Have you ever felt crestfallen when a client says after the fact, "I didn't know I could get my mortgage [or annuity or life insurance] through you." Uncovering clients' needs is about asking the right questions at the right time to find out what they are planning, what's on their minds and most importantly, how you can help.

Successful advisors have at least one skill in common with savvy litigators: They each know how to ask the right questions. Inquiry is crucial to discovery and, in the life of a financial advisor, good client discovery skills lead to a fuller understanding of his or her needs.

The discovery phase, utilized by litigators, is a critical area of professional skill and competency in the legal field. Financial advisors can learn a thing or two from deposition training materials about how litigators get to the heart of the matter (or the facts in the case).

Why bother to tap lawyers' tactics? Because uncovering your clients' financial needs is as important to your practice as the legal facts are to an attorney's case. Your goal should be to leave no financial need unspoken and no impending event unanticipated.

Litigators ask strategic questions. They have to know which one to ask and how to phrase them. In this column, I have borrowed deposition training materials and culled them to apply their tactics to your business. Below are approaches you might find useful:

Silver bullet questions, which are foolproof inquiries, should be structured to yield a specific intention or uncover a client need. One example is: "Who are the people in your life?" This naturally tells you about some of their concerns and what they may need from you. Keep a list of such questions and practice them until it becomes second nature to ask them.

A leading question is phrased in such a way that suggests a desired answer, and it won't help you get to know the client as well as you need to. Leading questions often end with the phrases "didn't you" or "wouldn't you" or simply "right." They tend to inhibit further dialogue and instead simply seek agreement to your underlying premise. One example of a leading questions is this: "You're not going to retire any time soon, are you?"

Open-ended questions, however, are better for probing, because they elicit a fuller, more honest, response. Examples: "Tell me how you are feeling about this," or "What do you think about that."

By being an attentive listener, you'll likely come up with an important follow-up, or clarifying, question, which can get to the heart of the matter and signal to your client that you are engaged in the conversation.

Gerri Leder is an industry marketing consultant and can be reached at leder@ledermark.com.