Anchoring Value Early: How to Prevent Price Shock

Why does the price of income protection so often become the whole conversation?

In this episode of Let’s Talk IP, Stevie and Matt explore why many price objections are created long before a quote is ever presented. They look at how advisers can unintentionally trigger price shock by introducing cost before they’ve established the value of what they’re recommending.

Together, they discuss how to position income protection as an investment in financial resilience rather than just another monthly bill, why clients mirror an adviser’s conviction, and how linking protection to a client’s goals changes the entire conversation.

This episode is all about creating value before discussing cost, helping clients understand what they’re protecting, and making price feel like part of the plan, not the headline.

If you’ve ever felt that clients focus on the premium before they understand the purpose, this episode will give you practical ways to change that conversation from the very beginning.

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Produced and edited by SEA Studios

Transcript

Advisors Trigger Objections Early

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Do you feel like advisors then are accidentally creating like an objection really by doing this?

SPEAKER_01 0:07

Oh, absolutely. A lot of advisors I speak to when I'm doing the coaching work, they often say to me things like, you know, clients said they can't afford it. And I'm like, what do you mean they can't afford it? In many cases, what happens is advisors are either jumping to quotes far too quickly without really understanding what is so important for the client that is worth investing X amount of money in safeguarding their income.

Value And Context Change Everything

SPEAKER_00 0:32

Hello, this is Let's Talk Income Protection, proper conversations, and advice for advisors who want to get income protection right, not just get a quote accepted. And this episode is all about value. Because let's be honest, a lot of objections around protection aren't really about affordability. They're about context. Clients will spend hundreds every month on cars, phones, subscriptions, holidays, but suddenly income protection feels expensive. So awesome advisors. Today we're talking about why that happens. How advisors accidentally create price shock and how to anchor value properly before cost ever enters the conversation.

SPEAKER_01 1:22

Absolutely, my friend. I mean, I use this idea that price is only an issue in the absence of value. And I'll give everyone a bit of an example when it comes to context. So it's all down to context and how someone perceives value. If I showed you a bottle of water today, Steve, and said, Well, how much would you pay for a bottle of water? You'd probably say, I don't know, one pound, two pound, whatever the going rate is. But if you're alone in the desert and you had nothing to drink, how much value would you place in a bottle of water then? It's all down to context. It's all down to goals, it's all down to how we understand what is driving and motivating the customer. And from there the value can be created and we move the conversation away from price and into value.

SPEAKER_00 1:59

Okay, great, Matt. Well, let's start with this then. What actually causes price shock in income protection conversations?

SPEAKER_01 2:07

That's

What Causes Income Protection Price Shock

SPEAKER_01 2:08

a very good question. And it's typically, Stevie, because the advisor introduces the cost or even behaves like it's a cost, right? And they do that before they've created any meaning or any kind of tangible value. The problem is a price in isolation without any contacts, without any kind of value sitting behind it is just a price. And often advisors do this thing where they're asking clients to come up with sort of what budget they've got available or trying to whittle it down to a pounds and pence figure before having even discussed the value. So naturally, the price is the focus. It always becomes the trigger point, it always becomes the point to which someone's going to negotiate. And if they haven't got anything to sort of use to contextualize the value of the plan, all they're going to focus on is the cost, right? So it's more about how do I create the value? How do I create the essential nature of what we're talking about? Because ultimately, income is the be all and end all. It's the thing we use to pay for our lifestyle, to borrow money, to make investments. It funds our lifestyle today and in the future. It allows us to make our money work hard for us. It allows us to achieve all the things we want to do. And it's fundamental to our survivor. If you think about some of the most basic necessities we've got air, food, here, water, shelter, you know, several of those are not free and require us to have an income to support ourselves. So it's more about moving the conversation away from price and into investment. The problem is right now, the price shock is most advisors either don't provide any context, they ask the client to come up with a sort of a tentative figure, and then inevitably, if they haven't created the value, whatever they present is going to seem expensive in the client's mind because there's nothing to relate or compare it to, right?

SPEAKER_00 3:42

Do you feel like advisors then are accidentally creating like an objection really before they've even realized it by doing this?

SPEAKER_01 3:49

Oh, absolutely. A lot of advisors I speak to when I'm doing the coaching work, they often say to me things like, you know, clients said they can't afford it. And I'm like, what do you mean they can't afford it? And that really is down to the fact that that objection is created to the fact that they haven't created any value. Because in many cases, what happens is advisors are either jumping to quotes far too quickly without really understanding what is so important for the client that is worth investing X amount of money in safeguarding their income. You know, often they'll go into comparison mode very quickly and force clients to make decisions without actually spending time to understand the value or educate clients as to why this is so important. And I think inevitably, what happens then is you treat it like a commodity. Like I said earlier, a bottle of water. Without the context of being in a drought and needing the water suddenly, that bottle of water is compared against everything else that we've got. And so, of course, it becomes a price-led conversation. I also think advisors, unfortunately, um create objections by doing things like apologizing for what they're doing. You know, they become a little bit hesitant and almost reserved about what they're doing. I feel like they try and explain too much and almost persuade the client they need to do this. Um, I also see advisors doing a lot of work where, you know, they'll they'll always opt for the cheapest option or here's the cheapest. And they literally use that kind of language with a client. But of course, what does cheap say to you, Stevie? If someone says it's cheap, what does that make you think? Yeah, poor. Absolutely. Uh low quality. 100%, mate, rather than talking about the value. And I think advisors put more emphasis on things like clients' budget and affordability. I mean, even the word budget, Stevie, what does budget say to you naturally as a word? Going for a cheaper option, you know, you're scrimping, you're saving. Absolutely. Budget, budget to me sounds constrictive. You know, when we budget, if you think about what we do when we manage our money. Easy jets. 100%. Ryanair. Absolutely. No offense. There's our there are other airlines available, and there's nothing wrong with those if that's what you're looking for. No, but fundamentally you are spot on, Stevie, in that, you know, even the language and the positioning we use around what we're doing can often invite the objection and a price-led objection because we're so focused on the price because we're obviously cognizant of the fact that at some point we have to say to the client, right, it's £186, it's £200, it's £120, it's £56, whatever it's going to be. And we're so nervous about doing that as advisors that what we do is we treat it like an expenditure. And we feel like we've got to convince the client to spend the money. So we try and use either claim statistics or scare tactics or, you know, illness rates or length of claim to try and convince you to spend the money. Whereas what we should be doing is treating income protection like the investment it is, because when you think investment and you put it into an investment column, naturally your brain treats it differently than the expenditure column. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_00 6:29

Yeah, 100%. You know, we've discussed this a lot on this season of the podcast around anchoring the value, having these conversations up front.

Language That Makes It Feel “Expensive”

SPEAKER_00 6:40

I know this, you know this, and many of our awesome advisors listening right now are aware of this. But hopefully we are speaking to some people on this podcast right now who don't necessarily know about how to go about anchoring this value. So, what does anchoring value early actually mean in practice, Matt?

SPEAKER_01 6:59

That's actually a very good point. And and again, like you say, unfortunately, when we do this, we tend to assume that people are thinking an actor like us, and you know, I don't think I'd be a job or you'd have a job if people were all the time. I think for me, anchoring value early is actually spending a lot of time understanding what's pivotal to the client, you know, what's mission critical for them, what must they have every month, what do they need every single month, regardless? Because that kind of builds the foundation on which you create a value-based conversation rather than a price-based conversation. You know, if I was to sit there and say to you, right, Steve, here's a pen. Um, it's it's 150 pounds, you're gonna say that's probably quite expensive because contextually, but if I said to you, this is a solid platinum pen, um, you know, and actually this type of pen, you're probably gonna have to invest 200 pounds, but actually this one's coming in 150 quid. Now I've created some value for you where you understand it's worth spending that much on the on the pen. And I think for me, expectation management's the key because what we fail to do is really kind of help customers understand what this looks like, what it realistically requires you to invest in order to achieve the level of financial resilience that that most people would probably want and need in life. I also think that advisors should probably lean more into these aspirational concepts, this idea of wanting to be financially resilient, wanting to be financially secure. Because I think that's something that most of us would aspire to have rather than trying to convince people that they're going to get ill or injured or need time off work. I personally, anyway, would probably place a lot more value on the idea of being financially secure, not having to worry about money quite in the same way that I do now. And I think using language like investment, you know, explaining how the benefit can be used, but in a practical way. You know, I often talk about this idea that if you've got a parent and you're speaking to a parent, the idea that this type of plan would enable you to ensure that your children are always fed, that they've always got a warm bed to sleep in at night, there's always a roof over there, that suddenly becomes of high value, right? Because it's it's this innate need that we've got as parents, right? So I think what this comes down to really is more about managing clients' expectations, spending a lot of time agreeing what's non-negotiable for them, what absolutely must happen for them, and creating the value that way. But also, when we say expectation management, one thing I do teach advisors is where you've got advisors for whatever reason, because of network requirements or or firm criteria or even compliance, they are required to agree some level of budget or affordability with the client early on into the conversations. That obviously has the danger that the conversation leads down the price point, right? So, you know, what available budget have you got? Whereas I would encourage advisors to do a bit more expectation management and actually provide some guidance and education to the client. So to say, look, this really requires you to invest a couple of percent of your income and typically somewhere between three to five percent of your income to get the full plan. That means you've got your income sources ring-fenced and protected for life. It means anything that stops you working for an extended period of time, you'd always have enough money to pay this, to pay that, to do this, to do this, all the way through to retirement and then enjoy your pension thereafter. So it safeguards your investment into your pension, et cetera. And that kind of benchmarking allows the conversation to move away from pounds and pence into a sort of a bit of a space where you could probably create a meaningful recommendation without the client feeling ambushed or that's significantly more than they feel comfortable investing. So I think giving clients the ability to understand what's about to happen, to manage their expectations well, removes some of this sort of what I call it price ambushing, where I just give you a quote and of course you've got to make a split-second decision. I've had a long time to understand the value of these plans and why it would cost that or not cost that. And I'm expecting you to make a split-second decision. And to you, all you hear is pounds and pence and you compare it to everything else in your life that you probably think, well, do I really need this? I've gone 10 years without needing this. So you're always going to fixate on the price. But if I sort of set set goals with you, non-negotiables with you, if I manage your expectations and give you an idea that you should probably look to invest three to five percent of your earnings to make sure that the remainder of your earnings is safeguarded, we're now entering territory where your expectations are it's likely to be X pounds and pence. So whatever we come in at should, in theory, be in that sort of bracket, hopefully beneath it, so that your expectations have been well managed, and it won't feel like such a shock or um like you've just suddenly been ambushed by some price that you you feel has no context or value.

SPEAKER_00 11:21

I I've always thought that three to five percent investment each month to uh for you to be covered for your rest of your e your life, just it sounds like a bit of a no-brainer offer, for want of a better word. We've touched upon this next question uh a lot. It's quite obvious based on what we've been talking about.

SPEAKER_01 11:39

But when should advisors actually introduce protection in the conversation and I'm going to assume right now that we're not talking to a protection-only advisor, but let's assume it's either a mortgage or a wealth advisor. Now, naturally, if you think what the mortgage advisor

Anchor Outcomes Before Pounds And Pence

SPEAKER_01 11:55

is doing, the mortgage advisor is essentially taking someone's income and leveraging that to obtain a debt. Right. So when someone gets a mortgage, all that's happening is we're taking someone's income sources, we're leveraging it, we're applying to the lender for some money, stating that this individual's income is enough to warrant this level of borrowing and they're going to have this kind of income for the next 30 years. So the logical thing to do at that point would be if you're having an affordability discussion with the client or even giving them the idea that they might be able to move forward with the property purchase, is understand what this property means to them above all else. Why are they buying it? Why are they taking on this level of debt? Why are they paying back two and a half times the value of the house? And then essentially it's from there, it's stress testing their income sources because what you're trying to really understand is how sustainable is the income that you're using to obtain that debt right now. As in, there's not much point getting the hopes up and saying we think you could borrow 300,000 pounds or 400,000 pounds without first safeguarding the very elements they're using to get the debt, right? So I think for me, that would be the best way of doing it for a mortgage advisor, is stress testing someone's income sources long before you submit the mortgage application. Otherwise, you could get the hopes up, you could disappoint them, they may not be able to get the borrowing. And it just seems that it seamlessly blends into the advice process because you're talking about using someone's income at affordability stage, right? So let's stress test how reliable the income sources are. But the same principle applies in theory for wealth advisors. You know, if someone comes to you and says, I'm looking to set up a pension scheme, I'd like to retire at the age of 57 or 62 or whatever it's going to be, these days is significantly longer. But um, if you're then doing that and using, say, a cash flow model where what you're looking at is how the contributions will feed into the fund and how that compounds over time to deliver the level of retirement income the individual's looking for, each of those contributions is required to obtain the outcome. And so it would be completely logical, once again, to stress test someone's ability to make those pension contributions. And you know what's really interesting about all of this, Stevie, based on what you just said about the three to five percent. I said this to someone just the other day. What's really interesting for context, it is highly unlikely as an advisor, you're ever going to ask your client to invest more in protecting their income sources than they are currently happy to spend in interest on their mortgage repayments or in their pension contributions, which aren't guaranteed until the income sources are protected. Because both of those, both the property and the pension theory, are deemed as investments, which is why I'm proposing advisors to change the mindset and start treating it like another part of the investment that then safeguards the other investments they're making.

SPEAKER_00 14:19

This last question has made me think about how we can support mortgage advisors and financial wealth uh advisors on making that conversation more natural. Ultimately, these clients have come to them to speak about a mortgage or they speak about sorting out their finances. So, how do advisors bring in this need for protection to protect that income to do everything they want first naturally? Do they do that before they start having these calls? Again, this is all about expectation management. How does that work?

SPEAKER_01 14:54

I like the idea of just managing clients' expectations very well. So a prime example of this, Steve, is you know, we've just talked about mortgage and wealth conversation, right? So no one can borrow money or get a house or a mortgage without an income. No one can make pension contributions sustainably anyway, not without regular income to make the contributions. And so every one of those bits of advice is being underpinned by the income. That is to say, if I give you advice on a mortgage or if I give you advice on pension contributions, it would be foolhardy of me to assume that that's going to carry on perpetually. I ought to have a conversation with you about how sustainable the elements you're using are. So how how likely is it you can actually execute the advice I'm giving you, right? You know, we just talked about clients come for a mortgage, clients come for a pension. They haven't. Nobody wants a mortgage. If the client had the cash, they wouldn't borrow the money, they'd buy the house. So it's not the mortgage someone wants, but the property, the home, the investment, okay? And it's the same with the pension. Nobody wants a pension. What they want is the retirement income. They want their fund to grow so they can enjoy a standard of living that they're looking for when they retire and have and are able to stop working. So it's actually about saying, right, what is the customer really trying to achieve? And then how do we ensure they can do that? Our job is not just to set up a mortgage or set up a pension for you. Our job is to understand what are you hoping to achieve from this mortgage or this property purchase, what are you hoping to achieve from this conversation around investment to your pension, and then what does good look like for you? And then how do we make sure you can get there? Because the contributions are one element of it. And then the money that comes in each month to enable you to make those contributions is also pivotal to achieving the outcome. So I did some work with Zurich in um in Ireland and I dealt with their financial planners. This was really interesting, actually. And I taught them to basically, when they're dealing with customers who come in with an idea of a budget in mind in terms of what they want to spend on the pension contributions, they simply turn around and say, right, well, what we need to do is look at those contributions. We're going to split the investment into two important crucial parts. The majority is going to go into the pension fund itself, and another part is going to be apportioned to invest in a plan that's going to enable you to guarantee you can make those contributions even when you can't work. So the mindset's different. And it's a bit like if someone comes to you, and this is goes back to what you're saying around expectation management. If someone goes to a mortgage advisor and says, Yeah, I want to buy this house, right? What is the overall amount that you're willing to invest in your home each month in terms of the mortgage and any insurances you're going to need and all that sort of stuff? Client gives you a rough figure, and you go, right, what we're going to do is we're going to look at what we need to set aside for the mortgage and what allocation we need to set aside towards your essential insurances, any mandatory cover you've got and anything important you might want to consider as well. So what we're doing is we're setting ourselves up for success by managing expectations early on. The problem comes at the minute, particularly down the mortgage route and sometimes the pension route, is that all of the emphasis is on what they're putting into the mortgage or what they're putting into the pension. So almost like we swallow the whole budget or the level level of investment into that solution without actually thinking, how do we safeguard the client's outcomes? Now, consumer duty is really interesting because

Making Protection Natural In Mortgage Advice

SPEAKER_01 17:50

consumer duty talks about this idea that advisors, it is a regulatory expectation that advisors understand and give advice to help customers achieve their financial goals. So it's not enough to get the mortgage. It's not enough to set up the pension. It's about what is the journey the customer's going on and how do products like income protection ensure they can actually go down that route? Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_00 18:12

Yeah, 100%. How would you literally say that? Like, you know, we're just on a call, we're just gonna have a little chat about protection or again.

SPEAKER_01 18:19

I wouldn't bring it up as protection, my friend. Uh, and that and that's an interesting point. So, you know, um some people agree with me, some people disagree with me. I wouldn't bring it up as protection, right? A mortgage is just a financial construct, a pension is a financial construct, they're just products, just like income protection is a product. What we're really trying to do is understand the customer's objective from the advice. So it's about it's about spending more time with the customer early on in the advice conversation, understanding what they're really trying to achieve. If you were buying a house, Stevie, and we were talking about there, I'd be sitting here and I'd be asking questions to you, such as talk to me about this house you're buying, where do you see yourself in five, 10 years? And is this your forever home? Are you looking to move later on? I'd be asking a lot of open questions to really get my head around what does this property mean for you and your partner and your family, right? What are you trying to achieve here? And then from that, I would probably transition into, well, now I understand what this means to you. Can I give you a bit of guidance around some of the kind of non-negotiables that we typically advise our clients to think about and often what they want to consider? So, for example, would it be non-negotiable for you that you want to make sure your family gets to stay in this home that you're putting all this investment into, even when you have a break from work for an extended period of time or you can't work for an extended period of time, or when you're too ill to be able to go to work and generate an income? And you're gonna say, yes, it is. And I've just naturally introduced the concept of protecting your income, but done in a way that's linked to what's non-negotiable for you about this investment. It's not the same as saying, let's talk insurance, let's sit down and talk about protection, let's talk about how you might need to replace your income because you could get ill, Stevie.

SPEAKER_00 19:47

You could get ill. I I'm instantly already like, nah, I kind of, it's not what we're talking. That's not what I came here to talk about.

SPEAKER_01 19:54

Yeah, because you think you want a mortgage, don't you? My job is to educate you to say you don't want a mortgage. Nobody wants a mortgage. What we're trying to do is facilitate the purchase of a home or facilitate the investment in a property or whatever it is you're trying to achieve. But I've got to understand that first before I can give you meaningful advice. But the meaningful advice is always going to be right, whatever it is you're looking to do, Steve, if it requires you to make monthly payments or monthly contributions, I should be stress testing how reliable your income sources are. Because if your income sources are not guaranteed between now and the end of the mortgage term, we can't safely conclude that you can achieve the outcome you came to me for.

SPEAKER_00 20:27

Yeah, that makes complete sense, Matt. One thing you you have mentioned before, Matt, is um benchmarking expectations early. So what do you mean by that?

SPEAKER_01 20:36

Just like what we talked about earlier when I was talking about the sort of the three to five percent resilience benchmark, you know, the kind of the normalizing the investment, you know, almost using social proof to say, you know, typically we encourage clients to allocate around three to five percent of their income to ensure their income sources are ring fenced, they've always got enough money to invest, that their money can work hard for them, they can buy their property, pay for their bills, keep the lights on, feed their kids. So it's almost creating two things really, which is the level of anticipated investment required to achieve the outcomes they're looking to achieve, but also using a bit of social proof and normalization so they don't feel like it's something abnormal that they're doing. What that does, it helps avoid that sort of random price shock when you do end up bringing in a price. Because the one thing I would say is if I said to you it's 180 quid, Stevie, your instant reaction without any context is going to recoil. But if I said, great news, Stevie, I've actually managed to find you a complete comprehensive plan that gives you replacement income all the way through to retirement, enabling you to make pension contributions as well. Um, and we managed to find it in at 2.7% of your income. So it's actually around what we thought, maybe maybe at the very bottom end. So it's actually a very worthwhile investment. Suddenly you're now thinking, okay, well, that seems more reasonable.

SPEAKER_00 21:45

I've got the product that I want and it's under what I was potentially going to pay. So you, as you said, it feels like I'm I'm winning.

SPEAKER_01 21:53

Yeah, and you didn't get the product you wanted, you got the outcome you wanted. And I think that's the distinction, right? That's where the value comes from. So because if if I'm saying To you, the outcome is you want to be able to know that you can buy this home, that you can borrow, that you can pay the bills, that you can actually achieve the life objective you've got from owning this property. Because nobody buys a house for fun, Stevie. It's not, it's not an easy process to go through. I think you've been through it yourself, right? It's not an easy process, it's very stressful, it requires a huge amount of investment, it's quite taxing, it's a perpetual bill that sits there forever and it puts a lot of strain on people and household. So the idea of knowing that that's taken care of, so that even if you can't work because you get ill, it's still going to be taken care of, gives people a lot of satisfaction that the outcome of why they're buying the house is going to be achieved. But I think another thing that advisors do very poorly, from my experience, is things like underwriting changes. And income protection is very susceptible to this because this is a product that has a broad and comprehensive nature to it. And we're finding a lot at the minute that lots of clients are disclosing things, mental health conditions, MSK conditions. You know, people have got a lot of underlying and pre-existing medical conditions. And so that has an impact on the level of coverage and also potentially the premiums the client's going to pay. So it makes a lot of sense for advisors to manage expectations early. You know, I did this exercise with a firm recently who had a similar problem. Nearly all of their clients were having mental problems or physical problems. And so I was saying, look, do a bit of expectation management early on to avoid this price shock. So maybe talk about this idea that, you know, not everybody's eligible for these types of plans, unfortunately. So the number one thing you've got to do first is just check your eligibility by going through a couple of medical questions just to make sure you are somebody who's eligible for this type of plan. But what you need to understand is if, for example, um we look to make an application because of your pre-existing medical conditions, you are much higher risk than other people, it may mean you need to invest slightly more. However, if that happens, I'll explain what it means. But why is that so crucial? Well, because if you need to pay more for this, if you need to invest more for this, it's typically because the likelihood of you needing to claim is significantly higher. So it becomes far more crucial for you to do that. So we're managing your expectations all the while, and I'm not allowing that price issue to become a problem. Because if you if you do benchmark and we end up on the high end of it or something changes from what we've agreed, you've got to be aware of why it might happen so that it's not a shock when it does.

SPEAKER_00 24:15

Okay, Matt, we've got the penultimate question here. What is the biggest mindset shift that advisors need to make around value? Right.

SPEAKER_01 24:27

So stop treating protection like it's some sort of expense. That's the number one thing I'd say. Just don't treat it like an expense. It is still an investment. In fact, it's one of the best investments people can make because if you safeguard your income sources, what's going to happen is you're allowing that customer to complete all of their life goals. They can still contribute to their pension, they can still invest their money, they can still go on holiday, they can still buy the house and pay the bills, they can still feed their children. And so for me, it's just mentally moving it from the expense budget column into the investment column, as in safeguarding the financial goals the client's got and the various other products they're taking out, whether it be mortgage, pension, whatever. You just need to stop fearing conversations. The better you manage clients' expectations, the less likelihood there's going to be that they're going to be shocked or ambushed by the price. And so when you present the investment as being this thing where we've created the context and the value, my experience is clients often find that quite reasonable, particularly because if I said to you, Stevie, you know, if you had to give me a pound and pence figure, what's your income worth to you? I guarantee it'll be significantly more than what I'm going to ask you to invest in it, right? That's the truth. And, you know, you give up a third of your life on this planet in terms of hours and minutes and days and months of precious time you could be spending with your loved ones in the pursuit of the very same income that I'm talking about safeguarding for a nominal investment. And so it's just this mindset shift where we move from it's a cost to it's an investment in achieving everything we hope to achieve. That's how I do it.

SPEAKER_00 25:56

Safeguarding against many uh possibilities and yeah, outcomes that could happen.

SPEAKER_01 26:02

You've hit the nail on the head there. You in fact you summed it up beautifully because for me, I don't believe people buy protection because they think they're going to get ill. I believe people invest in protection because what they're looking for is the security of an outcome. That is to say, they want to achieve something, and what they're doing is putting a plan in place which makes perfect sense, as you say, a no-brainer, so that when something unexpected happens, they can still stay on track. That's a very different aspirational concept to I might get ill, I might get injured, I might have to stop working. Because none

Underwriting Expectations And Mindset Shifts

SPEAKER_01 26:30

of us really think it's going to happen to us. We don't want to believe that we're optimistically biased. So I think what you've done there is is is summarise it beautifully, which is safeguarding their options for the future. Love that.

SPEAKER_00 26:39

It's a strange thing that things like car insurance and home insurance are completely normalized and it's a must-have, yet people don't look at income the same way. But that's that's what we're trying to change here at the IPTF and support advisors and consumers in doing. So But you know what's crazy, Stevie? What pays for the car and the pet and the home insurance premiums?

SPEAKER_01 27:00

The income. Which makes it so but it's so bizarre, isn't it? The example is, Stevie, it's like insuring the golden egg, but not the goose that lays it.

SPEAKER_00 27:08

Love that, Matt. Okay, fantastic. Well, let's start wrapping things up here. So uh Matt, finally, what's one simple shift advisors can make immediately to reduce price objections before they happen?

SPEAKER_01 27:21

Two things I'm gonna say. Sorry, not one thing, two things. One is I I believe advisors should be stress testing people's income sources regardless of what they're talking about. So knowing that it's the income that's used for the mortgage, income used for the pension, income used for the investments, income that safeguards their lifestyle, that should be stress tested because when it's stress tested, what it does is it makes customers understand that the goals that they have from the advice they're getting are vulnerable and then therefore only protecting. But I also think benchmarking. So managing expectations, benchmarking is crucial. Just let clients know that they really ought to be setting aside typically somewhere between three and five percent of their income to invest in their future, to invest in a plan that's going to safeguard their income sources to allow them to do whatever they want to do in life. And that will fundamentally change the dynamic of every conversation because we've now got context and we've got value.

SPEAKER_00 28:06

So, really, what we're saying is this price objections often start long before the price is shown. Uh, if advisors create that value early and anchor protection to goals and then position it as part of the uh financial plan, um, clients will stop looking at it like it's just uh another insurance policy, it's not just another expense. Have I got that right?

SPEAKER_01 28:33

Absolutely spot on Steve. I don't think I could have summarized it any better myself, to be honest with you. It's just treating it like part of the financial plan. Love that.

SPEAKER_00 28:40

Fantastic. Thanks, Matt. So in the next episode, we're talking about trust. Specifically, what happens when clients have had a bad experience with advice before and how advisors can rebuild confidence

IPTF Updates And Closing Ask

SPEAKER_00 28:55

without sounding salesy or defensive. In other IPTF news, go to iptf.co.uk now to register for iPor. Registration is open and you can sign up once for all sessions. We also have a new report on uh the profile of the IP customer to go and check out. And Seven Families Revisited is also now out. Fantastic uh recap and going and revisiting uh a few of the families from the original Seven Families uh project. Look out for the individual family films on the IPTF social accounts and on the website, YouTube channel as well. Finally, if you found this episode useful, a quick follow or review wherever you listen really helps, or even better, share it with your advisor, colleagues, and friends. Okay, that's it from us. Catch you next time. Thanks for listening, guys.