Ep 483: Closing (More Affluent) Clients in The First Meeting with an "Approach Talk" Method to Create Urgency with Erin Botsford
Financial Advisor Success
Michael Kitces
4.7 • 719 Ratings
🗓️ 31 March 2026
⏱️ 90 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What does it take to close a high-net-worth client in the very first meeting? For Erin Botsford, the answer is for an advisor to position themselves as a risk expert and to create a sense of urgency to act in the prospects' minds.
Erin is the founder of The Advisor Authority, and has developed a step-by-step formula for advisors to close more upmarket clients faster. She joins the show today to share how advisors can create positive first impressions by creating a "founders video", help prospects recognize their potential risk exposures in estate planning and insurance, and create urgency naturally. Listen in to also hear Erin's insights on setting effective fee structures as well as how founders can strategically extract themselves from every client case and ultimately scale their firms more effectively.
For show notes and more visit: https://www.kitces.com/483
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Financial Advisor Success Podcast, where you go behind the scenes with |
| 0:07.1 | financial planner, speaker, and consultant Michael Kitsis to hear stories of how leading |
| 0:12.4 | financial advisors navigated the inevitable challenges that arise on the path to success |
| 0:17.4 | and get insight from leading industry consultants about how to break through to the next |
| 0:22.2 | level in your advisory business. And now here's your host, Michael Kitsis. Welcome, everyone. |
| 0:29.0 | Welcome to the 483rd episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast. My guest on today's |
| 0:34.2 | podcast is Aaron Botsford. Aaron is the founder of the Advisor Authority, a coaching platform that trains advisors on attracting more and wealthier clients while also scaling their businesses by building a successful team around them. |
| 0:45.6 | What's unique about Aaron, though, is how over the course of her career as an advisory firm owner herself, she developed what she calls the approach talk method to closing affluent clients in the |
| 0:54.8 | first meeting by focusing on risk management exposures that create urgency to act. In this episode, |
| 1:00.7 | we talk in depth about how Aaron's approach talk method centers largely on making prospects aware of |
| 1:05.7 | up to 26 risk management exposures, including potential estate planning and insurance items. |
| 1:10.7 | They face that can create a strong incentive to act, though it often only takes review risk management exposures, including potential estate planning and insurance items, they face |
| 1:11.2 | that can create a strong incentive to act, though it often only takes reviewing two or three of them |
| 1:15.9 | to get prospects to want to become clients, why Aaron thinks it's important to meet with both |
| 1:20.2 | members of a prospect couple and to recognize that different factors that might spur each of them |
| 1:25.5 | to want to take action. And how Aaron, before entering the room for a prospect meeting, showed them a founder's video |
| 1:31.7 | that introduced her and her story to the prospects efficiently, removing the temptation for her to |
| 1:36.5 | talk extensively about herself during the meeting itself. |
| 1:39.1 | We also talk about how Aaron used a fee structure that includes both a flat planning fee |
| 1:43.9 | to orchestrate implementation |
| 1:45.5 | of the risk management plan and an AUM fee on the client's assets to compensate for the |
| 1:50.8 | advisor's work managing their portfolio and the risk exposures they take in doing so. |
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