Why it’s beneficial when clients ask questions

It may seem like a good thing when a meeting goes great and a client asks no questions. William Marvin Richardson III, CLU, CFP, a nine-year MDRT member from San Francisco, California, says that questions are an essential part of the process of helping clients know what’s best for them.

“There was a time where I would just say, ‘Well, that was a good meeting.’ And then, in some cases, I would never talk to that person again because they were in the world of, ‘I’m going to think about it,’ and they’re probably still right now thinking about it,” he said.

“The challenge was I didn’t know what I needed to address because they didn’t ask any questions. So the really simple question that I ask today is, ‘What kinds of thoughts occur to you about that?’ And whatever that is, that’s a great question because then they’re going to start to reveal things. So you just ask questions that are soft and allow them to expand on whatever it is, and then eventually they’ll tell you whatever that one thing that you needed to know is. That makes all the difference in figuring out what we need to do to put the client in the position to make a well-informed decision.”

Hear more insights about communicating with clients and handling objections in the August episode of the MDRT podcast.