One powerful question to ask clients about retirement

It doesn’t matter if it’s a younger client or an older client. It doesn’t matter if the client has a lot of large assets or more modest ones. During the first meeting about retirement planning, Brent R. Kimball, ChFC, CFP, a 29-year MDRT member from Pembroke, New Hampshire, asks each client one crucial question: When we look back five years from now at what we’ve done together, what would you have wanted to accomplish in that period?

Kimball picked up the question at a past MDRT Annual Meeting and recognizes that it can be a difficult question for clients to answer. But he’s sure to explain that he isn’t looking for numbers regarding what they have or information about what they’ve purchased. Rather, he has seen a lot of success establishing a productive relationship through follow-up questions about how the clients envision their lives:

• Will you be volunteering?
• Will you be consulting?
• Will you be performing a second job?
• Will you be gifting to grandchildren?

Hear more in the September episode of the MDRT Podcast:

[soundcloud id=’340452322′ height=’false’]

Written by Matt Pais, MDRT Content Specialist