Planning Excellence Lead Consultant

About the Job

The Planning Excellence Lead Consultant serves as a financial planning expert responsible for advancing Northwestern Mutual's Financial Planning Philosophy (FPP), planning standards, and advisor effectiveness. This role applies deep financial planning expertise, the psychology of financial planning, strong business acumen, and an understanding of Northwestern Mutual's advisor model and corporate strategy to shape advisor behaviors and planning delivery.

The position requires knowledge of financial planning psychology and behavioral sciences to improve advisor-client interactions and planning quality. The Lead Consultant conducts quantitative and qualitative research utilizing data such as conversation transcripts and AI to identify drivers of high-quality planning, communication, and sales acumen. Insights are translated into planning best practices, advisor training, and content used across the Home Office.

The role partners cross-functionally to ensure financial planning software, training programs, and field-facing materials align with NM strategy, support advisor adoption, and improve client outcomes.

What You'll Do

Business Strategy & Alignment

• Applies strong understanding of the financial planning process including NM's business model, distribution system, and strategic objectives to influence planning standards, advisor guidance, and training.

• Advises Home Office partners on planning-related initiatives to support NM strategy and field adoption.

Behavioral Science & Advisor Psychology

• Leverages financial planning psychology and behavioral science to enhance advisor discovery, communication, and planning delivery.

• Identifies and recommends best practices that improve advisor-client engagement and support behaviorally informed planning conversations.

Advisor-Client Interaction Analysis

• Performs quantitative and qualitative analysis of advisor-client conversation transcripts to assess interpersonal skills, communication quality, and planning behaviors.

• Translates insights into recommendations that strengthen advisor effectiveness, planning execution, and client outcomes.

Field Training & Content Development

• Develops training materials, case studies, and best-practice content that incorporate financial planning psychology, interpersonal skills, and NM's planning standards.

• Collaborates with Learning & Development to support training programs that build advisor capability and adoption of planning best practices.

Planning Software & Home Office Partnership

• Contributes expertise to planning software requirements, use cases, and user acceptance testing (UAT).

• Partners with Engineering, UX, Product, Marketing, and other stakeholders to ensure planning tools and content support advisor needs and NM strategy.

• Identifies enhancements that improve planning workflow, advisor experience, and adoption of planning tools.

What You'll Bring to the Role

Required

• Bachelor's degree.

• Minimum 5 years of experience applying financial planning subject matter expertise.

• Strong business acumen and understanding of financial services or planning industry.

• Quantitative research experience with ability to analyze and interpret data.

• Ability to assess communication quality, interpersonal skills, or advisor-client interactions.

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.

Preferred

• Professional designations: CFP, CFA, ChFC, CLU.

• Experience as a financial advisor or in advisor coaching, development, or training.

• Background in financial planning psychology, behavioral finance, or related behavioral sciences.

• Behavioral Science Expertise: Graduate training or equivalent experience in psychology, behavioral science, behavioral economics, or a related field, with demonstrated ability to interpret human motivations, decision-making, and communication patterns in conversational data.

• AI-Enabled Conversation Analysis: Hands-on experience using AI, natural language processing, or large language models to analyze large datasets of transcripts, interviews, or recorded conversations to identify themes, sentiment, and behavioral patterns.

• Research Insight Translation: Obtain behavioral insights, prepare research findings, and strategic recommendations for business or research audiences.

• Experience developing training content that incorporates soft skills, communication, and planning best practices.

• Familiarity with financial planning software; experience with Northwestern Mutual tools strongly preferred.

• Knowledge of Northwestern Mutual's planning process, advisor model, and strategic objectives.

Skills You Have

Adaptive Communication: Formulates strategies to be used to convey complex information about services, products, systems, or processes to targeted audiences; communicates and liaises between technical and non-technical audiences.

Analytical Thinking: Organizes and compares various aspects of a situation to comprehend and identify key or underlying complex issues through the use of quantitative data and analysis; leverages strong business acumen, problem solving, and interpersonal skills to think critically about situations from multiple perspectives and consistently seeks ways to improve processes.

Business Acumen: Applies knowledge of both general and organization-specific business issues/financial implications for the organization to problem solve.

Cross Functional Partnering & Planning: Facilitates collaboration, communication, coordination, and planning with individuals and teams from different functions within the organization, and who have different areas of expertise, to achieve common goals.

Interpersonal Savvy: Relates well to all kinds of people inside and outside of the organization. Builds appropriate rapport, constructive and effective relationships. Uses diplomacy and tact and diffuses high-tension situations comfortably.

Learning Agility & Critical Thinking: Pursues learning and obtains knowledge continuously in relevant fields, methods, or technologies in current and future practices; continuously utilizes critical thinking to identify opportunities, execute solutions, and measure impact to constantly improve existing practices and processes based on feedback, lessons learned, and market trends.

Root Cause Analysis & Decision Quality: Assists and applies problem solving methods to understand the fundamental reasons of faults and problems; makes timely, data-driven decisions by understanding the probability of success, identifying customer risks, gathering business requirements, and developing value statements.

Compensation Range:

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We believe in fairness and transparency. It's why we share the salary range for most of our roles. However, final salaries are based on a number of factors, including the skills and experience of the candidate; the current market; location of the candidate; and other factors uncovered in the hiring process. The standard pay structure is listed but if you're living in California, New York City or other eligible location, geographic specific pay structures, compensation and benefits could be applicable, click here to learn more.

Grow your career with a best-in-class company that puts our clients' interests at the center of all we do. Get started now!

Northwestern Mutual is an equal opportunity employer who welcomes and encourages diversity in the workforce. We are committed to creating and maintaining an environment in which each employee can contribute creative ideas, seek challenges, assume leadership and continue to focus on meeting and exceeding business and personal objectives.

We're excited about the potential people bring to Northwestern Mutual. You can grow your career here while enjoying first-class perks, benefits, and our commitment to a culture of belonging.

• Flexible work schedules
• Concierge service
• Comprehensive benefits
• Employee resource groups