you've mentioned it. What does it actually mean in conversational terms? You know, you're you're saying, you know, income protection isn't a product, it's income resilience. What does that mean, Matt?

Resilience Beats Fear Tactics

SPEAKER_01 13:56

We do hear a lot of the minute around words like financial resilience and income security being banded around the industry. And in fact, a lot of advisors start to use them in the conversations, which I wholeheartedly support. And the reason being is because historically the way we approach protection conversations tends to be out of fear and risk. Right? So we play these emotional cards with people, which is oh, you, you know, you get cancer, you get ill, you die unexpectedly, you're unable to get to work, and there's a fear factor involved, which of course that's the reality of the risk, but naturally it's not something that people want to admit or accept themselves. We have inherent optimism bias. None of us believe we're going to be the one that gets ill or we're gonna be the one that can't go to work. And so I've been encouraging advisors for quite some time now, and anyone knows me will say you talk about someone's level of financial resilience. And the reason we use aspirational concepts like resilience and security is because they're they're positive. They're ones that people would probably want to do. If you ask most people in the street, would you like to be more financially resilient? They're going to say something like, Yes, of course I would, because who wouldn't want to be? Yeah. But contextually, what does it mean? Well, financial resilience as a concept means that you know, no matter what happens to you, you've always got enough to support yourself and pay those critical bills. Now, we as humans, we tend to focus on what we think is really important. The reality is there's only two types of expenses we've got in our lives, right? Things that you choose to spend your money on and things that you have to spend your money on. Naturally, we're more prone to focus on things we have to spend our money on because those are mandatory, we don't really have a choice. You can't go without food, you can't go without water, you can't go without heat, you can't go without shelter, you can't go without air and things like that. So these basic necessities are things where we go, yes, okay, well, I have to have those things covered off. But we forget over here, we've got a life we want to live with ancillary financial goals and things that we care about, family, holidays, trips, food, drink, nice experiences, those things that actually make life worth living. Now, resilience to me, the real true financial resilience is knowing that no matter what happens, when you're able to work and generate an income, when you're unable to work and generate income, and when you pass away or get a serious illness, you andor your extended family are resilient enough to cope because there's always enough income coming into the household to support them to pay whatever needs paying and whatever you want to get paid. So the concept of financial resilience in your context, I suppose, is Joe Blogg's mortgage customer, would be right, when you can't work, your bills still need to be paid, right? So what we've got to do is make sure you're resilient enough to cope, no matter what happens, because we have no idea what's around the corner doing, nothing. And so the idea is I don't talk about income protection as a product, as an insurance contract. I look at it as a form of boosting your own financial resilience and generating income security so that you can move through your life towards each of your financial goals and key milestones with a much greater degree of confidence. And the analogy I always use, Stevie, is if you think about someone going and buying a lottery ticket, do you know why people buy the lottery tickets or play the lottery? And you'd say, it's to be a millionaire, it's to buy a yacht or a house or a car or whatever. The truth of it is, most people's primary motivator for playing the lottery is financial security. It's the idea that you could know, I don't have to worry about money anymore, I could quit my job and tell everyone to jog on and do whatever I want to do. And actually, you can recreate that same sensation through products like income protection by safeguarding someone's ability to have whatever it is they need whenever they need it for a fraction of what they're currently having to spend on their other bills. I mean, I often say to Mortifyers, you should do realize that a full-term income protection contract for the rest of someone's working life is likely to cost them significantly less than what they pay in mortgage interest each month on their repayments. And so contextually, suddenly it becomes a high value product. You know, and what I'm saying is it's got nothing to do with the insurance contract and everything to do with the sensation of knowing I'm okay. I've always got enough money every single month to pay my bills, even when I'm unable to go to work through inner illness or injury or something else that incapacitates me.

SPEAKER_00 17:37

Yeah. All of this makes complete sense. And it's it's core to the the advice you need to give to give it that context, to give it the reason why it's uh uh uh not just important but like vital, and as you're saying, sort of very empowering. But let's move on to probably one of the biggest issues for for for clients, and you know, it all comes down to this at the end of the day, most times, price. So, why does price first framing kill momentum so so fast, you know, and how do we move away from thinking about price first?

SPEAKER_01 18:13

That's a really good point. And actually, what you just said there was really interesting because you said, Oh, the thing it always boils down to, and I completely disagree with you. Okay, it's not in a bad way. I just I'm simply saying that's the entire point I'm trying to make is that both you in a consumer frame and me in an advisor frame, most people are automatically assuming that this is a price issue. It's never a price issue, it's a value issue. Price is only ever an issue in the absence of value, Stevie. If price was the main consideration, and I use this context all the time, if price was the main issue, everyone would drive the cheapest car on the market. Right? Yeah. And it's true. How many times has someone, a mortgage advisor, for example, met a client going, oh, you'd like a mortgage? Okay, so what you're buying? Well, I went on right move and found the cheapest house I could find.

unknown 18:53

Yeah.

Price Versus Value

SPEAKER_01 18:54

Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah. So it's got nothing to do with price, but what happens is we perceive as a price issue because we have something called premium bias. So we start imposing our own perspective on price onto the customer unwillingly, not even realizing it's happening, right? It's unwitting. We don't even know it's happening. But we start talking in a way where we actually play it down or we make it an issue of price. So, prime example of this, right? The main reason people take short-term income protection contracts is because the advisor offered it up as a solution because they were worried about the price of the full-term contract. Sorry to be controversial, but that's the reality. Because I would challenge you first about the value of making sure you've got your income protected until I'd even consider defaulting to a short-term contract. So the reason that price framing early on kills momentum fast is because we commoditize the solution. It becomes a product like a bottle of water or a glass or a mobile phone. It's something that you can have and throw away or keep or not keep. We treat it like a commodity. And then of course, price becomes the deciding factor. Whereas what we should be looking at is what it's bringing to the table, the value of it. And the reason that I'm saying this is so important is because. If you do what I did early on, which is provide some context and some expectation management, if I go through the conversation consistently repeating why it's so worthwhile, the value it brings, the peace of mind it offers, the fact that you'll end up being able to do whatever you want to do, the fact that I'll give you a prime example. I'll give you a prime example, and this is a really good one. If there's any financial planners or wealth planners, listen, this is a great one. So I went and did a bit of work with a financial planning firm in Ireland of all places, and they were talking about income protection. They said, we get a lot of people coming in and they want to put into a pension fund or something like that, and they make these contributions each month. And I said, right, what you want to do is treat that investment as a double part investment. You say we're we're making this investment. What we're gonna do is split the investment into two parts. This part here is what's gonna go into the fund that's gonna allow the fund to build, and you're ultimately gonna be able to enjoy the compounding interest and then hopefully retire at the age you want to or the amount you want to. But this part of the investment is what's gonna go into a solution that's designed to safeguard the money and the contributions you're making each month so we can guarantee these returns. Now, what I've done there is I've just sold you essentially a pension solution, but I've also sold you income protection to make sure you can keep making those contributions. Because this is where it gets really interesting. The compounding interest and growth of that fund, which relies on the contributions you're making, is so big relative to the investment I'm asking you to make in the solution, the solution pays for itself. You're not gonna see an issue with it because the value is inherent. Now, if I said to you, if I could safeguard your income for the rest of your working life, Stevie, to make sure you've always got enough money in the bank to look after yourself, so you can make pension contributions, retire at the age you want to, support yourself, pay all your bills, and do whatever I want to, would that be of interest? And you're gonna go, yeah, because the idea of financial security is really exciting, right? But if I said, But the only way I can do that is you have to take a 5% pay cut. Now, most people in the world will go, fine, because the value of what I've just proposed outweighs any potential level of investment, certainly below 5%. But it won't cost you that much, Stevie. You won't have to invest that much. Or I've even just used the word invest rather than pay or spend or premium because I like the word invest, because if you invest in your own financial resilience, conceptually it's it's perceived as a higher value. And I did a survey recently with a load of advisors where I split the room into two groups and I asked one group, okay, what would you spend? What's your budget each month that you would be prepared to spend on your personal protection insurances? And then I asked a different group and a different room, how much are you happy to invest in your own financial resilience to safeguard your future financial goals and lifestyle? And they asked, they gave me figures which were roughly twice what these people did. So, same question, different value perception. And what I'm really trying to say here is if you focus on price first, you make it all about the price. You make it all about the premium. It's a race to the bottom because no one wants to spend any money unnecessarily. Whereas if I focus on value first and I provide some context, you're more likely to take my recommendation or we're likely to stay up here.

SPEAKER_00 22:42

Yeah, I would say if we if we're going on price, it would become a bit like price comparison website. I'd be picking and choosing different bits to, you know, drop it down a little bit to just get it to a price at a slightly lower price, you know, without that uh without that sort of you know thinking and guidance but behind it and advice that you you know you're giving.

SPEAKER_01 23:03

Sorry, mate, I was gonna say, you see this play out a lot in the advice world where there's a lot of networks and firms that that insist on their advisors asking for a protection budget off the client. And I find this ridiculous. I don't know how you could say to someone, oh, very quickly, what's your budget for protection insurance like I did a minute ago? Because the client has got no context. They don't say if I said that to you, if you came to me and you were buying a house and said, So, Stevie, what's your budget for your insurances that you're going to need and things like that? You wouldn't know what to say to me. So instead, it's really important that advisors provide that context and those guidance, exactly what you just said, not making it about the price, but making it about the package that you're putting together for them to deliver the goal and the outcome that they came to for. Because when we do it that way and we make it about you and your goals and your objectives, suddenly the price becomes a secondary consideration that we can negotiate on when the time comes to find the right solution for you, rather than making it the focal point of the conversation.

SPEAKER_00 23:55

100%. Okay, let's move on to some assumptions here. So, what assumptions do advisors make about clients that cause them to undersell before the client even speaks? I see this so much.

SPEAKER_01 24:10

This is a great question, unfortunately. We haven't gone that long, but I'll run through a couple of them. Like professions. You you do, you see it. So certain professions. Uh, you see advisors looking at certain professions and already assuming that a person's financially literate and they're not capable of uh or not wanting to even discuss these types of things, and you see that play out a lot. Um, I often see things like, okay, well, someone's got good sick pay, so they don't need to discuss this, or they'll be happy with a short-term plan, or actually they don't need to talk about income protection. And it's absolutely ludicrous to me because it's good sick pay actually gives you a vehicle to recommend income protection because all you do is you delay how quickly they need it to kick in, and it means they've got access to far more cost-effective solutions that give them lifelong financial resilience. The other thing that advisors do, which is really interesting, is when they see clients, they believe clients want choice. They believe clients want a choice. So I see this play out a lot. Oh, well, we've got a full-term package, we've got a short-term package, we've got a two-year one and a one-year plan. And what happens is I use the example that if you went to the doctors and you had a problem and you said to the doctor, I've got this issue, doc, I really need to look at this. And the doctor came back with four or five different prescriptions, you'd run a mile. You think the you think the doctor's lost his mind. What you really want from the doctor is conviction in the prescription. You want them to give you a prescription and think, take this, because I'm the expert that you've come to me. I'm the patient, you're the doctor, I need your guidance, so I'm gonna listen to what you've got to say. And this is what I'd say to advisors: the assumptions they make are that clients aren't interested, they don't want to talk about protection, they haven't got the budget for it, it's all gonna be about price, they want options, they got good sick pay, they're not, and all these things are caught up in the advisor's mind, they're mindset traps, I call them. And so what happens, the advisor goes into the conversation with a negative perspective and ultimately manifests and drives it to that same outcome because they that's the way they push it. Whereas if you stay open and curious and you ask lots of questions and you get to know the customer really well and what drives and motivates them, it's so much easier to find points where you can create value around what you're recommending. But my advice to all the advisors listening, advising advisors, is simply to act with conviction. If you believe something's in the client's best interest and you think it's the right solution for them, don't offer them multiple solutions. They want conciseness. Don't give them doubt in what you're saying, give them very clear instructions and start with the full-term IP. And from there, you can always negotiate and adjust and adapt based on specific circumstances, but you're doing what you know's right for them and you're not giving them lots of wiggle room because ultimately they either need the income or they don't need the income. It's as simple as that, mate.

The Pension Split Analogy

SPEAKER_00 26:30

Fantastic, Matt. Okay, one final thing. Uh, if you could change one thing about how advisors start their income protection conversations, what would it be? Very quick one here, please, Matt.

SPEAKER_01 26:44

Yes, of course. That's a really good question. I'm sorry, I thought for Britain, but hey, there's a lot of value in what we're doing today. Um, I think for me, that the solution here is a bit like what I just said earlier, either doing something like an income stress test just to create the awareness around how reliant individuals are on their income and what they actually give up in the pursuit of it, or just thinking differently. Just stop assuming that the client doesn't want to have this conversation. Everybody would love to have a conversation with someone about how they could be more income resilient or financially resilient. And so rather than assuming the client isn't interested or going in on price or going in negatively making the wrong assumption straight away, just be just be overtly curious and just be supportive and educational and guide that client towards the very reality of what their situation is, which is they need an income and you're there to help support them so they can go and achieve their life goals with greater confidence. So, yeah, and probably a mindset more than anything, Stevie.

SPEAKER_00 27:34

Okay, Matt. Well, that just about wraps it up for today. In our next episode, we're gonna go one layer deeper. Why advisors undersell IP even when they know it's important, and how fear of money and pushback quietly drives the wrong outcomes. In other IPTF news, you can still apply to be a seven advisor for the year. If you don't know what a seven advisor is or would like to apply, uh details are on the IPTF website, ibtf.co.uk. And if you've not seen it yet, do check out Aerie, the IPTF's new AI assistant on Wednesdays for what the IPTF is calling as Wisdom Wednesday. Matt, before we wrap everything up though, why don't you give a taste to the audience, the listeners, what we're going to be delving into in more detail across this season?

SPEAKER_01 28:33

It's really brilliant, Stevie. This season is going to be a little bit different in that what we're really trying to do is uncover all of those mindset traps, those biases, those challenges, those issues that hold advisors back and stop them from being able to protect more of their clients' incomes. So this is encapsulating all that I've learned as a protection coach, trying to bring as much of that knowledge, as much of that insight, and as much of that support to all the listeners to help them have even better, more impactful income protection conversations and hopefully protect more of those households.

SPEAKER_00 29:00

Okay, that's it for this episode. And if you found it useful, a quick follow or review wherever you listen would be really, really helpful. All right, that's it from us. Catch you next time.

SPEAKER_01 29:12

Thanks for listening.

SPEAKER_00 29:21

Let's talk income protection is produced by C Studios.