The Referable Advisor

A story people want to hear

You wonder when your business stopped growing. 

 

You remember a time when talking about features and benefits was enough,

and when demonstrating your vast knowledge and mastery got people’s attention. 

 

That was when you could count on your clients to translate what you do into how it solves their problem.

 

Now there is just too much noise, too many distractions to get people to listen. 

 

A story is what they want to here—a story about how you are going or help them solve their problem.

 

Nothing more, nothing less...

 

So, when are you going to stop talking about what you do and start telling a story people want hear? 

 

Core value

Your brand’s core value is the promise your product or service makes. 

In storytelling, a core value is expressed in both its positive and negative forms (success/failure). 

Shifting between positive (success) and nagative (failure) within a core value is what draws people into your story and holds them. This is because it emotionally charges, dramatizes, and disturbs the equilibrium our brain seeks to maintain. 

Think of your brand’s core value like a channel within these positive and negative charges that propel your story forward to its final resolution.

The key is to make sure your brand’s core value matches the story you tell in your product or service, because inconsistency is detrimental and verification is only a google search away. 

 

The problem could be there isn’t a problem

The tendency, when something is not working, is to do more, work harder, and go faster. But the best thing to do is slow down, take a step back to see the problem as it is.

This is especially true in marketing where the smallest detail can make the difference between failure and success.    

The biggest marketing mistake you can make, as a financial advisor, is talking about what you do.    

News flash!

Nobody cares about what you do.  

What everyone does care about is how you solve their problem.    

Nobody cares that you build portfolios that have these factors or adapt to different markets, etc...

What they would care about is what the next big market down-turn could do to their portfolio, and what they can do about it.

In your marketing, if you haven’t identified a problem, people won’t know what problem you solve. There are not enough features and benefits in the world to get the attention of someone who doesn’t know the problem you solve, or that they have a problem.    

In the chaos of a product launch our the repetition of a portfolio update, it is easy to get too close to see that you have forgotten to include your client’s problem in your message.     

So, if your marketing is not working, before you start doing more, working harder, and going faster, take a step back to see the problem as it is.

Maybe the problem is, there isn’t a problem (in your marketing message).

 

Euphemisms

“Euphemisms, such as journey, separate the mind from the unpleasant realities around it, and, like the genteelisms we use when we toilet-train children, they have a place in polite society. But the protagonist of a well-told story is not a passive passenger; she struggles dynamically through time and space to fulfill her desire.”

Excerpt From
Storynomics
Robert McKee & Thomas Gerace

 

Overcoming skepticism

Skepticism is a natural product of human nature. In traditional marketing, if 5 details about the features of a service are good, 20 are better, and a repetitive and amplified claim about what a product can do is met with doubt and disbelief in its promise.  

A story has the power to wrap your brand in a halo of truth. The reader is connected to the main character through empathy and their experience becomes one.  

When you use stories to sell your products and services you create a unity with your market, a lasting impression that influences how someone feels about your brand.

 

Emotional Communication

Emotional communication taps into human nature, and touches our instincts to survive, be admired, succeed and to protect those we love. At its root, there are only two basic emotions—pleasure and pain. These come in many varieties but at the sensory level, either something feels good or bad.  

Good storytelling exists between these two opposites and connects to an internal desire to maintain emotional equilibrium. It uses these polar opposites to pull the reader in and propel the story forward until there is resolution.  

In marketing, this equates to a story about how your product or service makes your client feel about what you do.

The power of a problem

We are drawn into a story when something goes wrong. This is the moment we pay attention, because we are hard-wired to notice problems, so we can learn and know what to do to survive in the future. 

Four quotes storytelling

“The deepest audience pleasure is learning with out doing any work.”  

“Story is evolutionary adaption to consciousness.”  

“All people seek a positive glow somewhere in a story’s world.”  

“Emotion is the side effect of change.”

 — Robert McKee, Storynomics

 

Heaven and hell

John Milton said something like, “the mind can make a heaven of hell and a hell of heaven.”    

The story we tell ourselves about something can be either positive or negative, and that story can create a heaven or hell if we let it.    

It’s not hard to make what’s different about others evil and overlook how much we have in common.

 

Finding meaning

Move your marketing message from a static description of what you do to a dynamic story about your clients’ values and desires,

because values and desires always reflect each other and together, like a compass, point us in the direction of what is meaningful in life.