Psychology of Financial Planning

CHAPTER 15Client‐Preferred Learning Styles: Getting and Keeping Your Client's Attention

Have you ever been in a doctor's office when the doctor began discussing the diagnosis of a new disease? There are a great number of details that can be difficult to grasp. It can seem as if the physician is throwing all kinds of information at you all at once, while you're still trying to make sense of the illness itself. You have so many questions, and the doctor may or may not be answering them. Did they just say what I think they said? What is the nature of the malady? What is the treatment? What do I have to do during the treatment? What is the prognosis? Your physician is probably sharing many of these details with you in that moment, but you are missing them due to stress and/or just plain information overload. Similarly, you may have parents or grandparents who depart from the doctor's office and cannot remember key points related to their care. You find yourself repeating the same question: “What did the doctor say?” The experience of information overload is so common that researchers found that only 14% of medical information was remembered by patients when it was shared only verbally.

The same holds true when it comes to financial planning. Like medicine, our profession is full of complicated jargon and data that can be overwhelming to our clients, particularly while they may be feeling financial stress. We can find ourselves talking too slowly with some clients and talking too ...