“In a sea of competition, you’ve got to capitalize on what makes you unlike anyone else.”

This advice from “Feel Great Naked: Confidence Boosters for Getting Personal” is aimed at bloggers. The author urges them to share personal stories. But it also applies to financial advisors, especially solo practitioners or small firms, when you communicate with your clients and prospects.

Sharing your personality—and even a bit of your personal story—can help you connect with your clients.

One advisor’s personal story

For example, in a sales letter, one salesman shared his story of how his family had suffered needlessly because of an estate planning mistake. That mistake fueled his passion for bringing new clients to his firm. After sharing that story, the letter shifted to discussing the benefits his firm could offer his prospects.

I’ll bet that personal story prevented some prospects from dropping the salesman’s letter into their wastebaskets.

Sharing your personal stories to connect

Don’t focus your communications exclusively on yourself. Ultimately, your client or prospect will care more about the WIIFM (“what’s in it for me”). But a bit of sharing can create a connection that goes deeper than dollar and cents.

Any financial advisor can heed this advice in one-on-one meetings. It’s more challenging when you work for a large firm and you get into written communications. There’ll probably be a company-wide communications policy that sets an impersonal tone. This gives an opening for advisors with smaller firms to outmaneuver their colleagues at larger firms.

Have you tried taking a personal tack? I’d like to learn what your experience has been.

If you enjoyed this post, you may also enjoy my two-part series on “How to add personality and warmth to your financial writing.”

NOTE: I updated this post in Jan. 2017.

 

Image courtesy of Master isolated images at FreeDigitalPhotos.net.