It’s time to get ready for a strategy session! Shortly after the client has signed up and paid their retainer, the client will book a strategy session with their strategist. In this module, you’ll gain an understanding of the importance of preparing for a Strategy Session and how to set yourself up for success in the call. This will involve using the tools mentioned in Module 3 and ensuring that information is captured and presented in a way that enables you to have an interesting and enjoyable session with the client.
Table of Contents
The client has signed up with InvestorKit! Now what happens?
After choosing us as their portfolio partner, clients receive an email containing a welcome video from Arjun and a Calendly link to book their strategy session with their strategist. These bookings automatically sync to the strategist's Google calendar.
Once a client books their session, they receive setup instructions for their Gameplans account and access to our Portfolio Strategy video.
Example template the client receives (automatically sent from your email address)
How do we build portfolios? The Portfolio Scaling Framework!
Our portfolio scaling framework has proven transformative. Over the past five years, we've helped clients build strong portfolios that generate their desired passive income. The key to this success lies in creating a solid strategy and following a proven formula. Let's explore the essential elements of our portfolio scaling framework.
The importance of condensing the acquisition phase
- Achieving higher growth early in your journey significantly accelerates your progress
- This early momentum compounds over time, leading to much stronger overall portfolio results
The acquisition formula
Foundation Assets
These are larger assets in major markets, capital cities, or satellite cities. They build confidence and resilience for new investors by providing peace of mind through established market stability.
Momentum Assets
These are properties in smaller, more affordable cities that offer better yields. By following reliable market data, investors can diversify across different locations and economies while building deposits more quickly. While many start with foundation assets before momentum assets, this order isn't mandatory—we view it as a flexible progression rather than a rigid sequence.
Passive Assets
Once you've built a diverse portfolio across major and smaller markets, we consider passive assets like commercial properties and unit blocks. We recommend establishing a solid residential portfolio first, as these assets carry higher vacancy rates and risks. However, passive assets are crucial for supercharging your journey toward strong, sustainable passive income.
The investing life stages
We have three main investing life stages that we typically see investors go through:
- Acquisition - Building the portfolio asset base
- Optimise - Refining finances, making strategic adjustments, and allowing market growth to work
- Consolidate - Reducing debt and streamlining assets through passive means (savings and income growth) or active steps (downsizing, selling investments)
- Wave two - An optional second round of acquisition that some investors pursue based on their life stage. E.g incomes progress in later life, or investments pause to purchase a family home before resetting and investing again.
Must Watch: Check out this detailed video below in which Arjun breaks down why strategy is so important to our clients. This video explains our methodology for starting and scaling portfolios, showing how we structure investments through different life stages to help clients achieve their passive income goals. You’ll notice the number of views, and no, that’s not the size of our company (yet!), it’s because all of our customers are sent this video when they sign up.
InvestorKit Portfolio Strategy Video - How we scale portfolios!
The Importance of Preparation
Preparation is a cornerstone of success in any role, but particularly in one where trust and expertise are the foundation of client relationships. If our clients don’t trust us, everything falls apart. As an advisor, preparation isn't just a task — it's a mindset. The more prepared we are, the more effectively we can deliver exceptional value to our clients and build long-lasting partnerships.
The Benefits of Being Thoroughly Prepared
- Making clients feel valued and more than just a number
Clients come to us for personalised, thoughtful advice. When we take the time to gather all relevant information about their situation by reviewing every detail that we can, we demonstrate that they are more than just a number to us. This personalised approach builds trust, shows professionalism, and reinforces that we genuinely care about their goals. It’s not just about delivering recommendations but showing the client that we’ve listened, understood, and are tailoring our guidance to their unique circumstances.
- Conducting productive and goal-oriented strategy calls
Walking into a strategy call fully understanding the client’s situation transforms the dynamic of the conversation. Instead of wasting time gathering basic details or reacting to questions on the spot, you can focus on what truly matters, learning more about their aspirations, uncovering any hidden challenges, and collaboratively problem-solving. Preparation ensures you’re equipped to provide clear, logical answers backed by solid data and research, building the client’s confidence in our recommendations and ability to help them achieve their goals.
The Risk of Under-Preparation
On the flip side, a lack of preparation can be a major obstacle to success. If a client senses that you’re underprepared, struggling to answer their questions, missing key details about their circumstances, or appearing reactive rather than proactive, they may begin to doubt your ability to guide them. This doubt can undermine their confidence in our services, making it harder to build trust and move forward effectively.
How can I be proactive in preparation?
- Understand the client’s context
Review all information provided by the consulting team and ensure you have a thorough understanding of the client’s background, objectives, and challenges. Seek clarification with the property consultants if anything is unclear.
- Anticipate questions and concerns
Put yourself in the client’s shoes: what might they question, doubt, or want to explore further? Prepare robust, logical answers supported by data, examples, or case studies.
- Practice strategic thinking and visualisation
Think ahead about how to guide the conversation to maximise value for the client. Identify areas where you can provide insights, educate them, or address potential barriers to their goals prior to the session
- Leverage resources and tools
Use the resources at your disposal, research documents, blogs, whitepapers, team expertise, to back up your recommendations with credible, actionable data.
By prioritising preparation, we ensure that every interaction with a client is intentional, impactful, and aligned with their goals. It’s not just about meeting expectations (like many of our competitors), it’s about exceeding them!
What do I need to do prior to the session?
Pre-session activities
Before the strategy session begins, complete these essential tasks to ensure everything runs smoothly:
- Ensure the client has completed their Gameplans fact find
- Grant full access on Gameplans and assign yourself as the client's strategist
- Review and summarise the consultants' notes into the relevant 'Context' or 'Brief' Attio fields
- Update the client's status to 'Active Client' (Now automated)
- Tick off the ‘Strategist: Prepare for Portfolio Strategy Session’ task in the client workspace
Gameplans completion
Follow the process flow below to verify that the client has provided all necessary information in Gameplans before their session.
Must watch! The Loom video below will show you how to verify if the client has completed their fact-find on Gameplans
On the client overview page in Gameplans, the client should have a score of 300. A lower score indicates they haven't completed the full fact find.
You can deem what score is acceptable before giving full access. Generally, the minimum that they need to fill out is the money management section and the portfolio section.
If their account isn't visible in the client list, verify their signup email address and partner code. They should have entered the 'investorkit' code under Character Details > Additional Partners, which can be located on the bottom left.
Following up on clients who haven't completed their Gameplans fact-find
Check your upcoming sessions three days in advance to verify if clients have completed their details. Once they have booked in, you can send a scheduled message to follow up and ensure they complete it with enough time for your preparation.
If a client can't complete their details in time for you to prepare adequately, call the client to let them know they will need to use the reschedule link in their original Calendly booking email.
Template message to send to clients
Hi <Client Name>, this is <Strategist Name> here, your Portfolio Strategist at InvestorKit.
If you haven’t already, please make sure you complete the “Login & Complete Your Gameplans Profile” task. This task contains the instructions to create your Gameplans account so we can make the most of our time together.
I will need this completed at least 48 hours prior to our session.
Please fill it out to the best of your ability. If you’re unsure about a question, just pop in your best guess and we’ll clarify together during the session.
If you don’t think you’ll be able to complete it in time, there’s a reschedule link in the event description or in the initial Calendly email you were sent, feel free to use that to find a better time.
Thank you, and I look forward to going through your strategy with you soon.
The client has completed their fact-find! What do I do now?
Once the client has provided sufficient details, you can proceed with their account setup. Purchase full access for their account and assign yourself as the 'Allocated Strategist.'
On the clients GP account, go to the ‘Detail’ page, select the ‘Orders’ tab, click ‘New order’ and then ‘1-Click Payment’.
For additional preparation guidance, refer to the portfolio planning template script in Module 14. Resources.
Attio preparation
Must watch! The below video will show you how to review the notes from the consultant team and store them in the right places for your strategy session
As seen in the video, once a client has signed up and booked in, they will automatically be added to the client list on Attio and the respective strategist will also be tagged on their profile.
Attio Client list:
As mentioned above, preparation is key for these strategy sessions. Our consultants have some deep and informative conversations with the client before they sign up with us. It’s extremely important we leverage the notes that they have captured, so we can fluently continue the conversation from where they left off, rather than feeling like they have to repeat all the information they discussed to a brand new person.
It’s useful to set a daily reminder, to review and summarise the notes of the clients that you have for the following day. Try to gain as much information as you can walking into the session.
When doing your summary, we have created two sections where you can store ongoing key information for the client. These are the ‘Context’ section and the ‘Brief’ section. The ‘Context’ section relates to the client, their personality, experience, etc. This is accessible in two places, on the client profile in the ‘Context’ section on the right-hand side, and is mirrored on their agreement level, in the ‘Client Profile’ section, also located on the right-hand side. The ‘Brief’ section is only viewable on the agreement level, also located on the right-hand side but a bit further down.
Client profile - Context section located on the right side
Agreement view - Client Profile section located on the top right
Agreement view - Brief section located on the right
Store all key client information and their purchasing brief in these sections. Review the consultant's notes (found in the client's profile notes tab) and organise the important details into their relevant sections. This will help you reference and expand upon the information during your call.
After completing your preparation, the last step is to ensure you update the client's status to 'Active Client'.
In the client profile, locate the 'Client List' section with the 'Status - Strategist' field. By default, clients start without a status. Change this to 'Active Client' so we can track which clients have active agreements with us. (Now automated)
Client view - Client status located on the right hand side
Once you’ve updated that field, all the work is completed!
Make sure to tick off the ‘Prepare for Portfolio Strategy Session’ task in the portal and you’re good to go 🔥
Brief Creation Sessions
Brief creation sessions are basically just shorter portfolio planning sessions, without the tools and as much strategy.
These will often only occur when a client has been referred by a partner who is doing their strategy and doesn’t believe ours is required.
Pre-Session Preparation
Contact the Referring Financial Planner and add them to the portal workspace
- Call the referring planner directly.
- Gather any key requirements or constraints, such as:
- Minimum yield
- Maximum purchase price
- Any strategic or structural considerations (e.g. asset class preferences, SMSF rules, etc.)
- Goals
- Invite the Financial Planner to the Client’s Workspace as a ‘Collaborator’
Well done on completing another module! We’re now ready to dive into the exciting strategy session!