These 5 Questions Make Client Review Meetings Fun Again: Meghaan Lurtz

Once a financial plan has been created, delivered and implemented by an advisor, the most pressing issues clients face have usually been “fixed,” leading the advisor and client to enter the monitoring phase, where they routinely return to the plan and make any needed adjustments during recurring review meetings, according to Meghaan Lurtz, senior research associate at Kitces.com.

Over time, those meetings can become boring, Lurtz said Feb. 7, during the Kitces.com webinar “Making Client (Review) Meetings Fun Again: Questions to Ask to Move From Fine to Flourish.”

After all, advisors and clients aren’t typically thrilled to meet repeatedly when there is nothing new or exciting to report, said Lurtz, who is also the founding strategic advisor at the fintech firm Couplr, a professor at Kansas State University and lecturer at Columbia University.

However, when clients hit the phase of the client-advisor relationship when everything is “fine” with the client, it presents the perfect opportunity to start conversations about how clients can move beyond being fine and “flourish,” while bringing some fun back to the client-advisor relationship, and even transforming those once-boring monitoring meetings into something inspiring, she explained.

Hearing that things are just “fine” is “not always the best thing we want to hear,” she told viewers.

The good news is that clients actually want more connection with their advisors, she said, noting people change but are often bad at talking about it. Advisors and clients also like chasing new goals, she said.

Review meetings don’t necessarily have to be about “fixing” something that is wrong, she noted. Advisors can instead work with clients on growth and meaning during transitions in the clients’ lives.

Questions to Ask

Advisors can keep in mind that there are five components of helping their clients to flourish that she collectively referred to as “PERMA” (Positive emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, Accomplishment).

There are several questions advisors can ask, she said:

1. What’s possible now?

This question helps clients discover their purpose and achieve autonomy, self-determination and optimism, she says.

2. If money was of no concern, much like right now, how would you raise your overall level of satisfaction with life?

This is the key question to ask to help clients achieve personal growth and engagement and find meaning, she said. To follow up, she suggests asking the client “how [they] might enhance or improve on the idea of stewardship over [their] finances and financial life.”

3. How could your finances be used to improve your physical and mental health?

4. What aspects of your character do you see represented in your finances?

These questions help clients achieve vitality, resilience and self-acceptance, Lurtz said.

5. How might you use your finances to improve or strengthen your personal relationships that you are most or least satisfied with?

Ask clients to identify a relationship (personal, charitable or professional) that they had thought about cultivating in a more meaningful way, she added.

Set an Agenda and Stick to It

For the meetings designed to help clients flourish, she suggested that advisors stick to this process: Set out the agenda in an email to clients, telling them what you intend to ask or tell them, and stick to that agenda.

If the client does not like the agenda, he or she won’t read it anyway, but for those who do like the agenda, this is a helpful step, she noted.

She suggested advisors avoid small talk and jump right into the discussed agenda.

After the meetings, she said, advisors should restate the agenda with context, remind clients what was discussed, ask whether the client felt he or she accomplished the agenda, and get feedback on whether they believe that you discussed those things.

The “last step is most crucial” because it “solidifies” what happened during the meeting and ensures everybody is on the same page, according to Lurtz.

She suggested that advisors encourage clients to talk about what they took away from the meeting and to share their excitement about the next steps they need to take.

(Pictured: Meghaan Lurtz)