When we think about the interactions and the engagements we want to have face-to-face or virtually, we think about it the same way. I’ve had conversations the last couple of days just saying, “It’s not the same.” And it’s not the same. We are never going to be able to replace that face-to-face interaction when we can’t have it. And some of us, depending on where we live, are getting in situations where we can again get out and meet. But even when we get to a point in time, on the other side of this, where we can get out and meet everybody, there is still going to be a certain population of our clients who are going to want to continue to meet virtually. So, we have to be able to prepare to create experiences, whether we are live, virtual or over the phone.

I love this quote from Carl Buehner. I use it all the time in everything I do: “They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel.” It’s so critical in everything that you do, everything that we do, especially in these virtual interactions.

The brain has two primary focal points that it’s after. One is the connection. It is always looking to connect, right? So, when you think about the virtual world, the connections and how we make people feel are absolutely critical. Your brain wants to make sure that that connection is still there, even though we can’t be in the room. The second thing is that it wants to feel safe. The protection piece. What does that mean? If I’m an advisor meeting with a client or a prospective client and I’m worried about how my setup is or what’s in the background or how I look or how my hair is, then that protection piece, that safety piece, is going to be down for me. Which is going to say that my resilience, my state of mind, all those things are going to be down. I’m not going to be as good as I can be. But if I can take all of those restrictions, if I can take everything out of the background and I can focus just on my connection, that is the way that I am going to win.

So, the important thing to remember here is that as you are preparing for a meeting, as you are helping people prepare for these virtual interactions, focus on how you are going to serve that person or that group of people as opposed to how things are going to look in the background. And that will get your brain and their brain into the right frame of mind.

When we think about prospects, here’s one of the things I think is overlooked a lot of times. There are three different types of processing styles. You’ve probably heard people talk about this at some point in your career. And if you didn’t, I’m going to give you a 30,000-foot perspective on it. You’ve got visual processors; these are people who envision and make decisions and picture things with their eyes. If you can’t create a picture or if I can’t create a picture with your words, for what you’re saying, you’re never fully going to get me.

The next group, about 30 percent, are auditory processors, the words. And the last 5 percent are represented by kinesthetic processors. I work with a lot of advisors who work with farmers, ranchers, and those types tend to be a lot of kinesthetics, looking down and away, very slow talkers, very methodical.

So, it’s really important when you are thinking about these virtual engagements to think about how we are engaging. What I like to look at is the 95 percent. I feel like if I’m helping you connect with 95 percent, we are hitting a huge audience, which is the visual and the auditory processors, so I want to make sure that the pictures are there, and the words are there to support those pictures.

With prospective clients, one of the things that I’ve heard a ton over the last couple years is that I can’t get them to jump onto a virtual meeting. I don’t believe that always to be the case; I think you can. I think that’s becoming more and more acceptable, but I get it. Sometimes it just doesn’t work. I hear other times that people don’t have technology and all of these things, so getting on a virtual meeting is kind of impossible for them. So, we are stuck to the phone in some instances. What I want to tell you is, and I’ve had a lot of people just say, “I’m not really good on the phone because I’m such a relationship person. When I get in the room, when I get to interact with these people, I’m so much better.” Of course, you can see their body language, right? You can read their body language, you can feed off of their body language and everything that they are doing, but you can still do that in these virtual environments.

Over the phone, it becomes very, very difficult. So, what I want to suggest that you think about doing is creating the visual presence. The planning horizon is the most powerful sales tool that we’ve developed in our organization over 30 years. Why is it so powerful? Because over the phone, I can get prospective clients on the other end of that phone line actually drawing out what it is that actually makes me different and how it is I want to actually engage in conversation with them. And what I will tell you is more powerful than me — either being on a virtual meeting or live in the room with them, drawing it out. It’s more powerful if I can actually get them drawing it out for me as I talk them through it. So, my talking them through it is my auditory words; the picture that they are drawing with my words is their visual connection. I’m connecting with a ton of people.

The concept here in this planning horizon is hitting a premise that I believe most of the people you get referred or introduced to don’t really want to meet with you if they can avoid it. And in most cases, they want to avoid it however they can. They want the call to go short; they want to figure out how to get off the call as quickly as they possibly can because they think we are calling to sell them something. So, we need to overcome the fact that we are not here to sell them something. We are here to have a different type of conversation than they’ve ever had with anybody else. “Can I take five minutes to share with you how I want to talk with you today? What I want to talk with you about here today?” “Sure.” And that’s when we introduce the planning horizon. All we need to do is get them to get a small piece of paper and a pen, crayon, magic marker — I don’t care what the utensil is, as long as they have something.

I want them to draw that line, the planning horizon, across the center of the page, and it divides two realms: what’s above and what’s below. The areas below are all the strategies, tactics and tools. This is why they don’t want to talk with you because they’ve already got people. They’ve done things, they probably feel OK, but this is what they think you are calling to talk to them about: a thing, a tool, a strategy, a product, something that they haven’t thought about. And that’s what they think. We’ve got to shift the thinking. We’ve got to shift the conversation. And we do that by saying, “Listen, we understand that most of the people whom we meet with in a first interaction like this, when we get introduced, are thinking that we are calling to talk about a different product or strategy or maybe something you haven’t considered before from your other advisors. We are calling to have quite a different conversation.” Our conversation starts up here above this horizon, and I want them to write down values, vision and goals. I would tell this prospect, “See we have a tremendous amount of competency and knowledge at our firm and on our team, and I do myself. But the reality is, for me to begin to talk about what you ought to do, or maybe what you ought to change, and the things you’re doing today already, before I understand what’s important to you, and why that matters and where you’ve been and where it is you want to go, it’s like putting the cart before the horse, isn’t it?” And they are going to acknowledge back, “Yeah, it is.” See, that’s what’s crazy. For some reason, everyone in our business, that’s where they start, but we start at a different place, so that’s the conversation I want to have with you today.

I will tell you, because I’ve been doing this a long, long time, that you are going to begin to start to have a very different conversation. And if you stay on course, for getting clear on what it is they value, the vision they actually have for the future, big or small at this point does not matter, and the goals that you can pursue together to actually help them achieve that, you are going to be not only in a different type of conversation but a different type of relationship.

Todd Fithian is the Managing Partner of Legacy, an industry leading training and coaching organization focused on advisor growth. Todd provides the vision and leadership for his team at Legacy, which has revolutionized how advisors engage and serve client relationships using Legacy’s trademarked approach that allows advisors to discover WHAT matters most to clients and WHY it’s important, before jumping into HOW to solve it. Fithian has trained and coached thousands of financial advisors across the United States and Canada, deploying approaches to drive measurable growth.