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Written by: Chris Carnazzo | Your Money Cues
A new client walks in composed. Five minutes later, you notice the tells: tense shoulders, a tapping foot, paperwork gripped too tightly. Soon they are apologizing for old mistakes and opening every question with, "This is probably stupid, but…" Then something shifts. The shoulders drop, the questions turn curious, and by the end they are talking about the future instead of the past.
Advisors often credit that shift to intuition or chemistry. A new Australian study suggests it follows a set path, and that the path repeats.
The Pattern
Ben Neilson and Michelle Lobartolo (2026) examined 1,236 transcribed client interactions from four years of financial planning practice in Australia, coding each transcript line by line for the emotions that surfaced at each stage. A clear sequence emerged. During discovery, anxiety dominates. During the strategy presentation, confusion gives way to relief. During implementation, confidence competes with hesitation. During review, reassurance and trust define the relationship.
Implementation was the pivot. Confidence and hesitation ran nearly even, a fork in the road. When advisors addressed the hesitation, clients followed through. When they left it unaddressed, clients deferred. Same plan, same goals, different handling, different outcome.
Why It Matters
Plan adherence has been a problem for years. Scott Frank (2026) cited a 2019 survey of 138 advisors by Russ Alan Prince: within six months, only 30 percent of clients had implemented at least 20 percent of their plan's recommendations, and nearly one in five had done nothing at all. Meghaan Lurtz, a partner at Shaping Wealth, points to one root cause (2023). When the next steps feel fuzzy, that fuzziness ends up "causing the client to doubt their ability to follow through." Clients do not act because the math is right. They act when they believe they can execute it. The study's four stages map cleanly onto the CFP Board's seven-step process. Same road, coarser mile markers.
Reading the Cues
Each stage has a tell. Anxiety sounds like hedging and self-deprecation, the "I'm terrible with money" reflex, and it eases when an advisor normalizes the feeling before offering information. Confusion shows up as repeated requests for clarification and selective attention; it resolves with structure, not more content. Hesitation looks like delayed responses and one-more-question stalling; decision-support tools and step-by-step pathways convert it into action. Trust arrives with relaxed posture and a willingness to delegate. The researchers found that early negative emotions "acted as a gateway to deeper engagement when navigated with psychological sensitivity." The emotion handled well did not slow the work. It deepened it.
The Repeatable Roadmap
Anxiety asks for safety: acknowledge before you inform. Confusion asks for structure: simplify before you add. Hesitation asks for agency: equip before you push. Trust asks for transparency: review honestly and keep earning it. Four emotions, four moves, in that order, client after client. A client showing anxiety does not need a Monte Carlo simulation. One showing confusion does not need more jargon. They need an advisor who reads the emotion before solving the financial problem.
What the Study Can and Cannot Carry
The evidence has limits. The transcripts come from one region of Australia, the lead author practices in that market, and the findings are observational, not randomized. The journal is a lesser-known open-access outlet, and no one has replicated the work. Read it as a map drawn by a thoughtful traveler, not a survey completed by a cartographer. Maps like that are worth having; you just want to know who drew them. And this one agrees with what the adherence literature keeps saying: the numbers tell you whether the plan will work, and the money cues tell you whether the client will act on it.
Warmth Before Competence
Clients decide whether they feel safe with an advisor before they decide whether to believe one. That is why the journey starts with safety at discovery. I once asked Vanessa Van Edwards, the behavioral researcher behind the book Cues, how advisors should balance the two. "You don't need a lot of warmth, you need enough warmth," she said. "Especially in those first five minutes… you want to start off with a foundation of warmth so that paves the way for your competence." Enough warmth to tell the client's nervous system it is safe to open the books. The competence gets its turn.
Related: Is Your Excess Cash Working for You?
References
CFP Board. (2018). The 7-step financial planning process. Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards. https://www.cfp.net/ethics/compliance-resources/2018/11/focus-on-ethics---the-7-step-financial-planning-process
Frank, S. (2026, April 22). Closing the implementation gap: A formula for exploration meetings that lead to better client follow-through. Kitces.com. https://www.kitces.com/blog/financial-planning-psychology-client-communication-recommendation-advisor-evoke-exploration-meeting-george-kinder
Lurtz, M. (2023, December 20). Implementation questions to properly prioritize and address to-dos for consistent follow-through. Kitces.com. https://www.kitces.com/blog/implementation-questions-financial-plan-advisor-communication/
Neilson, B., & Lobartolo, M. (2026). Mapping the emotional landscape of financial planning: Identifying patterns for more effective client relationships. Open Journal of Business and Management, 14(1), 82–103. https://doi.org/10.4236/ojbm.2026.141006
Notes
The Russ Alan Prince survey (2019, 138 advisors) is cited as reported by Scott Frank on Kitces.com, a secondary source, which is why the Frank entry appears above rather than a Prince entry.
The Vanessa Van Edwards quote is from a Van Edwards Office Hours session for Certified People Coaches in which the author asked the question directly. Per APA 7, a personal communication is cited in text only (V. Van Edwards, personal communication, February 2026) and does not appear in the reference list.
Related: Is Your Excess Cash Working for You?