At SHIFT this year, we were in awe of Brendan Frazier’s 10 Insights to Master the Human Side of Advice. So many of the insights resonated with us and are problems we’ve set out to solve - or at least make it easier for advisors.
For those of you wondering how you can use Lumiant to maximize Brendan’s insights and change your business’s trajectory, you're in luck!
Let’s look at his insights through a Lumiant lens. This week we bring you Insight Three: From the Clouds to the Street.
If you didn’t attend SHIFT, you can check out his full article here.
From the Clouds to the Street
“The more vivid and clear your future, the more likely you are to change your behavior.”
We couldn’t help ourselves but scream “YES” when we read this quote. It’s one of the main reasons we built Lumiant - to help clients truly articulate and visualize what their best life could look like.
This isn’t something they can achieve by looking at spreadsheets, graphs or discussing vague financial goals, such as retiring at 65 with $X. They can’t relate to it. It doesn’t resonate with them. They can’t visualize how these numbers translate to real-life outcomes - what that dollar figure in retirement empowers them to do.
Morningstar’s research reveals a direct link between savings behavior and your mental time horizon. Their study found that people who think at least ten years ahead save significantly more than peers who have a shorter mental time horizon. It’s about having a clear vision for the future with vivid and specific details that make the mental imagery feel more tangible and realistic.
It’s why visualization techniques have been around for centuries, with many still being used today. There is real power in creating “vision boards” and the like, as it helps us to identify what we want to achieve.
For advisors who are looking to motivate clients to take action on their financial plans, making them visual could help them to start ticking off their goals. And the more goals they achieve under your guidance, the happier your clients will be.
Tips to bring your plan to life
So how do you make your financial plan as visual as possible?
Personalize plans with images and videos
A list of goals on a sheet of paper, excel document, or Kanban board isn’t that inspiring. The client has to work hard to bring it to life in their minds, particularly as our visual imagery vividness declines as we get older.
To help bring goals to life, we recommend clients attach real-life pictures or videos of what they want to achieve.
It could be a video of them on holiday to help them save for their annual trip. It could be a picture of the family outside what could be their dream home or the campervan they are going to purchase to tour the country in retirement.
Whatever it is, ask the client to choose imagery and videos that are personal to them, the ones that evoke the right emotions and are inspiring to them.
In Lumiant’s Goals module, you can get clients to upload these images and videos directly to the goals, acting as a constant reminder of what they want to achieve each time they log in. Like their own personal digital vision board!
Ensure your client portal can visualize outcomes beyond performance reports and graphs
Many client portals today offer clients an on-demand view of their financial data and performance reports. While these numbers are critical to ensuring the optimization of your client’s net worth, they still leave a lot to the imagination.
Some financial clients will love the data and the graphs, as they are motivated by the positive trends they can see in the numbers. But for many clients that are non-financial, these reports can often lack meaning and require significant explanation.
Why not make it simpler?
At Lumiant, we roll up the strategies, goals and portfolio modeling into an “Underfunded”, “On-Track” or “Overfunded” color-coded score. This means clients don’t need to track the data to work out where they are in their journey. One glance and you know where you stand and what action you must take.
Even better, Lumiant’s Best Life module also overlays the goals on the financial model and their age, allowing clients to see and experience what they are going to achieve and by when.
Not only do we offer a visual financial snapshot, but our Wellbeing score also helps to show how your advice is having an impact on your client's overall wellbeing.
Tracked over time, this can be a really powerful visual that can be overlaid on their financial results to show the positive impact you’ve had on all aspects of their lives. This can help keep them motivated to continue to tick their financial tasks off their to-do list and continue to stick to their financial plan.
Make sure you capture the non-financial goals too
To give clients a complete view of their best lives, it’s important you also capture their non-financial goals, too.
Just focusing on the financial goals can be hard to bring in the emotional imagery and visuals, particularly if it’s really number based - like paying down $5000 in debt. Yes, you could show a picture of a cut up credit card or the celebratory dinner they’ll have once they’ve achieved it. But what could be more powerful is being able to see all the non-financial goals they could achieve while they go through their cost savings exercise.
It could be things like running to work each week instead of catching an Uber. Having a date night picnic instead of a fancy restaurant dinner. Or it could be going for a hike and camping holiday rather than the usual city hotel.
If a client includes positive, meaningful imagery around these more non-financial goals, they will be more likely to achieve them. And, achieving these goals would increase client satisfaction even if they are working on goals that have a “negative” impact on their ideal lifestyle.
Remember to update those images when goals are completed
As you achieve goals with your clients, be sure to update your goals imagery. While they may have had a “dream” image to motivate them, including a real-image upon completion can be a great reminder of how they felt when looking back.
When it comes to your annual progress meeting, you can then spend some time with the client reflecting on what they’ve achieved with your guidance, going through the real-life moments with them on screen.
This will strengthen your perceived value to the client and act as an important visual reminder of the success to date, while motivating them to continue to take action to live their best lives.
Making your plan as visual as possible is critical if you want to motivate your clients to achieve success and act on your guidance.
That’s why, at Lumiant, we’ve made our platform as visual as possible so that we can help you help your clients achieve their goals and live their best life.