Lesson 12 | Goal Detail Process (3:37 minutes)
Goal Detail Process
You're having a great conversation about prioritizing the client's goal. Now we're going to take it and pressure test each of those priorities to make sure we're truly finding the motivators, so we're only acting on what they want. We use a tool called the Goal Detail Worksheet. Really, behind it all is a simple acronym called GISOR. Now, we've talked about G as in GISOR as in goals, but now we have four parts of this acronym that are really important to pressure test in the goals.
Spelling out GISOR, the second letter is I. It's about importance. Why is that goal important to them? That above the horizon discussion around vision, values, and goals, what's driving it?
The S is supporting resources. Now, we're not trying to get a list of every single one of their accounts and everything. We want to try to find out, at a cognitive level, what are the resources they think they have that are going to help accomplish that?
Then, going to O, obstacles. What's going to prevent it? Is it going to be their time? Is it going to be their energy? Is it determining the cost of what it entails? What are those true obstacles that are going to prevent them from accomplishing it?
Then R is readiness. We use a simple scale from one to five, one being ready, and five not being ready.
So, this acronym is something that you should be able to carry with you every day, that if you don't have the detail worksheet, you can remember the acronym, and write it down on a yellow pad, or just off the top of your head.
So, walking through this process of using that Goal Detail Worksheet the first step is to affirm the goal. We talked about prioritizing them, but we want the client to hear it from us. If the client wants to retire at 62, we're going to be very precise and affirm that goal back to them and write it down. We want them to hear us say it, so that if they alter it to say, "Well, 62 to 65," that can be a big difference. "I want to sell my business in a year or three years." We want to have that precision, or the range of it, so we document that.
Then now we pressure test it. Sometimes we can call it interrogation, but we really want to drive deep. We don't want to gloss over any of this. We're going to ask him why it's important. "Why do you want to get out of that business at a certain period of time?" We don't want to say it's ... We don't want to hear "Very important." They may share that. We want to be assertive, drive deep, and really find that motivating driver behind them.
Then we're going to talk about supporting resources, and when we talk about supporting resources, we really want to talk about their time, their wealth, their energy, what can they put towards it, that if they know specific resources, we want to write that down so then when we do an assessment, and do an illustration, we can connect to it and see, "Hey, their thoughts on this goal is much different," or dead on from what we've received from doing a financial plan, or an illustration, or looking at legal documents.
Then getting into obstacles, we really want to find what's going to prevent this. What obstacle do we need to get over? It could be their time, it could be anything, but we want to document it and hear it so that we are prepared for it.
Then getting back to that readiness factor, the one and the five. You might look at it, and say, "What does this all mean?" We want to get everything to a one, that they're ready to take action.
As you do this process, don't be surprised if a client says, "Four or a five." That means that hey, we've done a process. We've prioritized it. We've pressure tested it, and they're saying, "Maybe we need to do this education trust, because our kids are young, next year." So, the process of turning something into not being ready is a great success that we're not wasting time, their time or our time, on certain goals that they're not ready to take action.
Anywhere they're in between -- two, three, and four -- it gives us one more opportunity to ask the questions, "What do we need to do on your behalf to get you ready to accomplish this goal?"
