Lesson 2 | Phase 1: Discovery (9:23 minutes)
Phase 1: Discovery
In this segment, I want to talk with you about The Discovery Phase of the shared process, and this is really the first and the foundational phase. And before we get into the six components that actually make up this discovery phase, I want to talk with you a little bit about where this happens and kind of the power of this, because as we said early on, you really want to operate in the collaboration from a place of strength, from a point of strength, and so you want to be engaged by this client. If you are the one that is bringing this to prospective client or going back to one of your existing clients, and you're the advisor that's bringing the whole notion of collaboration and the benefits to this client, and they want to engage you to go through that process, to begin it, discovery is something that you want to do before you invite the other collaborators into the mix.
Now discovery is absolutely something that we're going to share with all the other advisors because it's critical, but that knowledge and that information that we gain in discovery is really the driving, overarching perspective of the resources we have and the things that are most important on behalf of this client to help them achieve the things they want to achieve and accomplish the goals and dreams and things of that nature that they want to achieve through this process. So, this is something that is really done as a starting point in the shared process.
So as I said, there's six areas or components that comprise the discovery phase. The first one, and we'll talk about each of these a little bit, the first one is what we call the vision, values, and goals. As we've talked about throughout the segments in this course, what we're talking about here is really clearly defining what matters most to this client and why, right? What are the driving motivators behind them that we're really trying to bring out and address here? So, we want to have a conversation about their vision and how do they want to see things play out in the future? What does that look like for them and how do they kind of see that ideal future state playing out and the thing that they're trying to achieve for themselves, for their family, for their business? We want to talk about the things that they value, right? Because these are things we want to honor and respect along the way.
And then finally we want to talk about the goals. And again, from our perspective at Legacy, the goals are really what are moving a client closer and closer to their vision, right? So, the goals that we're accomplishing are moving us closer and closer to the vision that that client has stated and we've really helped them get their arms wrapped around. So that's kind of the first phase. But this is really, really important. It's about taking the time, before we jump into getting into any solutions, to really discover what really matters most to them and why.
The second area of the shared process, The Discovery Phase, is called Goal Clarity. And this is a step I'm going to share with you that we haven't talked about much in the other sessions, but we find this to be an unbelievable best practice here at Legacy. And around goal clarity, when you have a conversation with them about their goals, their objectives, their vision, their values, what really matters to them, goal clarity is a step where we come back and we actually affirm back with the client that we actually heard them correctly, because a lot of times I think the conversation around goals from our perspective, it gets very convoluted, you've talked about a number of other things through this meeting and through this process where they might have lost connection to the things that they shared that were really, maybe discussed early on in the meeting, and really critical and important to them.
So going back after this meeting, we like to say with inside of a week, following this meeting, to go back with a detailed report of their goals. Here's what you said and here's why you said that was really important to you. And just simply asking them to sign off and let you know that they agree. Or, if they disagree and want to add additional comments, that's fantastic. But this is a step in our process that we call Goal Clarity. It's simply about clarifying the goal, the priorities, that they said were most important to them to accomplishing.The third area of this phase, The Discovery Phase, is what we call the Team Profile and we talked about this at length earlier in prior sessions, but the Team Profile is about assessing who's sitting at their table today, right? Remember the planning table discussion? We want to go back and revisit that as a part of this phase in the discovery phase and confirm that we really understand who's sitting at their table and what seats are these people sitting in today? We also want to go on the backside of this tool where we're talking about, again, what's the value that these advisors are bringing to the table, right? We talked about the measurements around the value. Is it relationship driven? Is it solutions driven? Is it discovery driven? Or are they bringing some level of management?
And then below that, we're talking about the trust formula. We want to know how trusted are these advisors to this client, right? How do they think about them on a trust scale and a trust level? So that's what we're doing in the Team Profiling phase, we're going back and making sure we have all that documented and captured because that's going to be critical as we move on to the advisor to advisor, face to face meetings. You want to really have that knowledge.
The financial assessments are really key and critical component of the discovery phase because we need to assess their financial situation, right? Everything that's going on in their life, their legal structures, their tax structures, their financial situation, because obviously these are the resources that we have to work with to be able to help them actually accomplish the things that they want to accomplish and achieve those things that they want to achieve.
The fifth area is what we call the Document Inventory and the Document Inventory is simply reviewing all of their documents and capturing all of their key and important documents. This might be wills or trusts or tax returns. It might be investment financial statements, it might be insurance policies and things of that nature. This would be making sure that we have all the documentation around all the key structures and products and services and strategies that they have in place because this is going to be instrumental to have that inventory as you move forward into the collaboration to be able to share that with all the other advisors to be able to really review the strengths and the weaknesses of what they have today.
And then the final component, the sixth component of this, is what we call the Goal Achievement and Goal Achievement is really a foundational piece where you're going to come back and you're going to, based upon everything that you've learned and understood and assessed as a part of this phase, you're going to begin to start to talk about what's possible as you enter this next phase and bringing this collaboration together. So what's possible in achieving these goals, based upon what you've assess in this process with their team around the goals that are important to them, around the assessment of their financials, a snapshot of their documents and their inventory and all of the things that they have today and the structures that they have in place, the Goal Achievement talks about how we're successfully going to be able to move them forward and achieve the things that they want to achieve through this collaborative process.
So this is The Discovery Phase and as you can see on the tool that we've provided you for The Discovery Phase, it breaks down what happens in each and every one of these steps and what are the outcomes that you're trying to achieve.
