Blair Enns

WHAT’S YOURS?

If anyone knows how to put a price on the kind of work we do as Real Financial Professionals, it’s probably Blair Enns. After all, that’s what his book Pricing Creativity: A Guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour is all about.

But part of knowing how to price our services comes down to knowing where our value lies. And brace yourself… it might not be where you think it is. 

In this conversation with Blair, we dig into so many important topics. What questions should you ask during a first meeting? What value do you offer your client? How do we gain pricing power? What do our clients really want, and what do they say they want?

In many ways, the first meeting we have with prospective clients is the “Golf Swing” of our business. This conversation will give you the tools you need to perfect that swing.

I know you’re going to get tons of value from this conversation. But if you want even more on the importance of nailing your first meeting with clients-to-be, you will LOVE The Society of Advice. 

SHOW NOTES

0:00 – 2:00 Prospective clients care about their problems… not your solutions. In order to get clear on their problems, we need to have what Blair likes to call “The Value Conversation.”

“The objective of the value conversation is to uncover the value you might create for the client and then determine the appropriate share of that value for yourself in the form of remuneration. You’re completely focused on the client. You’re not thinking about your own solutions at all.”

2:15 – 4:30 Blair breaks down the difference between what a client needs and what they think they need, and Carl urges us to listen.

“The customer isn’t always right. When a client comes to you and says, ‘I need X,’ your default assumption should be, that’s probably not right. More correctly, it should be, ‘yeah, maybe you need X. We’ll see. It’s my job to uncover what it is that you really need.’ Just like a doctor. If you went to your cardiac surgeon and said, ‘I have this pain in my chest, I think I need quadruple bypass surgery,’ and he said, ‘okay, lie down,’ he would be guilty of malpractice. Similarly, any financial planner or creative professional or professional of any kind who proceeds to prescribe or operate based on the client’s self-diagnosis… that is professionally irresponsible.”

4:30 – 6:13 Blair describes the four steps of a successful Value Conversation and the importance of finding a balance between the expert’s mind and the beginner’s mind.

6:13 – 9:00 Blair takes a deep dive into the Dan Sullivan question, and how to ascertain your prospective client’s desired future state.

9:00 – 10:35 Carl makes sense of how to absorb what a client comes in the door saying they want with empathy and then steer them down a path toward a deeper understanding of what they actually want.

10:35 – 14:45 A brief discussion of pricing power, niche narrowing, and how to set yourself apart from the other million advisors in the phonebook.

“At the end of the day, you are selling to your clients their desired future state discounted for uncertainty. So number one… have you helped them understand what their desired future state is? And number two, what’s the level of uncertainty in the solution that you’re putting forward that the client sees… You’re selling to somebody a better version of themselves, their desired future state, and the price—or whatever prices or pricing options—you put in front of them. Each of those prices has an ‘uncertainty discount’ built-in, and you’d be surprised at the premium that people are willing to pay—like, orders of magnitude—just for that premium of a greater sense of certainty.”

16:30 – 19:30 Carl asks Blair the million dollar question: “Why is money important to you?” And then breaks down how we can all use Blair’s answers to be better advisors.

“The mistake we make is we think, ‘okay, I’m a financial advisor. How many other financial advisors are there? We’re all selling similar things. Therefore, it’s highly commoditized.’ But, as a professional, the idea that the experience with you can be replicated is absurd. And therefore, there’s nothing commoditized about it at all.“

19:30 – 22:45 Blair shines a light on the four conversations: the probative conversation, the qualifying conversation, the value conversation, and the closing conversation. Do. Not. Miss. This.

25:00 – 30:45 As you listen to this section, remember that Blair is an expert on pricing creative services and not specifically the work of a Real Financial Professional. Some of what we cover in this section may not apply to how you want to build your business. That said, there is still great value in these last five to six minutes. Specifically around the idea of seeing every client as a blank slate. A fresh opportunity. New potential. What are you going to do with that potential?

As always, thanks for listening.

Again, if you enjoyed this conversation, I know for a fact that you would LOVE The Society of Advice.

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