Stop Selling Features. Start Protecting Futures

What if the biggest mistake advisers make isn’t recommending the wrong protection product… but starting with protection at all?

In this episode of Let’s Talk IP, Stevie and Matt explore why clients rarely arrive with a clear financial goal, and why uncovering what they’re really trying to achieve is one of the most important skills an adviser can develop.

From home ownership and retirement plans to family security and future aspirations, they discuss how income sits at the heart of almost every financial plan, whether the client realises it or not. They also look at why protection conversations become easier when they’re linked to outcomes people genuinely care about, rather than product features and policy mechanics.

This episode is a reminder that clients don’t buy income protection because they want a policy. They buy it because they want to protect the future they’re working towards.

If you’ve ever struggled to make protection feel relevant, or found yourself talking features before understanding what really matters to the client, this episode will help you approach those conversations differently.

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Produced and edited by SEA Studios

Transcript

Money Taboo And Hidden Goals

SPEAKER_00 0:01

What do you mean when you say everybody has a financial goal?

SPEAKER_01 0:06

Everybody has. It's just that often they're not unearthed, discussed, or talked about because ultimately money, let's be honest with you, is a bit of a super taboo in the UK. But everybody's got a financial goal. Whether that's retiring at a certain age, whether it's going on holiday in a Q in a few weeks' time, whether it's saving to buy your first home, whether it's buying a car on finance, whether it's putting into your pension, whether it's having kids, all of them are centered around this idea that everybody's got some kind of financial goal or driver.

Why Protection Starts With Outcomes

SPEAKER_00 0:33

Hello to our awesome advisors. This is Let's Talk Income Protection. Proper conversations and advice for advisors who want to get income protection right. Not just talk about products. And this episode is about stepping back a bit. Because clients don't come in asking for income protection. They come in wanting to stay in a home, look after their family, and have options in the future. So this is about how you actually get to that. What they're really trying to achieve and why protection only makes sense once it's clear. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 1:13

So this is really about understanding that everybody you speak to has some kind of financial goal.

SPEAKER_00 1:18

Okay, Matt, I I want to pick you up on something straight away there. What do you mean when you say everybody has a financial goal? Everybody has.

SPEAKER_01 1:26

It's just that often they're not unearthed, discussed, or talked about because ultimately money, let's be honest with you, is a bit of a super taboo in the UK. So we don't tend to talk about it, but everybody's got a financial goal. Whether that's retiring at a certain age, whether it's going on holiday in a cute in a few weeks' time, whether it's saving to buy your first home, whether it's buying a car on finance, whether it's putting into your pension, whether it's having kids, all of them are centered around this idea that everybody's got some kind of financial goal or driver. And I think it's really, it's really about understanding that that's the situation for nearly everyone you speak to. And when you're able to truly unearth that, when you're able to truly understand what they are and get the client to vocalize it with you, you've now suddenly got this very strong emotional anchor to which protection seems like a logical solution to safeguard.

Mortgage Is Not The Goal

SPEAKER_00 2:09

So am I right in thinking it's harder than advisors think to uncover those real goals?

SPEAKER_01 2:17

I completely disagree with that, if I'm being really honest with you. I think what it is is again, it's a mindset piece, right? So I think lots of advisors don't truly understand how they can do that. I think lots of advisors that I talk about this idea of like the path of least resistance, which is making assumptions around what the client's trying to achieve. So a prime example of this is if you have a conversation with most mortgage advisors, most mortgage advisors will assume that the clients come to them because they want a mortgage. Right? I'm a mortgage advisor, clients come to me, they want a mortgage. Same goes if they're doing a remortgage or a product transfer. Client wants just wants another product, wants another mortgage. Nobody wants a mortgage, Stevie. Nobody wants to pay two and a half times back the value of the house just to own it. What the client's really trying to achieve there, the goal that sits underneath it is home ownership. Right? So when we understand that it's never about the features or the products, and it's actually about the innate, deeply personal, human goal that that client's got, that is a part of their wider life goal and financial plan, we know that we can then align the solutions we've got in our toolkit to make it make sense rather than talking products or product features, which is what we're going to talk about today. This is about protecting people's futures so that whatever it is that good looks like for them down the road, we're making sure we put the guardrails up so they can actually get there. That's what we're trying to talk about today.

SPEAKER_00 3:33

So, how do we get to that place? Because, you know, we might be talking to a client and it's maybe hard to understand fully. You know, obviously, a lot of the time it is coming in to have to get to get the mortgage, and maybe that's the only thing they're really thinking about. They're thinking about the initial thing in front of them. So, how do we get to understand their goals and actually what they really need or want in the

A Simple Exercise To Clarify Goals

SPEAKER_00 4:00

future?

SPEAKER_01 4:00

That's a really interesting question. And I think we spoke about this offline, but I wanted to talk about it. Is that uh last year I did a bit of work for the Personal Finance Society, and I saw an amazing presentation from a guy called James Street from Morningstar Wealth, and he did this presentation around the complexity and the psychology that sit behind clients' financial goals. And he basically said they did a load of psychological research and they got this piece of paper they use with clients to sort of sample it. And this piece of paper had on the left-hand side three boxes, and then in the middle it had a series or a list of sort of more common financial goals that most people have throughout their lifetime, and on the right, another three boxes. And the idea was clients come into a meeting and they said on the left-hand side, write down your top three financial goals, but do it in pencil. Then, once you've done that, review these more common financial goals that most people have, tick ones that were of interest to you, circle ones which are really important to you, and draw a line through something you don't care about, and then rewrite your financial goals. And it was stark to see how many people actually change their financial goals once they were prompted with more common financial goals. So, what this really tells you is that most people aren't clear what their financial goals look like. Most people don't truly understand what they mean or what's what matters or what's important to them. And so naturally it's up to us as advisors to prompt them with the right questions. So rather than just assuming the clients come to you for a mortgage and going, okay, so I assume you want to get a mortgage or assume you look into buying, it's right, what does this home mean to you? Why is this home so important to you? What is it, what's it part of in terms of your long-term plan? Do you plan on having this one? Do you plan on buying other properties? Is this part of a wider financial strategy you've got? Why now? Why is this so crucial? Why this particular property? And I start digging into that so that you vocalize, because I'm inviting you to vocalize what really matters to you, which then enables me to not only recommend suitable protection, but actually recommend the most viable mortgage product. So when we start taking time to understand that actually, if we just go off what the client says or we allow them to be vague or we don't probe them enough, what we're really doing is giving them space to come up with probably non-stress tested, non-pressure tested goals that probably aren't that critical to them, which then means that we're going to get vague responses or a lack of emotional anchoring for them where they don't see the value in what it is we're recommending. So actually, it's about taking that time early on to just go a little bit deeper, go under the surface with your clients to really understand the core things that are motivating

Turning Vague Answers Into Anchors

SPEAKER_01 6:15

them. And in the absence of anything, you can ask things like, so I'll give you a prime example. I did this in a coaching exercise recently. There was a firm of advisors that were mortgage advisors, and they were saying, but we really struggle to anchor to someone's emotional goals when we're talking about a property. And I'm going, okay, well, how about this? So, in terms of aligning protection, how about this one then? You're saying that someone spent many years saving a deposit, they're about to commit themselves to 30 years worth of debt, and you can signpost that for them, and then you say something like, right, so given everything you're going through to make sure you and your family can get this home, is it fair to assume that you want to make sure your family get to stay in it when you die? Yes. Okay. In that case, we need to do the following things. So then you'd start saying things like, okay, so going one step further then, is it fair to assume then when you can't work and you can't generate an income, do you still want to make sure you get to stay in the home? Yes. Okay. And then I could talk about solutions. But what I'm doing is I'm using the right sort of questions based on what I know matters to you to drive you to agree a series of goals with me that I can then anchor solutions to that are going to help you achieve them.

SPEAKER_00 7:16

Does that make sense? Yeah. I think it's uh an interesting point around, you know, this vagueness because I feel like that might be something that advisors come up come up against. So, you know, we we we have touched on a little bit already, but what do advisors do when they're hearing something vague? How can they turn that into actually something usable?

SPEAKER_01 7:37

Like I say, just digging that little bit deeper and asking the right questions. I think the problem is a lot of the time we take things at face value. So a prime example is that research the guy did at Morningstar was saying that most people come into a meeting and often, believe it or not, they're actually saying either something that's top of mind. So if I said to you, What's your what's your number one financial goal, Stevie? You might have seen an advert for a holiday in Jamaica yesterday, or you might have a Lamborghini go past your flat in London and you might suddenly go, Oh, I want a Lamborghini. And so it's it's often no thanks. It's often what's top of mind, right? Um, you need a lot more than income protection for one of them. Um, but yeah, you know, it's it's often what's top of mind, or worse still, what the client thinks the advisor wants to hear. That's the biggest danger. So as advisors, we need to probe that a little bit deeper to try and actually unearth the customer's goals. So my advice to advisors is to get better at the prompts and asking the right questions to help the client unearth their goals. And then one thing you can do, so there's another firm I've been coaching recently, and they're protection-only. So they they write quite a lot of accent cover, income protection, things like that. And we were talking about this type of stuff, which is how do you set the conversation up where you make it about customer goals? Because naturally, as I said to you in the previous episode, I've got this framework that I like to teach, which is agree the customers' goals, manage their expectations, and set rules of engagement. So, of course, it's a case of if you're doing a protection-only or community-led conversation, how do you, how do you start unearthing goals? And I said, one thing you could do is just offer to give them guidance and support on how to do that. Because how many times has anyone sat down with you, Stevie, and gone, let me talk to you about your financial goals and let me help you uncover them? And so naturally I seem consultative, don't I? I'm not selling here anymore. I'm I'm actually saying, you probably don't know what your financial goals look like. So let's have a, let's just explore some of the more common ones. And then I'm creating normalization in your mind. So you think, actually, if that's what other people will do, then that's maybe something I should be considering. So it's like actually, a lot of my clients, or you know, often the main kind of financial goals that most people want to do is make sure their family gets to stay in the home when something happens to them. Make sure they've always got enough money in the bank each month to pay whatever it is they need to pay for, to ensure they can always make pension contributions, they get to retire when they need to. And just to make sure, generally speaking, they've got the essentials, they can keep their kids fed lights on roof over the head. So those kind of things we do. Most people are just looking to do those basics where they protect their financial future. So, does that sound like a series of goals that would work for you? And you go, yes. And I go, okay, brilliant. Well, here's the solutions you need. And so I'm not selling or pitching anything to you anymore. What I'm really trying to do is help you understand what those core innate personal, deeply emotional financial goals that you've got are. And then all I do is I simply bring in the solutions that make sure they can, they can, they can be achieved.

Coaching Lessons And The Power Of Silence

SPEAKER_00 10:16

I would love to hear a bit more uh about some of the maybe the objections or or things that you heard on some of your, you know, when you're going in coaching these businesses, what are some of the the the things that people are bringing up around this topic?

SPEAKER_01 10:30

So a lot of the time advisors are going in there and making assumptions around what the client's trying to achieve, you know, or what they do is they go straight into pitch mode, which is well, I've got uh a portfolio of solutions I want to offer you. So I start talking product features or oh uh, wouldn't eight grand if you broke your ankle be really good? Or you know, and you start pitching solutions to people. Whereas what you really should be doing is saying, right, so how's this conversation gonna go? Well, the very first thing we've got to do is understand what good looks like for you. Because in order for me to recommend the most suitable or the most pertinent or the essential things that you're gonna need, I've got to first understand what you really need to discuss and what you really believe is like non-negotiable, for example. So I might prompt you with things like this. I'm gonna ask you a series of questions. So, one of the key things I find when I'm doing coaching is that advisors are just going through the motions with a lot of clients, and they're not taking enough time to really try and get that client on a level with them where the client starts opening up. So, a prime example of this is there's a firm that I trained based out of Bath recently, and they had a protection advisor who was really, really good. Really good. He was writing significant amounts of business. But I went in there and did a bit of work with him on this goals-based approach, which is really trying to ask the right questions. And he's messaged me and said he's doubled his income, doubled, and he was always very already very good. Because what he said was, and it was the most striking point, that when he started asking the right questions and then just leant back and went quiet, the client was happy, happy to tell them what mattered to them. Because often what happens is we're not given the space to vocalize these things. You know, the advisors are making assumptions around what we're trying to achieve, we're going through an advice process and a series of motions, but just that little bit of effort at the beginning of a conversation to just leave the floor open to the client and go, brilliant, right. Well, let's talk about what good looks like to you. Now, I can happily help give you some prompts if you're not sure what those goals look like. But are there any key things that really bother you that you know you really want to make sure happens for you? Are there any non-negotiables for you in life, financially speaking, that you want to make sure happen? Because if I leave that space to you and you fill that void, you've now told me in your own words what matters most to you. And rather than it feeling then I've got to pitch you products, I'm like, ah, okay. So what you're saying is this is really important to you, and I'll repeat your words back to you. In that case, you are absolutely going to need to make sure your income is ring-fenced because your income's gonna do the following things. And so now I'm educating you, not selling to you, and I'm aligning it to something you told me is really important. So the number one thing that advisors can take away from this session, the key tip is to just spend that little bit of extra time with the client early on to allow them the space to vocalize their financial goals, prompt them with the right questions, so that you then got a solid foundation on which you can build your advice process.

SPEAKER_00 13:18

Amazing, Matt. Yeah, as we said at the top of the episode, take a step back, ask a question and wait. And it then becomes a collaborative experience, doesn't it? As you say, it's not it's not this selling mindset, it's an advisor mindset, it's an educational mindset, and you are then doing this together. Um, which I feel that as a as a consumer, as a client, I would find I would be very appreciative of that. It's helping me understand exactly what I, you know, helping me plan for the future in maybe a way I haven't sat down and thought about properly.

SPEAKER_01 13:58

Well, you're gonna build more exactly, and you're gonna build more trust with me, and you're gonna be more inclined to take my recommendations because I've given you the space to understand what that looks like for you or why it would be so crucial based on what you've told me you want to do.

Making Protection Feel Essential

SPEAKER_01 14:10

So it's a very different dynamic to I'm going into a conversation to pitch you a load of product features and sell you some insurances. And I think a lot of the time I see this unraveling in businesses. So let's use the example of persistency. So a lot of advice is out there, if you don't know what that means, Steve, I'll explain. It means someone recommending a product and it's staying on the books. So we often see this in the advice space where someone will recommend a product, let's call it income protection, and then that product will fall off because someone's paying a direct debit each month. And for whatever reason, they can't connect the dots as to why that's valuable or why they need it. So after the advice conversation, that product gets cancelled. Well, the very best way to avoid things like cancellations and lapses is for the client to be as part of the decision-making process and to feel that that product delivers real value to them because it's linked to a goal they've vocalized. So this is about allowing the client to feel, like you say, collaborative, that they're involved in the decision-making process, that they had some part of the decision in terms of what's happening, which is what we were talking about in the previous episode, which is why it's so important to pass that buck back to the client and make them responsible for the decisions, because when they are, they're more likely to be vested into it, they're more likely to keep it running because they understand the mechanism and how it supports a goal that they've vocalized with you.

SPEAKER_00 15:20

Do you think this is the you know the the important step that's missing that makes sometimes makes protection feel optional than that?

SPEAKER_01 15:32

What a brilliant question. That is it's one of the best questions I think you've ever asked me, Stevie. Um without doubt, right? So anything optional is because the client is is given the perception that it's an additional thing, that it's something that can be considered or or chosen. And I think optionality is the biggest killer. And when something feels optional, the advisor then feels this inherent need to persuade and convince the client to do it, which then becomes a bloody sales pitch, which is exactly what the advisor is trying to avoid. So optionality only exists where the client can't connect the dots and see the value in what you're proposing or where it's relative or essential to a goal. Now, we always talk about this thing in the protection space where advisors say things to clients which completely undermine the value, which is, oh, by the way, none of this is mandatory, things like that, right? Because they feel from a regulatory perspective they're supposed to say that. But let me explain to you, as we talked about previously, if you want to pay for something each month, if you want to borrow money, if you want to put into your pension, you need an income every single month to be able to do that. Ergo, it no longer becomes optional. Yes, it's not mandatory to protect it, but it's bloody essential. And that's a significant mindset shift for advisors, which is let's stop thinking it from terms of from a regulatory standpoint, is something mandatory or not mandatory to is this an essential consideration to ensure the client can achieve what they came to you for? If it is, if it's necessary and essential to actually be able to execute the advice you're giving them, such as the mortgage or the pension or whatever it is you're trying to do, ergo is an essential part of your advice consideration. So it stops then being this optional consideration and becomes embedded and entwined in the advice model.

SPEAKER_00 17:11

You just touched on something now that was really interesting from an outsider, this this idea that you you you know perhaps need to say this isn't mandatory up front. If that is the case, Matt. But you don't.

SPEAKER_01 17:23

You don't. But lots of advisors volunteer the information because they're trying to avoid sounding salesy. But all you're really saying to the client is, oh, by the way, you don't have to do this, so I'm creating optionality, which means of course you're gonna go, oh, well, if it's optional, I don't need it then. But yeah, when I make it a goals-based conversation, you and I agree what is crucial to you as part of your life goals, and I say to you, right, so what are the elements you need to do this? Use a mortgage. Let's use a mortgage for just a second. What are the elements you need? So I would agree with you that your goal is not a mortgage, but a home ownership. You are desperate to get out of your parents' place, you're desperate to put your stamp on the world, to invest in a property so you can get on the property ladder, seek independence, and go start living your life the way you want to. So, of course, what are the elements you need to do that? Well, you need a deposit. Yep. You need a decent credit score to get access to top shelf mortgages that aren't going to cost you the earth. And ultimately, you need an income. Because if you don't have an income, you can't leverage it to go and borrow money. So, my question then becomes around okay, so how do we safeguard the elements you need to be able to go and buy this property because your goal is home ownership and you found this particular property you like that you've told me all about because I've invited you with the right questions. And now I start asking you very clever questions around, so given this is so important to you, I assume you want to make sure that your family gets a stay in it when something happens to you. Yes, right, in that case, and all of a sudden, these become goals-based advice recommendations, not sales-led advice recommendations. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_00 18:46

Yeah, it's just making me think, uh, is there a how do we help advisors set this up? Like, you know, the initial initial, you know, let's let's call it a cheat sheet, a cheat, you know, cheat scripts, and you can change it in your own words. How would you approach you know the this initial conversation when you you know perhaps it perhaps it's the first time you've you you're speaking on a on a video call face to face with

A Practical Opening Script For Advisors

SPEAKER_00 19:13

someone?

SPEAKER_01 19:13

Yeah, very good. So let's give them some sort of actual framework they can take away. Absolutely. So I think for me, the number one thing is to just add a little step into your process at the very beginning. So when you explain who you are, what you do, how it works, what you should be really saying at that point as you're going through things like your IDD or just kind of vocalizing who you are and what your role is, is that you know, part of what we're gonna do before we do anything else is to truly understand what good looks like for you. So just setting the scene, you know, mise on sense. Let the client know what to expect from the advice process that is gonna start by you agreeing a series of financial goals with them. And if they're not sure what those are, you'll help them to understand what they are, you'll help them unearth them, you'll give them a bit of guidance around what most people do in their situation or what good looks like for them. And from there, what you do is you'll set out the advice process to let them know what you're gonna be looking at, the various different steps you're gonna take, whether that's an income stress test, whether that's looking at this, looking at that, whatever it's gonna be. And then reassure them that once you know what matters to them, what their goals are like, you'll make sure they've got all of the essential things they need to execute that that goal. Because what happens there is you're creating this sort of um an agreement of sorts, this contract of sorts between you and the client that you're you're helping them understand what they care about. Then you're gonna guide them towards what they need to do. But as their advisor, you'll make sure they've got the absolute essential things they're gonna need to ensure they can achieve the goal. And what that does is it gives the client comfort, it gives the client conviction that you, as a professional, are doing exactly what you're supposed to do. It's a bit like it's all outcomes-based, isn't it? It becomes an outcomes goal-based conversation, not a sales pitch. So just take the time from a framework perspective as advisors listening. This is the key takeaway, this cheat sheet, so to speak. Just take time at the beginning of your conversation to do that because it will have a dramatic impact on the client's perception of what it is you're doing, particularly when you start introducing things like income protection.

SPEAKER_00 20:56

And during that process, we all that's where we're gonna start also uh highlighting where income comes into this and sits within all of this and is the key thing, you're the big, the big thing that needs protecting, right?

SPEAKER_01 21:11

It's the foundation of what the goals look like, right? So whether that be a pension, well, you need to make regular contributions, which come from your income sources. Whether it's getting a mortgage, okay, well, yeah, but that naturally means that you've got to have an income to leverage to get the debt and make the repayments. So all of the goals you agree will inevitably be in some way linked to someone's ongoing income, right? So then it just becomes a case of and that could that could even just be, well, I just want to make sure my kids are fed each week or each night, or they get to go to bed in a warm, you know, in a warm home. Okay, well, how are you gonna do that without an income? So all of a sudden, everything we're talking about anchors back to this need for ongoing regular income. Because as we said in previous sessions, income equals outcome. They're they're you know inextricably linked. And so all you're doing really is the connection to the income comes when you start doing things like the income stress test that we talked about in previous episodes, where you know you're you're doing that Jenga Tower thing that we talked about with the IPTF video, where you're identifying that look, whatever goal you've got, it's almost incumbent on the idea that your income's gonna carry on even when you're not able to go to work, even when you get ill, even when you can't generate an income. You've got to make sure you've got this coming in to be able to execute this goal over here. So naturally, then the conversation around income protection becomes a high value one and price becomes this completely secondary consideration because it's far more inherently linked to a goal, something that's deeply personal and important to the client, than just, well, you need this insurance product and I'm gonna recommend it to you.

SPEAKER_00 22:35

Okay, so the big shift here is this you're not selling policies, you're protecting outcomes. And once the goal's clear and the income is linked to that goal, everything else starts to make much more sense.

SPEAKER_01 22:51

Absolutely right. And you can't do that unless you take the time in your process to get to the bottom of what those goals look like for the client, which is why it's such a crucial part of the advice process and best done at the very beginning.

SPEAKER_00 23:02

All right, amazing, Matt. Super clear. Okay, next time we'll build on this again. How you anchor that value early so price doesn't take over the conversation. In other IPTF news, have you registered for Income Protection Action Week yet? If not, head on over to Iptf.co.uk to register now. A week's worth of incredible content that you don't want to miss out on. This year's theme is all about the moments that matter. And what matters is you register now. See what I did there? Uh and finally, if you found this useful, a quick follow or review wherever you listen really helps, or even better, share it with your advisor, colleagues, and friends. Alright, that's it from us. We'll catch you next time.

SPEAKER_01 23:52

Thanks so much for listening, guys.