Whey are some financial advisors thriving in an age while others are struggling to survive? Why do some seem to never get over the hump of building a bigger book of business? Why do some advisors struggle to keep up with all the referrals they get when others have to claw and dig just to get one referral?
In this Hero’s Journey seminar we will find the answers to those questions, find exactly how top advisors excel. The characteristics I found in top advisors were both profound and simple:
- The way they adviced was illustrative and simple
- They are great storytellers; they excelled in relating and communicating
- They developed specialized audiences for their services
Practical Info
The price of this one day seminar with Peter de Kuster in London is Euro 995 excluding VAT per person. There are special prices when you come with three or more travellers.
You can reach Peter for questions about dates and the program by mailing him at peterdekuster@hotmail.nl
TIMETABLE
09.40 Tea & Coffee on arrival
10.00 Morning Session
13.00 Lunch Break
14.00 Afternoon Session
17.00 Drinks
About Peter de Kuster
Peter de Kuster is the founder of Passion Never Retires. Peter’s approach combines in-depth storytelling and marketing expertise, and for over 20 years clients have found it effective with a wide range of creative business issues.
Peter is writer of the series The Heroine’s Journey and Hero’s Journey books, he has an MBA in Marketing, MBA in Financial Economics and graduated at university in Sociology and Communication Sciences.
INTRODUCTION
The way top advisors excel is by simplifying matters, not complicating them. Many advisors purposefully add complexity to their presentation, thinking it raises their stature and indispensability in the eyes of their clients. This complicated approach, however, works against, not for, the advisor.
The top advisors did just the opposite with amazing results. By using simple illustrations, anecdotes and metaphors, they bring themselves and their ideas into the mental grasp of every client. Consequently, clients love talking to them and referring their friends as well.
I call this advice technique storytelling. I have come to believe that storytelling is the key to building a large and loyal book of business. It is a proven psychological fact that storytelling puts the mind in a light trancelike state and makes us more susceptible to influence. Everyone loves a good story. In this seminar we will teach you to tell the financial story.
In an age of online, do-it-yourself finance, people still yearn for mentoring, for guidance and for affirmation. Many have gone the loner’s route in finance because they haven’t been able to find an advisor who knows how to communicate effectively. Your success as an advisor hings on your ability to communicate. Make the complex simple and understandable and you will never lack for clients. The storytelling truths and examples in this seminar will revolutionize the way you offer financial services and yourself.
We travel in the footsteps of the greatest storyteller on the subject of life and money ever: Charles Dickens. How he taught us how to change our life in one Christmas Night by rewriting our story about the role of money in our life has inspired generations.
Your succes with clients doesn’t hing on being a better analyst or fiscalist but rather on being a better teacher, a better storyteller, and a master of the metaphor. individuals will no longer tolerate being left in the dark, and they will gravitate to the advisors who excel in illuminating and communicating. In this seminar you will find the examples and techniques necessary to become an expert storyteller yourself.
Top advisors have a sincere concern and respect for people. Clients feel good after meeting with these advisors because they sense these advisors have their best interests at heart. The second section of this seminar reveals the relational magic top advisors exhibit: incisive questions, intuitive listening skills, the ability to read body language, a sense of humor and down-to-earth- humility. These pros recognize that what people really yearn for is respect.
I once heard a speaker say that all the people he had ever met had a sign hanging on their neck and that his own life had become a string of successes once he learned to read that sign. He said that when he was younger he was too caught up in himself to realize people were wearing this sign – much less to be able to read it. His life was far too important to be caught up in somebody else’s world. But a wiser man pointed out to him that the sign around each person’s neck actually says, ‘Help me feel important’. He said, No matter who they were, no matter how high they’d risen or how much they had, they all wear the same sign. Those who learn to recognize and respond to that sign will succeed.
I started looking for the sign on the people I invited to tell their story for the hero’s journey and the heroine’s journey website. In the people I knew and the people I met. I saw the sign on friends, clients and coworkers. I saw it in the eyes of my audiences. This world has a way of wearing people down – it can be hard on them. It stereotypes them, categorizes them and assigns numbers to them. But we want others to see us for the unique individuals we are.
The speaker was right – when you learn to read this sign, everything changes and success is inevitable.
You start with eye contact and attentiveness. You progress with a sincere and interested discovery process. It takes hold when your clients see that you have their best interests at heart. It is respect in the highest form. This seminar will show you how to demonstrate that kind of respect.
Finally I found that top adviseors have learned to focus and specialize their book of business into profitable niches as the Affluent Market, the Mature (65+) market and the Women’s market. I will show you how these advisors are communicating with and prospering in those markets. By moving from a jack-of-all-trades, anybody-will-do adviseor to a specialized expertise in profitable niches, these advisors have seen their book of business grow faster and larger than they ever imagined possible. In this seminar you will learn how to communicate with the growing markets of affluent, mature, and female clients respectively.
Storytelling will help you become more expert at communicating, at relating, and at penetrating profitable markets – and make money in the process! Storytelling is about making an emotional connection with your client’s hopes and dreams by using illustrations and stories they can understand.
Enjoy the journey!!
SCIENCE AND ART
Financial advice is part art and part science. But the majority of financial advisors put too much emphasis on the science, which is not only boring clients to death, but, because financial professionals are all using the same scientific charts and facts, have begun to sound like every other advisor out there.
Financial services providers are familiar with the science of investments. However we have found that an exclusively analytical scientific approach to explaining investments has a half-brain appeal and, in fact, may be counterproductive. It may be counterproductive because when we get caught up in any form of analytical science, we begin to speak in jargon, which tends to confuse and intimidate most people. Many advisors are spewing jargon and investment cliches to uninitiated clients and don’t realize the confusion and intimidation they are causing.
Highly successful storytellers have learned to simplify complex investment strategies and products. They have learned to realte these strategies and products to matters their clients can understand by using the phrase, “it is kind of like’ In this seminar I will share many of the stories, analogies and metaphors that you can use to your own benefit and the benefit of your clients.
“Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six , result happiness.
Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield
TURNING THE LIGHT ON
It is important for advisors to not only be knowledable but to be able to communicate as well. All the knowledge and understanding in the world is useless if you can’t effectively transfer and relate that understanding to your clients. To become a more effective communicator, you must:
- understand how the human brain works and how to capture and keep people’s interest; and
- learn to integrate visual, imaginative, sensory and emotive aspects in your client presentations through the art of storytelling.
As a result you will gain tremendous confidence in your ability to communicate and connect with your clients. Your clients will feel a stronger bond to you as an advisor because you are not just an advisor who directs their assets but you are a teacher who simplifies and illuminates concepts they once found confusing. Their personal confidence level is now raised because of their increased understanding, and their confidence and trust in you is raised because of this connection you have established. You have turned on the ligt about a topic that has confounded and perplexed them in the past.
‘Credit is a system whereby a person who can not pay gets another person who can not pay to guarantee that he can pay.’ – Charles Dickens in Little Dorit
This is just one of the many examples of storytelling. The use of methaphors to increase illumination, stir the imagination and promote a decision that fits each client’s comfort zone. Why does this approach work? Because it appeals to both sides of the brain. It gets us fully involved in the decision, intellectually, imaginatively, emotionally and intuitively.
Before we go any further, I must explain what it is about the human brain that makes this storytelling approach so effective.