What differentiates a successful financial advisor from the rest is the ability to create a connection between themselves and their clients. One such way of connecting is through storytelling.
Stories are powerful. They activate both the logical and emotional parts of the brain, and they have proved through the ages to be an effective means of making vague concepts more concrete.
An IFA can promote his or her ideas and recommendations through stories. In fact, the most effective stories tend to revolve around how advisors help clients avoid major mistakes and ways in which an advisor’s approach is uniquely effective.
Commenting on how storytelling helps advisors, Suresh Sadagopan, Founder, Ladder7 Financial Advisories believes, “Conveying concepts and complex topics in the form of a story helps IFAs make their clients understand it easily. Wherever possible, try to connect with the client using an anecdote or a testimonial from an existing client. Adding a ‘human angle’ to the story helps connect better with your target audience.”
Seconding his thought, Shifali Satsangee of Funds Vedaa said, “Drawing analogies and parallels through narratives or stories helps investors relate easily to what we want to communicate. Also, the probability of the investors recalling what we conveyed to them is higher, when conveyed through stories.”
Here are a few tips for advisors to improve their storytelling skill.
Get people to empathize
By tapping into the feelings of someone else, we are able to adopt similar feelings and make them our own. Get others to empathize with your story by providing vivid details and the emotions behind them.
Make the unfamiliar familiar
Through stories you can break down technical lingos and jargons into simple and understandable concepts for your clients. Effective communication of this kind will not only make your prospects feel smarter but also develop a positive emotion towards you.
Provide a solution
The ultimate goal of a story is to grab the attention of your audience with your USP. The solutions offered in your story should portray the uniqueness of your service.
Use stories to influence your prospects
It is often difficult to convince clients to do things that they are not comfortable or willing to do. For instance, convincing a young client to save instead of spending on costly gadgets may be difficult. However, through stories advisors can influence their clients to change their mind. An advisor who wants to inculcate the habit of saving and investment amongst his prospects, could tell them stories of how his clients had previously invested and how he has helped them grow.
