Goals-Based Wealth Management: An Integrated and Practical Approach to Changing the Structure of Wealth Advisory Practices

Chapter 9Working to Understand Client Goals and Goal Allocations

It is worth thinking of a restaurant analogy here. Dishes which are served to each patron hopefully reflect all the skills of the chef and what the diner ordered. Yet, back in the kitchen, each dish is rarely prepared fully from scratch each time and for each patron that orders it. Each of the various ingredients has been prepared, whether this simply involve peeling and dicing vegetables or concocting a fancy sauce that will eventually be delicately poured into the plate and on which the various elements of the dish will be artistically placed. Chapter 8 really dealt with the process that, in our restaurant analogy, takes place in the kitchen. It is generic to the restaurant and applies to all patrons, at least to the extent that they order the same dish. Chapter 9 takes us upstream of this process in that it deals with sitting down with our diner and discussing what he or she wishes to eat. Chapter 9 must, in our own mind, come after Chapter 8, even though one could argue that client needs come first, because we must, keeping with our analogy, know what kind of restaurant and what kind of cuisine we are serving. Sushi shops rarely serve spaghetti dishes, and it is rare—although fusion cuisine is gradually making this dichotomy somewhat arbitrary—to see Chinese restaurants offer French cuisine and vice versa. In some way, we can argue that Chapter 8 dealt with capital market realities subject to client needs, ...