Leading with the right

People have an insatiable appetite for stories, and advisers who master the art of telling stories and eliciting them from prospects and clients can forge deeper relationships, simplify complex investment decisions for clients, and grow their businesses, a consultant and author told advisers at IMPACT 2014.
Scott West, head of Invesco Consulting, calls this art “story selling,” and during an IMPACT 2014 session entitled “The Power of Story Selling,” he said advisers who are effective story sellers rarely face objections to their recommendations.
“Story selling is nothing more than making the unknown known by using the familiar,” said Mr. West, co-author of “Storyselling for Financial Advisors.” Using stories, analogies, metaphors and intentional questions allows advisers “to provide a cognitive shortcut for people” to make decisions, he said.
“I’m not suggesting that this is a replacement for the facts, but….this business is about an emotional connection as much as it is about logic,” he said. “Emotion is the engine of the decision-making process.”
He called advisers’ attention to the distinction between “left-brain people,” who are analytical, well organized and inclined toward number-crunching and fact-finding, and “right-brain people,” who tend to be big-picture, conceptual thinkers.
As people age, the left side of their brain deteriorates, and the right side of their brain becomes more dominant, he said. “It’s an inexorable march,” he said. “Even with some of the most left-brain people…you can’t fight it. It will happen.”
Memories and experiences are stored on the right side of the brain, giving people as they get older “an incredible ability to remain coherent and…to make actual decisions sometimes quicker,” Mr. West said.
Advisers probably have experienced this phenomenon with older relatives and clients, he said. “They couldn’t tell you what after-tax return was or yields, but ask them a question about their past, and with HD clarity they bring back memories, images and experiences from three, four, five decades ago,” he said.
For this reason, advisers should “lead with the right, and follow with the left,” particularly when talking with older clients or with women, who research shows are generally more right-brain-dominant than men, Mr. West said.
“Think of your 70-year-old clients coming to see you, walking in with a vast warehouse of neatly filed experiences waiting for you to draw upon,” Mr. West said. “Memories are the way to connect.”
This approach runs counter to traditional thinking in the financial services industry, which focuses on the use of left-brain-oriented literature and tools with clients, Mr. West said. “Therein lies the disconnect,” he said. “In our industry, we are told to throw the left all the time.”
Advisers do not have to be eloquent story tellers to become effective story sellers, Mr. West said. “Just a few words can turn a conversation,” he said. Advisers, he added, should be intentional in their client conversations, using simple words, phrases, questions and statements, such as: “It reminds me of…”, “Do you remember when?”, “It’s a little like…”, and — the most powerful of all — “Let me tell you a story.”
Advisers should get into the habit of asking clients questions aimed at developing a better understanding of who their clients are, their needs, likes and dislikes, he said. “We’ve lost the art of being fanatically curious,” he said. “My challenge to you is to get out of your comfort zone and ask great questions…. Great questions reveal land mines or gold mines…and you want both.”
Mr. West provided several examples of intentional questions that can help advisers achieve this objective, including:
• Where are you from, and what did you like about living there?
• Outside of work, what consumes most of your time?
• What was your first experience when you learned the value of money?
• Could you tell me about your life’s work?
• What is the best financial decision you’ve ever made?
Combining a question with a simple illustration can be a very effective way of prompting a client to share valuable information, Mr. West said. He cited the example of an adviser who starts each client meeting by drawing a simple diagram showing zero and 10 connected by a line. The adviser then asks, “On a scale of 0 to 10, how confident are you that you will have what you need when you need it financially in the future?”
“There’s no fear based in that,” Mr. West said. “But what is in there is the fact that she’s putting a finger on the potential discomfort of our clients.” The adviser, he added, reminds clients that she will show them the diagram and will ask the same question each time they meet because she wants them “to visually feel” their progress. She also reminds them that “we’ll never get to 10 because I’m not perfect and the markets are uncertain,” Mr. West said.
Another adviser explains diversification by drawing two squares, Mr. West said. One square hangs from a single vertical line. The other hangs from three vertical lines. The adviser tells the client that the pictures represent elevators and asks which one the client would prefer to be in during an earthquake. The adviser then explains, “My job with you over the next year is really quite simply to provide you with more cables on your elevator.”
Mr. West has found that intuitive story sellers also decorate client-meeting space in a way that fosters and facilitates story selling. He said they make sure the space does two things well:
1) Communicates the story the adviser wants to tell to clients. If the adviser likes to use certain analogies or metaphors, he or she decorates the space “in such a way to lead that,” Mr. West said.
2) Provides an opportunity to gather stories from clients. Examples of decorations that can serve as conversation starters include ones that spotlight family members, hobbies, education and awards, Mr. West said.
“Family is absolutely the most important,” he said. Advisers should make sure clients can see family pictures easily because they can foster conversations about clients’ families. “You want to understand the land mines and the gold mines of why people do what they do to save, invest and spend their money? Talk about the family,” Mr. West said.
He also encouraged advisers to think about hobbies they could spotlight in client meeting areas and could use as springboards for story selling. He recommended that advisers display education and award items in client waiting areas and not in their office, “to build credibility for you as they wait to see you.”
Mementoes from meaningful experiences in an adviser’s life also can serve as useful reference points during conversations with clients, Mr. West said. He cited an adviser who is an Iraq War veteran and displays in his client-meeting area his tattered flight manual from the war. When clients resist the idea of financial planning and ask him why they should do it, the adviser tells them that without financial planning, they never will get to their destination, just as he never would have reached his destination without his flight manual.
“We have an insatiable appetite as human beings to be told stories,” Mr. West said. “My point to you is they have a tremendous place in our industry. In a thoroughly left-brain-dominated business, you can set yourself apart by leading with the right and following with the left, becoming fanatically curious….and being intentional in your conversations.”
This article is part of a special advertising section that appeared in the December 15, 2014 issue of InvestmentNews. It was written by the InvestmentNews Content Strategy Studio and does not reflect the views of the InvestmentNews editorial staff. To download the full supplement, please click here.