My last post here ended with an assignment: write down the ten questions clients actually asked you last quarter, pick one, and answer it in plain language before the month is out.
A few advisors will have read that and pictured a brainstorming session.
Here’s the thing: there is no session. The list already exists. It’s sitting in your sent folder, your meeting notes, or the voicemail you returned from a parking lot last Tuesday.
You already answer these questions all day. The problem is that you answer them one person at a time. While that’s generous, it’s also the least efficient distribution model ever devised. A question answered verbally during a client review helps one client (or one household). The same insight as a blog post keeps working nights and weekends for every client and prospect who wonders the same thing.
Start keeping the list this week. After each call or meeting, write the question down in the client’s own words, before your professional vocabulary gets to it.
Most client aren’t asking about “sustainable withdrawal rates.”
Their question is simpler: will they have enough money to last through retirement?
Nobody has ever asked an advisor about sequence of returns risk. But plenty have asked what happens if the market crashes a month before they retire.
The verbatim wording matters. It’s what people type into a search bar at 11 p.m., which makes it your headline. It also provides evidence to the reader that a real human wrote the post.
Patterns will start to show up after a quarter. If three different clients asked some version of the same question between April and June, that question goes to the top of your list; repetition is your audience raising its hand.
One question becomes one post. My father passed away and I inherited his IRA; now what? That sentence is already a finished blog post title, and the advisor who answers it plainly becomes findable by every adult child in that situation within twenty miles.
Ten questions at one post a month is coverage into next summer, with two spares for the weeks when the market does something clients notice. Nobody needs a strategy document for this; keep a running note on your phone and set aside a standing hour each month, and that does it.
One objection comes up every time: my answer depends on the client. That’s true, and it’s also instructive. Write the post about the considerations and two or three factors that move the answer. Then, stop exactly where it starts to depend on the reader’s situation.
That’s an honest stopping point (a blog post shouldn’t pretend to be advice).
It also tends to be the moment the reader reaches for the phone or sends an email. That’s because you’ve shown them the shape of the problem and made it clear that the last step is a conversation with you.
If the list exists, but the hour never does
Some advisors will keep the list faithfully and never find the time to write the blog post.
That’s why I’m here.
Send me an email with your ten questions here, tell me which one clients asked most often, and the first post can be on your site before the list goes cold.
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