The power of holistic advising: Stronger client relationships, greater success

As we all do, your clients experience the joys and challenges of life’s many different stages. This may include buying homes, having children, getting married, expanding their business and retiring. Because I practice holistic financial planning, I help clients navigate through all of this.

Creating wisdom teams

To fully serve my clients in this capacity, I encourage my clients to have a wisdom team. On this team — besides me as their financial advisor — there’s an attorney, an accountant, a doctor and a banker.

Guiding clients

While your client works with all these other professionals, at the end of the day, you are the one alongside them to make sure they get the best service possible from all these other professionals.

Educating clients

We want to look out for all of our clients’ best interests and educate them. Educators tell clients all the benefits of certain choices, which allows them to make informed decisions. I call that empowering clients to be all that they need to be. We’re never selling them, saying, “Oh, you need this, or you need that.” I call that product pushing, and that’s not necessarily caring about the client. That’s not who I am.

I educate clients to make informed decisions. The internet is a powerful tool, but the information available must be interpreted. It’s also our job to ask questions that make our clients pause and think. This is what holistic planning is about.

Listening to clients

If we ask questions to make clients think and we listen to their answers, we can help them. I was told a long time ago that the answer is in the question. So, as educators versus sellers, listeners versus talkers, it is our job to assist our clients in making informed decisions. You must decide for yourself which one you want to be.

Walking through life with clients

Our job is to be strong and to be there for our clients, to be that wisdom team member, to help them out. When it’s time to call that attorney, we call the attorney in and work with the attorney to achieve that estate plan. When it’s tax time, we get together with the accountant and get everything needed to make sure the taxes are filed on time and properly. We make sure that clients are going to the doctor. In other words, sometimes you have to ask, especially men, “When was the last time you had your heart checked? When was the last time you had this checked and that checked?”

We are going through life together. Our job as holistic financial advisors is to make our clients the biggest winners.

Ellis Liddell is a 10-year MDRT member, and he is also a Top of the Table member. You can read more from Liddell in his 2020 Top of the Table Annual Meeting presentation, “Holistic planning and navigating your clients through life’s challenges.” You also can watch the video. (MDRT member-exclusive content)

For more about holistic, or multiline, financial planning, read

• “Making the jump to holistic wealth management” (MDRT member-exclusive content)
• “Providing holistic family planning for clients in their 30s and 40s”