Financial professionals recognize that many of their clients have needs, challenges, and questions that could be resolved if they had a fresh opportunity to talk openly about them. Sometimes all it takes is to look at these situations in a different light.

That’s why the Alliance for Lifetime Income has created the New Client Conversation Profiles (PDF), designed to help you have better discussions with your clients and prospects. You are likely to recognize these people. The five fictional profiles are based on real-life cases and represent the most common opportunities for protected income strategies.

These profiles present a new way of looking at client segments: they focus on the individual life situation, rather than solely assets. “There are numerous components for client segmentation, only one of which is assets,” says Michael Harris, Senior Education Advisor for the Alliance for Lifetime Income.

“We need to consider age, risk tolerance, psychological profile, recent life events and then sort them by their commonalities. That’s what we did with these personas to show a better understanding of the people that fall into each broad group. Their stories include client financials but are not based solely on assets.”