Those who tell stories, win the clients. Story telling is perhaps the most ancient art and yet it is still the most powerful tool to capture one's imagination. Though the forms and ways of story telling has evolved with time, the art of verbal story-telling is still very handy and powerful today as ever. From Shakespeare to Gandhi to Steve Jobs and to Narendra Modi, if there is one thing common between all of them, it is their ability to tell stories. What makes them so great is not just the ideas and concepts that they hold, but the way in which they translate those thoughts into carefully developed and artistically delivered stories.

Why is storytelling so powerful? It is because, it helps us connect. It helps connect an individual to the story or to the underlying idea or to a particular situation very easily. No amount of figures and research can make an impact what one touching story can. Owing to its' effectiveness, storytelling is very popular and perhaps a must for those into sales. For financial advisors, its' importance cannot be overestimated. An advisor can use storytelling to emotionally connect with his/her clients and if there is any shortcut to winning clients, then this must be it...

Advantages of Storytelling:

• Capture the attention, curiosity and concern of the client
• Helps establish connection with the client
• Opportunity to show your creativity, skills, experience and stature to clients
• Opportunity to highlight cases, products, needs, etc. to the client
• Guide clients to think the way you desire
• Make your presentation / pitch interesting and memorable

Why Storytelling for Clients:

• Clients make decisions emotionally
• Clients want to do business with people they like and trust
• Clients may not really understand numbers & products easily
• Clients may not readily know /appreciate their needs /goals
• Clients may not readily change their beliefs /attitudes
• Clients may likely get into arguments and evidence in absence of stories

Making Difference:
The difference between a truly great and successful financial advisor from the rest is the ability to create a connection between themselves and their clients. Experience shows that attitudes, greed, joy, fears, hopes, and values are the emotions that are strongly influenced by stories. Stories are also more effective at changing the attitudes and belief systems held by clients which otherwise is a big challenge. Your own, personal stories can establish a true connection with the client but to make a real difference to your storytelling ability, here are a few key points to keep in mind.

The stories must be carefully designed to ...

• Cover both your and client's point of view
• Argue, persuade and give evidence for your case
• Be factual, believable and realistic, if not true
• Not disclose the identify /confidentiality of other clients
• Highlight your experience, skills & abilities in a mild way
• Evoke emotions of hope, fear, responsibility and action
• Not make fool of anyone or brag about self
• Not focus too much technicality /numbers

Selecting / Building the stories

• Share your own experience – you have many more good stories than you think
• Select stories to match client needs / ideas / products to be pitched, etc.
• Stories selected must be dramatic to be able to evoke emotions
• Get the background facts rights
• Present your time and nature of intervention /role in the story properly
• Build a mental library of stories for each occasion /sale

Delivering the stories with impact ...

• Speak as the first or second person
• Love your stories and deliver with passion
• Take it deep and make it personal
• Be courageous in revealing your weaknesses /mistakes
• Keep it short and focused on the main theme
• Don't keep it too obvious

New to Storytelling:
If you have not used storytelling in past or find it difficult, remember that storytelling is not something god-gifted but can be learnt at any age. You can dramatically improve your storytelling ability by practicing, reading books, watching and listening to good presentors. Remember that practice will only make you better. Overtime, as a financial advisor, you will have enough stories of your own that you will be able to narrate with great conviction and impact.

Conclusion:
As human beings, we love to connect to others. A client is more likely to do business with you if he/she connects emotionally with you. If a financial advisor can find the right story suitable to the client and the situation, and deliver it with passion and honesty, there is little doubt that the client will turn away. Advisors can be honest enough to even share their mistakes and weaknesses – it will only show that you are human and perhaps may even generate more trust and likeness for you from the clients.

A study has shown that most of the affluent clients are right-mind dominant – meaning that they will first like to judge you as a person and connect emotionally before finding a logical reason to do business. Financial advisors, on the other hand, are more likely to be left-brain dominant meaning that they will be too focused on logic, numbers, product features, etc. to pitch to clients. Thus, storytelling is one easy shortcut to connect and influence clients.

" A satisfied customer is one who will continue to buy from you, seldom shop around, refer other customers and in general be a superstar advocate for your business" - Gregory Ciotti

Just imagine you have shifted into a new apartment, and you get up in the morning and your wife asks you to get milk. So, you go to the nearest milk booth which is almost 200 meters from your place and the shopkeeper greets you with a smile and hands over the milk packets to you. The next day, you go to the same milk booth, exchange smiles, buy milk and come home. This continues for 6 months, you greet each other, exchange smiles, talk about random things at times; you have developed a bond with the milk vendor. One day you see that a new milk booth has opened and this one is almost 100 meters from your home, while for the old one, you had to walk almost 200 meters everyday. What would you do? Would you dismiss your earlier booth and buy milk from the new vendor or would you choose to walk another 100 meters? You would go to your old vendor because of the rapport you share, the bond of trust that is built between you and the milk vendor.

This holds true for any business. People buy relationships and not products.

The World is getting bigger, the number of companies and the products are increasing, businesses are expanding as well as getting complex with the advent of new things, new requirements, increasing competition, etc., yet the fundamentals remains the same; working on trust is still the best business strategy.

In advisory business, customer is not just at the center, it is actually all about them. A financial advisor can survive only if he is good at winning the trust of his clients.

How do I win my Clients' Trust?
Each advisor has his own style, personality traits and a set of unique skills through which his clients develop affinity towards him, yet there are certain tried and tested tips which you may apply and win your client's trust:

• Do Not Overcommit & underperform: The primary cause resulting in trust issues between you and your client is committing what you might not be able to execute. He believes in you and if you promise something, you are setting an expectation in his mind and if you are not able to fulfill your promise, your client's expectations are being shattered. There is loss of trust. So, next time if you tell him to invest in a product, he might not do it because he does not trust you anymore. So, be conservative when you set expectations, under promise and over perform.
• Knowledge: This is the basic. An investor is looking for someone who knows about investing, the products available and the ones which are best suited for him. He is not looking for a layman because he himself is one. You should be really strong in technicals, the new products being launched, any important financial news. The point is you should not be blank when your client is in doubt, at any time he shouldn't get a vibe of unawareness. So the client trust you that his money is in the hands of someone experienced and knowledgeable.
• Show them you care: "Your customer doesn't care how much you know until they know much they care" – Damon Richards

Your client must not at any time get the feeling that your inclination towards a product, or your sales targets, etc., are the reason behind him investing. He should be at the centre always. They should feel that you are attentive to his needs and problems. Your relationship with your customer is like your relationship with your wife, both of them should feel that you care.

• Be Empathetic: Learn the art of stepping into his shoes and understanding his perspective. Equity might be an ideal product for him if you consider his age and income factors, but he doesn't want to invest in equities because he wants to contribute this money for his sister's wedding which is happening a year hence. And he is not ready risk his principal. Or may be his father has had a bad experience with equities in the past, so he is unsure. It is your job to evacuate that aversion, explaining the probable reasons for his father's loss and justifying why is equity the best product for him. You must understand his position and advise, so that he is clear and believes in his investment.
• Don't ignore: Don't ever commit the sin of ignoring your clients, especially when there is volatility in the markets. Your clients are concerned because it is their hard earned money which is falling, they are bound to panic. "Do not not respond to their calls", they need you the most, and it is your responsibility to to listen to them, assure them and make them believe in their decisions.

A financial advisor is a combination of Knowledge, experience and Trust. You can win the battle only if you build the right proportion of the three elements.

Get closer than ever to your customers. So close that you tell them what they need well before they realize it themselves. ~ Steve Jobs

During the colossal market crash of 2008, many investors lost their wealth. That phase led to negative sentiment towards equities in most Indian hearts. People lost their conviction towards equities, they sold off whatever shares they had, booked huge losses, and directed their money towards fixed income securities.

But then slowly, the bruises started to heal, the markets started to revive, and people gradually developed confidence in the markets once again.

And in the mid of all this chaos, the ones who were calm, who did not sell when the prices went down, who waited for the storm to pass, who were optimistic about the future, were the ones who gained.

The Sensex is celebrating the Indian economy's success and is at its all-time high. And amidst this air of positivity, there are two types of pessimist investors, you have to deal with. Their bruises have healed, but the marks are still there which makes them panic at every other news in the market.

1. Those who want to sell, because they have made profits on their investments: These are your existing clients, who invested some time back, they are super happy to see their gains since the markets took a steep upsurge recently. They might or might not have invested in equity or mutual funds for certain goals, but now since they have made profits, they want their money back, they want to feel the contentment which has been bestowed onto them by the harvest on their investment. They believe that this is the peak, and if they do not redeem now, they may not be able to yield this much tomorrow.

So as their advisor, you must hold them from falling prey to their emotions. You should explain to them that:

• Until they are not in dire need of money or it's time for a goal to be fulfilled, they shouldn't encash their investment.

• Lastly, make your clients realize they are investors and not speculators. They are here for the long haul. They are not the ones who dived in to be gratified by short term nominal gains, rather they should crave for more by being invested for the long run.

2. Those who do not invest, because they believe that it would be expensive to invest at market highs: Many of your prospective clients or existing clients may also be of the view that “since the markets are so high, the cost of acquiring investments would also be high, so let's wait for some time for the markets to fall and we'll invest then.”

So, for these investors, you have two options:

• One, you explain to them that there is no right or wrong time to invest. You never know, the markets may never take a U-turn, so if that happens and the investor procrastinates his purchase decision to purchase on the notion that markets will fall, will end up paying extra money later.

• Two, SIP is the solution to all problems. Whatever happens in the world, just keep paying your SIP installment. At the end, your total cost will be averaged out, no good or bad will have a significant impact on the acquisition cost. The Power of compounding will help your money multiply of the years.

Your clients panic because they have had a bad investment history, they panic because they get influenced by the TV anchors who propagate that markets are at their peak and a fall will begin very soon. The true role of a financial advisor comes to play at such times, your clients need the right advice. You cannot ask them to not watch the TV, or forget the past, but can definitely hold them back, ensure them that the right thing to do is wait and watch their small money create huge wealth for them.