How I Use a ‘Good Fit’ Call With Every Prospect

In this edition of What’s Working Now, an AdvisorRADIO feature in which Horsesmouth members tell us about recent success they have had running and growing their businesses, we are doing something a little different. Today we hear from Peter Hafner, who uses a Good Fit call with every prospective client to bridge the gap between educational seminars and the first discovery meeting.

The following article is an edited version of Pete’s comments. Or you can hear a lot more of the conversation by wathcing the full interview in the video below.

Peter Hafner is the founder and owner of Hafner Financial Group, which serves clients in western New York. He’s a CFP, and began his career 31 years ago as an advisor with A.G. Edwards.

In this conversation, Pete tells how he has developed the “Good Fit” call as an integral tool within his discovery process. Pete never meets with prospective new clients unless they come through his Good Fit call process. Indeed, he has refined his system to the point where his assistant is responsible for virtually all aspects of the Good Fit process. All Pete does now is show up at the appointed time and meet with the prospects.

Interested in hearing from an expert at Good Fit calls? Please read on…

Inviting prospects to a Good Fit call

We do a lot of free educational workshops and webinars and during them, I tease the idea of a Good Fit call a couple of times throughout the presentation. I tell our guests that it’s about a 20-minute call where they have the opportunity to get to know me and I get to know them.

It gives them the opportunity to learn more about what we do and how we do it—and how we charge for it—so they’ll be in a position to know whether or not working with us is going to help them. They’ll be in a position to know whether or not, if they work with us, we can make a powerful positive impact in their lives.

So that’s how it starts. After the workshop’s over, they have the ability to message my assistant, Samantha, and let us know they’re interested in a Good Fit call. And that happens sometimes, which is nice, when they call us.

But we are also proactive about scheduling these. Sam calls everyone who attended the workshop and she either leaves a message or asks them if they want to arrange a Good Fit call. So we are definitely proactively reaching out. My assistant does all the advance work. I don’t do anything but show up and do the call.

Zoom vs. phone?

Nowadays, I prefer doing the Good Fit calls via Zoom because I can show prospects everything that I talk about. We’ve got a folder we mail out to prospects after the call. And in the folder, it’s got our process. It’s got the way we charge for things. It talks about if we’re acting as an investment advisor, what our pricing structure is.

And it’s hard to really talk about these things if I can’t show them to these prospects. So, in a Zoom call, it’s really easy to show it to them. I can circle things. I can write on it, so it’s great. Once in a while, I will do a phone call, but via Zoom, it is much easier to show them things and go into greater detail.

Starting a Good Fit call

I went to a conference at White Glove and there was a person there who had very specific ways of handling these Good Fit calls and I have implemented a lot of those tactics into my routine. So I do have a 13-point agenda that guides the conversation (although I admit that sometimes I wing it). At the beginning, I always receive permission to have my assistant on the call; she is off-screen, taking notes. Initially, I will chit-chat with the prospects a little bit just to get things flowing.

And I will let them know the purpose of the meeting, again, is the opportunity for them to see if working with us can create a powerful and positive impact in their life. I let them know there’s no pressure today. I tell them the hardest question we’re going to ask you is if we can schedule another meeting with you, so that we can come together again, and I can answer any questions you’ve got about this information after you’ve had time to look it over.

And then I just say, “What’s on your mind? What are you thinking about?” And usually, I already know the answer, because Sam does a really good job of giving me notes and telling me what they have said, but I want them to tell me. I want them to put it in their own words.

And as we’re talking, I’m taking notes. My assistant’s taking notes. I’m really looking for the planning objectives. What are the important issues? What are the pain points? What is it they’re looking for that I can help them with?

The number one objective that almost everyone has is they want to make sure they have a solvent retirement plan, so they don’t have to worry about running out of money. For 99% of the people I work with, that is the number one objective.

Establishing trust and confidence

So, they just talk, and I listen, and I make notes, and then I repeat back to them. I hear you saying this is important, that’s important. The other thing’s important.

After I’ve got a good idea of what their objectives are, I also sprinkle through this conversation a couple of things. Number one is that I wear two hats. I’m a financial planner, and I’m an investment advisor. And I let them know the difference.

And I let them know we always do the financial planning first. How can I possibly know how to manage, how to invest your money if we don’t have a target and a plan?

I also try to let them know about what makes us unique. I think this is really important as you’re having this conversation with them. So, we’ve actually got a guarantee at the Hafner Financial Group. We guarantee that we will take the worry out of retirement planning, that we’re different because we will make retirement planning simple and easy to understand. I also talk about how we’re a certified financial fiduciary. Then I go into our process.

Sharing process and positioning pricing

We have a written process. We’ve got a nice diagram, and I take them through it: “We do step one, we do step two, three, four, five, six. Step five may not apply to you. It’s estate planning. And the reason is…” And I’ll generally talk to them about how much the amount that is excluded from estate taxes increased since I got started in the business. It used to be $650,000, now it’s $22 million. And then, we laugh, and we cross that out.

But I like to talk about that because when I go to pricing, we’ve got three different prices we charge for financial planning, depending on how much work we’re doing for them. So, they’ll fall into one of three categories: (1) basic retirement planning, (2) basic retirement planning plus tax planning or (3) basic plus tax plus estate planning. And we charge the most for estate planning.

So that’s where I start. I say, “We charge the most for estate planning because we’re going to spend the most time with you in estate planning. But as we talked about before, you don’t need estate planning. So, you see this dollar amount, you’re not going to pay that.”

And then, I work my way to the left. And now, we’re talking about basic plus tax planning. And if that’s where they are, it’s going to be a lower price, which they like to see!

Closing the Good Fit call

Although I don’t state it directly to the prospect, the purpose of the meeting is to schedule the next meeting. That is it. I just want to have a good conversation. I want to leave them feeling pretty comfortable and confident about working with me.

So to wrap up the call, I let them know I’m going to mail them my folder with all the information we’ve looked at and discussed, plus more information on my broker-dealer, on our clearing agent, what it means to be a certified financial fiduciary, all these different kinds of things.

And then I offer them a copy of a book that I like to give prospects. I tell them, “It’s about a couple just like you approaching retirement. And it goes through all the questions that are on your mind, the planning process, how working with a planner like me can address all these issues. And it goes through and shows you the strategy we actually use with our clients, so that you can insulate your retirement income from stock market volatility, crashes and recessions in bear markets.”

And I say, “I’ve got extra copies. I’d love to mail it out to you if you’re interested in reading it. Would you like me to send this out along with your folder?” And everyone says “Yes!”

So I have this book on hand because I’m part of C2P, Clarity to Prosperity. They’re great. The book is written by Jason Smith, the lead of C2P,and it is called The Bucket Plan Book. It is a bestseller on Amazon for personal finance. It’s a great story, about a three-hour read. And because I am a member of C2P, I buy these in bulk, like 500 at a time, and I wrote the forward to the copy that I send out. So, anyone who’s with C2P can do that.

From Good Fit call to discovery

At the end of the call, I go back and I remind them, “These are the objectives we talked about. We’re going to mail all this stuff out to you.” I let them know we’re going to mail the folder and the book, and I bring my assistant on. And she schedules a meeting about three weeks out. That follow-up meeting is always either a Zoom call or it’s going to be in-person in my office.

I always start the follow-up meeting by asking, “What questions did you have about the materials I sent out to you?” And even if they don’t have questions, I review again.

And I say, “OK, here’s our process. This is what we do. This is what you should expect. It should take five to six meetings or seven to eight meetings depending on which package you’re following.” Then I take them through the pricing again. I just say, “Is this going to fit your budget? Does this sound reasonable?” And then, if I gain agreement there, then we go into the discovery process.