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Telling your story as a way of marketing and differentiating your business has become all the rage in marketing circles recently.
The idea is that by sharing your personal story, experiences and philosophy, your ideal prospects will magnetically find you and want to hire you.
By relating to your story at a personal level, the hope is they’ll form an emotional bond with you and your business, leading to trust and ultimately the sale.
This over-used approach is based on the “know-like-trust” method of traditional selling.
There are three hidden weaknesses with this approach never shared by those who promote it:
- Other advisors are doing the same thing.
- Your story feels different to you, but it won’t to your prospects.
- Your prospect cares more about their own story than yours.
This is not what you wanted to hear after spending serious bucks on your story development and the marketing of it.
Here’s the rub…
You’re trying to convince your prospects of your value as it’s defined from your perspective, not theirs.
No matter how artfully you can pull this off, in the end, it’s about promoting your point of view to them.
It’s about proving that you’re different and convincing them of your worth, based on how you see yourself.
Don’t get me wrong – this approach still works in certain markets and industries.
But in the advisory profession, where prospects are looking to trust you with their life savings, you need to be perceived as having the purest of intentions.
Any sense that you’re promoting your agenda, and they’ll exit your sales process and ghost you.
Here’s the shift for you to consider...
Your prospect doesn’t care about you pre-sale... they care about your understanding of them.
They don’t want to know about your story or how your business came to exist – they want to know if they can trust you to solve their financial issues.
A sales approach focused on you and your value doesn’t lead to trust.
It leads to questions and objections that force you into selling instead of prescribing.
You need a trust-based sales approach that articulates and clarifies your prospect’s problems – just like a doctor who diagnoses their patients, and taking them from diagnosis, to prescription, to getting medicine, all in one sequence.
Your prospect can only see your value through the lens of their own situation.
Their take-away experience of encountering you needs to feel like you just read them a page out of their story.
Your story is irrelevant to trust building.
To learn more about how to think differently about your sales process, order your complimentary book and consultation below.
Ari Galper is the world’s number one authority on trust-based selling and is the most sought-after high-net worth/lead generation expert for financial advisors. His newest book, “Trusted Authority” has become an instant best-seller among financial advisors worldwide – you can get a Free copy of Ari’s book here and, when you click the “YES” button in the order form, you’ll also receive a complimentary “plug up the holes” lead generation consultation. Ari has been featured in CEO Magazine, Forbes, INC Magazine and the Australian Financial Review. He is considered a contrarian in the financial services industry and in his book, everything you learned about selling will be turned upside down. No more chasing, no pressure, no closing.
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Advisor Perspectives welcomes guest contributions. The views presented here do not necessarily represent those of Advisor Perspectives.
