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Dan’s new book for millennials, Wealthier: The Investing Field Guide for Millennials, is now available on Amazon.
As a financial advisor, you’ve heard the common advice that the key to attracting clients is telling your personal story. The narrative goes that prospects want to know all about you – your background, values, approach to investing, and so on. If you share enough about yourself, people will be drawn to you and want to work with you.
Typical advice
Many marketing professionals advocate telling “a great story during sales meetings or presentations.”
This advice from Stanford University is typical: “When telling a story, you take the listener on a journey, moving them from one perspective to another. In this way, story is a powerful tool for engendering confidence in you and your vision.”
The power of telling your personal story is advocated in glowing terms: “Personal stories are powerful because they build genuine connections between people. Once someone connects to you on a personal and human level, they trust that you have built your offer with their best interests in mind.”
Focused on ourselves
According to research, a significant portion of our conversations revolve around ourselves.
Wealthier:
The Investing Field Guide for Millennials.
Why have so many financial advisors agreed to review an advance copy of Wealthier: The Investing Field Guide for Millennials. It empowers millennials to be responsible DIY investors and financial planners. You can see some of their reviews here.
Dan’s new book for millennials, Wealthier: The Investing Field Guide for Millennials, is now available on Amazon.
Here’s what one advisor said: "Saplings grow into trees. We need to help the next generation of investors get to where they need our services."
For more information, visit the website for Wealthier:
To review Wealthier send an e-mail to: [email protected]
On average, we spend 60 percent of conversations talking about ourselves, which jumps to 80 percent when communicating via social media.
One study found that 78 percent of conversations involved talking about ourselves and our perceptions of the world. According to Deb Knobelman, Ph.D, our brains are wired to think about ourselves, which causes us to focus internally rather than on others.
Here’s a stunning statistic: Most of us have between 60,000 and 80,000 individual thoughts daily, and up to 80 percent are self-directed.
Change is difficult
It feels good to talk about “me.” According to Mark Goulston, the author of Just Listen, we are wired to talk, not listen. Listening overloads our brains. It puts pressure on us to remember what’s being said. It’s uncomfortable.
Judith Glaser, a communications consultant, found that listening can cause us to feel “cut off, invisible, unimportant, minimized, or rejected, which releases the same neurochemicals as physical pain.”
Talking is entirely different. It relieves stress and “frees space in our brain’s circuits and in our minds.”
Studies have shown that talking about ourselves is incredibly pleasurable. When we talk about ourselves, regions of the brain associated with reward and positive affect, such as the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and the nucleus accumbens, are activated.
How pleasurable is talking about ourselves? Brain imaging studies indicate it’s as rewarding as sex, cocaine, and good food. It’s not easy to give that up.
Why you should shut up
Here’s why giving up the pleasure of talking will lead to more conversions:
When you're focused on delivering your pitch, you may overlook crucial cues from the prospect regarding what they value or require.
When actively listening to your prospects, you can uncover valuable insights about their pain points, preferences, and objectives. This information enables you to tailor your offerings to align more closely with the client's needs rather than what you assume they need. Effective listening is instrumental in building trust and rapport.
When you demonstrate genuine interest in what the prospect has to say and show that you’re actively listening to their concerns, you foster a sense of trust and credibility. If you dominate the conversation and constantly interrupt or steer it back to your agenda, you risk coming across as pushy or self-centered, which erodes trust and makes it more challenging to establish a meaningful connection.
Final thoughts
You have a clear choice when meeting with a prospect (from a neuroscience perspective). You can talk, which will make you feel great but create stress akin to physical pain in the prospect.
Or you can ask questions, focus on the prospect, and encourage them to talk. This will transfer that positive feeling to the prospect. Instead of telling your story, get the prospect to tell their story.
If you opt for the listening option, your conversion rate will increase exponentially.
Dan coaches evidence-based financial advisors on how to convert more prospects into clients. His digital marketing firm is a leading provider of SEO, website design, branding, content marketing, and video production services to financial advisors worldwide.
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Advisor Perspectives welcomes guest contributions. The views presented here do not necessarily represent those of Advisor Perspectives.
Here’s what one advisor said: "Saplings grow into trees. We need to help the next generation of investors get to where they need our services."