Factfinding is what an advisor does TO someone. Collaborative Discovery is what an advisor does WITH someone. Equipping financial professionals with The Art of Questioning gives them the confidence to facilitate a conversation with a potential client to identify where their actions, what they’re currently doing in various planning areas, are misaligned with their intentions, where they would like to be in the future from a financial standpoint. 

The RPM Questioning Model™ is a framework for success that organizes an advisor’s approach to the discovery process. It categorizes questions by the impact they ultimately have so advisors can ask the right questions, in the right sequence to maximize the value of the collaborative discovery process for both themselves and the potential client. RPM stands for Reality, Pain-Gain, and Magnification questions which represent the three categories of questions necessary to move a prospect through the entire Collaborative Discovery Process.

Let’s take a look at each of these in more detail:

Reality Questions – Reality questions uncover the facts about the prospect’s existing situation. This can be data, facts, and figures. It can also be their beliefs, perceptions, values, and history. Reality questions are generally used at the beginning of the discovery process to gain background information and factual data. They help to identify relevant information about the prospect’s current reality, such as the planning they’ve already done in the areas of insurance, retirement, etc.

Pain / Gain Questions – Pain-Gain questions expose the prospect’s problems, difficulties, and dissatisfactions with their current situation. They also help to uncover the prospect’s goals, desires, wants, and/or unmet needs that represent potential gaps. Pain-gain questions explore areas the prospect may want to improve. This is the heart of the diagnosis during collaborative discovery. These questions are more powerful than reality questions and serve to lay a foundation for advancement. They help to clarify where a prospect’s actions are misaligned with their intentions.

Magnification Questions – With experience, average financial professionals eventually become very proficient at asking safe reality questions and a bit more confident in asking pain-gain questions. Quite often, an advisor is able to help prospects identify gaps in their current planning. However, the prospect still is not motivated to move forward because there is no sense of urgency. This is one of the single biggest frustrations for a financial professional. The key is learning how to use magnification questions to highlight the potential implications of the problem and create a sense of urgency within the prospect.

Magnification questions help to identify the consequences, effects, or implications of a prospect’s current financial situation. These questions help the financial professional develop clarity and strength of a potential client’s financial problems and the chain of ramifications that can result from those problems. Magnification questions also help to expand the prospect or client’s perception of value in solving the problem.