IDEAS / POST
Rising Above The Sea of Sameness
Last week, I ran a workshop for financial advisors on standing out from the crowd.
If you’re familiar with the machinations of this industry, standing out is a tall order. Big brands (with big brand guidelines) and strict regulations are the order of the day. Add a fairly commoditized offering, and you have a recipe for sameness.
Which is sad, considering the majority of advisors I know have a strong entrepreneurial streak, and the sector is fairly competitive. I believe these professionals would jump at the opportunity to position themselves in a unique way.
Enough preamble. Here’s how the story unfolded.
My first task was to help the advisors realize that what they believed was a unique offering, well, was not.
I started with a simple exercise: “Write down the one thing that makes you unique and attractive to your clients.”
Then I had them fold up their notes and pass them to the person next to them. Finally, I asked a few to unfold and read their note.
The results? Smile-inducing.
“Listen to get solutions.” “Listen better.” “Listen and understand.”
Every. Single. One. Was about listening.
I asked the room: “Hands up, who sees a pattern here?”
Here’s the problem: you aren’t the only one pitching a prospect. If they sit down with 5 potential advisors, and each one proclaims their superpower as ‘listening’, you’re muddying the water, devaluing your offering, and sanding down your competitive edge.
Inside The Proverbial Jar
This isn’t a problem unique to the financial industry. It’s being “inside the jar”, and we all fall prey to it.
When you’re deep inside your industry, you know what sounds good to other professionals. “Listening” is obviously important – it’s what every financial advisor should do.
But you can’t hear what people outside the jar (your prospective customers) are saying. What they want.
So while you’re all claiming to be the “listening” advisor, your potential clients are scratching their heads wondering why they aren’t being heard.
This is common to every business. Legend has it this exercise was once done with heads of ad agencies – people whose entire job is standing out. Their unanimous answer? “Creative thinking that gets results.”
This might explain the dismal state of advertising today. But I digress.
Conclusion: We’re all stuck in our own jars.
The Only Way Out
There’s only one escape route, and your proverbial ladder over the top starts with listening to your clients. Seems a bit ironic, given that the entire room of financial advisors listed their superpower as better listening. But it’s a different kind of listening.
Actually, it’s a different person doing the listening.
If you ask your clients what they value most about you, they’ll say something they know will make you happy. It’s like asking someone what they think of your baby. They’ll be polite.
You need someone else to walk your “baby” around the playground and get the real feedback. Only then will you discover your baby’s eyes are too close together, or it isn’t pudgy enough. Or, worst of all, it looks like every other baby. Gasp…
When I do this for clients, I get the same result roughly 100% of the time: what customers actually love about my client turns out to be completely different from what my client imagined.
Real Insight Beats Industry Speak
I used the example of an actual financial advisor I’d worked with.
Interviewing that advisor’s clients, I dug deep to unearth pretty raw sentiments.
“My previous advisor talked down to me… mansplaining.”
“She put me at ease. Made me feel OK about not being good with numbers.”
“She never tries to take a position of ‘I know more than you do.'”
“She makes you feel smart and in control.”
“She acknowledges you could do this well… but you’re smart enough to know she can augment your awesomeness without drawing light from your halo.”
She augments my awesomeness.
Now that’s differentiation. Not “I listen better than other advisors,” but “I make you feel more capable and confident, not less.”
The Uncomfortable Truth
Here’s what this really revealed: For successful people, talking about money is often the one area where they feel powerless. In every other part of their life, they’re the captain of their destiny. But in personal finance talks, they feel like they’re wearing a backless hospital gown – exposed, vulnerable, laughable, uncomfortable, and disempowered.
This advisor was actually solving a deeper emotional problem that her clients revealed to me: helping people get out of the metaphorical hospital gown and back into their power suit.
From Insight to Impact
That’s a killer insight. But it’s not enough to stand out. You need to add creativity to make it memorable.
In my presentation, I showed ‘She Augments My Awesomeness’ as a white headline in a red box. Not terrible, but unremarkable.
Then I showed a series of Economist ads. Same starting point – The Economist is in the business of Augmenting My Awesomeness, too. Same white headlines in red boxes. But the ads sparkled.
Ads like “Womensplain mansplaining.” and “Money talks, but sometimes it needs an interpreter.”
What would happen if the client who’d felt mansplained to saw an ad for her advisor – a variation on the “Womensplain mansplaining.” headline?
She’d be one step closer to undying loyalty is what.
At this point, I took the advisors on a rapid journey to unlock their creativity. Using prompts from Roger von Oech’s Creative Whack Pack to jolt their thinking, they went from insight to a series of smart, witty, and standout headlines in just 10 minutes.
Obviously, I can’t replicate that interactive experience in an article.
But I can offer you the starting point. If you’re ready to get out of your own “jar” and build a brand that truly stands out, I invite you to book a Messaging Power Boost, a structured 1-on-1 engagement that delivers the same results.