In this blog category you will find blog posts packed with stories, analogies, power phrases and how to use them to better your practice and to become a successful financial advisor.

Death of Common Sense

The Death of Common Sense - Don Connelly

I want to pass on to you an obituary, no pun intended, called ‘The Death of Common Sense’. You may have seen this. If you haven’t, it’s just extraordinary, and basically it said, “We’re mourning the passing of a beloved old friend, Common Sense, who has been with us for so many years. No one knew for sure how old he was. His birth records were lost long ago on bureaucratic red tape. He’ll be remembered as having cultivated such valuable lessons as, ‘knowing when to come in out of the rain’, ‘why the early bird gets the worm’, ‘life isn’t always fair’, and, of course, ‘maybe it was my fault’, that’s a great lesson.”

Watch the video or read the transcript below to hear the entire obituary of Common Sense and hopefully help you put things in perspective and think about the world we live in today.

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The Shoplifting Story

Don Connelly audio blog post

You’ve probably heard me in the past talk about a book called ‘Whoever Tells the Best Story Wins’ by Annette Simmons. It was really designed for bosses to sell themselves to employees but anyone who is selling themselves should read this book. The author makes the point that we really need six stories. The most important one being the ‘Who I am’ story. because people don’t care what we know, they care about who we are. Can they trust us? The second most important story she mentions is the ‘Why am I here’ story. Why am I doing this?

Listen to this audio post or read the transcript below to learn why the ‘Why I am here’ story is so important when communicating with clients and to hear a very emotional story that an Advisor from Texas tells his prospective clients.

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Two Stories to Help You Explain What You Do

Two Stories to Help You Explain What You Do

I have a thought I want you to pass on to your clients. Tell them this from me. The only people who lose weight are the people who hire trainers. People that buy equipment and put it in a house don’t use the equipment. How many times have you seen a treadmill with a neck tie or a blouse hanging on it? You’re the trainer. You make them do sit ups and you get them on the treadmill. It’s a great analogy.

Listen to this audio episode or read the transcript below to learn two more quick simple stories about advisors who were great at getting people on the treadmill.

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The Importance of Your Storytelling Skills in Building Trust

The Importance of Your Storytelling Skills in Building Trust

Now and then, financial advisors must be reminded that they are in a relationship business and that what they have as a clientele is a direct by-product of trust.

The cold hard reality is that people need to trust you before they will engage with you. Especially these days, people are almost instinctively cynical, overly careful to approach others they don’t know with a heavy dose of skepticism. So, when we want to connect with any group of people, our first task must be to break through their defensive shells so we can build trust. Without trust, there can be no connection, no relationship, and no channel through which vision and ideas can flow.

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Three Stories about Trust to Use with Prospects and Clients

Three Stories about Trust to Use with Prospects and Clients

The most fundamental principle of building a clientele is understanding that people do business with people they like and trust. While it’s easy for many advisors to be likable, trust has to be earned—quickly and often. As an advisor, you can never lose sight of that because trust not only binds a client to you but it also enables them to follow your guidance with confidence and conviction, which is critical to their long-term success.

If you’ve been following this blog for any length of time, you know I believe in the power of storytelling to drive home concepts and change a client’s perspective. I offer these three stories about trust to you as an advisor to drive home the crucial role trust plays in your client relationships.

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How to Build Your ‘Why I Am Here’ Story

How to Build Your ‘Why I Am Here’ Story

Your ‘why I am here’ story is an essential market differentiator. First of all, not every financial advisor even has one – other than to make money. And out of those who really do have a client-centered reason for being in this business, not all of them are able to express it. So if you have a real reason you come to work every day, and you’re able to articulate it in a way that makes sense to the clients and gives them a reason to work with you, you’re already way ahead of the competition.

That’s why you need a “why I am here” story.

But the ability to articulate your story in a way that makes it stick is essential. You don’t want to get lost in the details. You don’t want to get sidetracked. You don’t want to get interrupted while you’re trying to tell it. And you don’t want to bore the listener!

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How to Build Your Story-Benefit Matrix

How to Build Your Story-Benefit Matrix

Last week I blogged about a useful sales tool called a story-benefit matrix, and why you should develop one for your practice. Just going through the process is beneficial: It forces you to think through a number of different ways your prospective client will benefit by working with you – and gives you an opportunity to help tell an illustrative story that will cement that case.

It’s basic “soft-skills” at work.

But it’s helpful to understand how to build one yourself, so let me help you with that.

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Why You Should Create a Story-Benefit Matrix

Why You Should Create a Story-Benefit Matrix

Recently, in my post ”Never Underestimate the Power of a Good ‘Who I Am’ Story,” I mentioned the concept of building a good “story-benefit” matrix. I wanted to take a little time and drill down that concept.

Many salespeople are familiar with the concept of a features-benefit matrix – a handy little cheat-sheet that helps sales and marketing people translate product features into benefits for the customer.

Here’s how a features-benefit matrix works in a nutshell.

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8 Stories to Help You Build Trust and Open Accounts

8 Stories to Help You Build Trust and Open Accounts

As you might know already, I’m a big believer in telling a story.

As I write this, it’s presidential campaign season. The candidates are all about telling their stories. They want to get their preferred narratives out there, in front of voters. Successful candidates are very well rehearsed on these stories. They constantly make references to these stories, in the effort to brand themselves, differentiate themselves from other candidates, and inoculate themselves against attacks from competing candidates and their staffs.

Why?

Because it works!

It works in financial services, too.

In fact, it works so well that I don’t want you to have a single story defining you. I want you to have at least eight! And I want you to know them cold.

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