Strategy Highlights
Week 18
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Strategy 4: Articulate Your Value Promise
Write, refine and tell your personal story
Your value promise will motivate qualified prospective clients to consider entering your wealth management process. But it is only the first step in building trusted, long-term relationships with these individuals. To connect on a deeper, more meaningful level with affluent clients, you must be able to tell your personal story. By opening up to others about what is important to you, your listeners become much more inclined to trust you with what is important to them. Your story makes you real and believable to them.
To begin to find your story, ask yourself these questions:
- Who has influenced your belief systems? As you reflect, you may notice that there are some people you moved toward, others you moved away from and still others you moved against. What was it that you saw or felt in those relationships that caused you to rethink how you would act in the future?
- Which events have moved you the most? These can be personal experiences, such as the birth or death of a family member, repairing a lost friendship, falling in love, sharing a secret, or standing up to a boss or a parent. They can also be external events, like an economic downturn or a natural disaster. How did these experiences and events shift your worldview?
- What have been your valleys? Your story should report not just successes, but also danger, remorse and your big mistakes. The more difficulty you faced, the greater the triumph when you succeeded. All our lives are filled with peaks and valleys. The story often lies in how you came out of the valleys.
After reflecting on these questions, begin to put your story down on paper. Take these steps:
- In two to three paragraphs, write your story about why you chose to become a financial advisor. As you write, keep in mind that this story is less about why you chose this profession and more about who you are as a person.
- Now dig deeper. What is it about your story that really shows the essence and spirit of who you are? Write this down in one or two sentences.
- Describe a single event that was a turning point for you in your decision to become a financial advisor.
- Explain what is was about this event that made it a turning point. What was at stake?
- Describe what you did immediately after this event.
- Recount the result or outcome of your actions following the event.
With your draft complete, commit to telling your story at least 10 times to 10 different people. As with your value promise, share it with everyone who knows your business and can provide useful feedback. As you tell your story, notice the responses of your listeners as well as your own responses. Take out the parts that are less important or that do not evoke a response in your listeners (or in yourself). Add more detail to the parts that your listeners find most interesting. By making small adjustments, your story will become better and better with each telling.