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I had three children with my partner, Antonio, over a span of three years; and I’ll leave you with that fact alone for you to imagine the stress of our daily life together. Yet whenever I’m ready to threaten to burn everything he owns (married people, admit it, it’s crossed your mind at least once), he manages to remind me why I’m in love with him by making me laugh.
Good humor is irresistible and rare, and the uniformly dry, boring cannon of financial marketing suffers from a lack of it. Humor is a lethal weapon. To connect better with your audience, refresh them, relieve tension in stressful situations and be more relatable and real to the people you want to impress, here are ways to infuse humor into your business, and some that you’re better off leaving out.
A few words on how to apply humor
Before I give you some examples of ways advisors should use humor, here are some things to keep in mind.
Humor causes physically beneficial results.
Have you ever noticed that when you laugh or smile, your body naturally relaxes? Comfort and relaxation are a beautiful thing in the sales process for both the seller and the buyer.
Humor succeeds or fails based on its timing.
Antonio is a highly trained, top-performing salesperson with 30+ years of success in retail, face-to-face sales (bragging). He doesn’t have a masters degree, but he thinks on his feet brilliantly.
However, my mother, a veteran teacher with 50+ years of experience teaching chemistry to high school students, is probably the funniest person I know.
Both are naturally funny but they’ve got years of practicing their craft on real people who they are face-to-face with every single day. It’s allowed them to fine tune their skill.
Why does this matter? It’s a split second that makes a joke come off as hilariously funny or a complete dud.
You’ll be successful infusing humor into your marketing and sales if you let go and speak with your natural voice. The timing flows better that way.
Humor doesn’t work all the time
You can be on point with your humor, but some audiences are just not going to get it. Be prepared. It’s a risk you’re taking.
My advice comes in two parts. Is your audience open to laughter or are they the type to have a stroke over their advisor displaying any sign of personality. Never be inappropriate with your humor. Make sure that if people aren’t crazy about the joke it won’t raise issues.
Get an editor (or two or three)
Humor is very hit or miss so make sure you get a second set of eyes on it before you click “publish.” By the way, compliance is not the editor. Bad humor is just going to irk compliance and once you get on their bad side, just like Darth Vader, there’s no going back.
Situations when advisors can use humor
Boredom
As we all know, advisor marketing is some of the most boring material ever to grace the planet Earth. Making a joke about it can introduce a little bit of self-deprecating flair.
Example:
Entitling a market outlook piece “The Only Thing Worse than Boring Market Outlooks (Like This) Is Not Reading One That Could Inform You of a Pending Recession.”
A little modesty never hurts, right?
Delicate family relationships
Do this carefully, but family dynamics can sometimes be hard for people to discuss. Making a joke can sometimes make it seem that you can relate to the situation better and that you won’t judge them for being abnormal.
Example: You’re trying to close a deal with a prospect who is stalling.
“Craig, your estate plan and will don’t say anything about how assets would bequest in the case that your daughter were to marry someone who was not financially responsible. Now, if you’re like me, this is the number-one thing that makes me want to cancel my daughter’s cell phone and Facebook accounts permanently.
I live in fear of the day she were to bring Mr. Financially Wrong home to Thanksgiving dinner. What do you say we talk about what you should know about protecting her and your family from the ‘irresponsible son-in-law’ curse?”
Popular news
News stories that everybody is talking about, whether or not they are financially related, are a great way to capture the prospect’s attention. Also consider putting a twist on famous song titles and using them as newsletter or blog headlines.
Example: Sally, let’s do next quarter Gangnam Style.
If you really want to break the Internet, you could make a video of you and your team doing the funny little jig that made this video so popular.
Funny pictures
Images and photography are typically the place where financial companies display an absolute lack of any creativity. Buck the trend and you’ll see results.
Example: Putting a moustache on the Fed chairman’s picture with article headline, “Things are about to get hairy at the Fed.”
Birth/marriage
Anytime someone has a baby or gets married they tend to be in a good mood. Use positive humor to create a memorable congratulations.
Example: Send an email with subject line: Merger Deal
Scott, I heard the good news about the merger deal you just did! Congratulations. Let’s meet when the deal is finalized and continue our conversation about how this may impact your 401(k) beneficiary designations.
Can’t get their attention/lost the sale
If a prospect has gone “radio silent” or you’ve been told that you lost the sale, you have nothing to lose. Try some humor once the deal is off the table – chance are they’ll be in a more relaxed state of mind. You may be able to reverse some of their thinking or gain clarity about what the true objection is.
Example:
Sending an email with subject line: Dinny-poo
Bill, I have a feeling you’ve decided to work with another advisor on your IRA rollover, but I’m convinced that I’d serve you better for several reasons (one of which is my unconventional usage of the English language).
Let’s have dinny-poo tomorrow night and discuss.
Example: leaving a voicemail with a car engine revving in the background then you say, “Hey Clair, are you ready to jump start that retirement plan yet? Let’s talk.”
Humor can be the magic fairy dust that awakens the sleeping prospect. If you feel the deal is going to wrong way or it’s already been lost, that is the point at which you should take maximum risk to get the prospect’s attention and get it back on track because if you don’t then failure is inevitable.
Situations when humor should not be used
Here are some examples:
- Price. Never ever joke about the cost of your services. This is not time to josh around; it’s time to talk turkey. Jokes can be misinterpreted and this is when you want absolute clarity on every detail. By the time you are negotiating a deal, you should be past the rapport-building stage.
- Investment performance. For legal reasons, in any client or sales situation where you’re discussing market returns, you should put on your game face. Making a joke about losing money is never a laughing matter.
- Death. Any comedic intentions here are unwanted. I’m sure there are some life insurance salespeople out there who have been successful at this (because they talk about death all the time), but the risks of failure are high if you’re not extremely experienced with this type of humor.
- Mistakes you made. If a situation is tense because something went wrong that is not directly attributed to you, it might be okay to make light of the situation. However if it’s clearly your fault, trying to make a joke out of it is just going to irritate the client even more.
Example: “So sorry I didn’t call you back today. What do you say we talk tomorrow and you hopefully by that point I’ll have a clue how my calendar works?” Self-deprecation can be funny but in this case the humor makes the apology seem insincere.
Sara’s upshot
Many advisors are funny when I talk to them, but they don’t know how to translate that into effective marketing. If you have any good financial knock-knock jokes to share, hit me up on AP Viewpoint.
Sara Grillo, CFA, is a top financial writer with a focus on marketing and branding for investment management, financial planning, and RIA firms. Prior to launching her own firm, she was a financial advisor and worked at Lehman Brothers. Sara graduated from Harvard with a degree in English literature and has an MBA from NYU Stern in Quantitative Finance.
Read more articles by Sara Grillo
Advisor Perspectives welcomes guest contributions. The views presented here do not necessarily represent those of Advisor Perspectives
