Case Study

Glenn: transforming an advisory practice through storytelling

Note: The following case study is based on an actual case. However, all of the names and telling details have been changed to preserve client privacy.

Two years ago, Glenn, a 44-year-old financial advisor, was running a reasonably successful practice, but he was not where he had expected to be by his mid-40s. He had hoped that at that age and stage in his career he would be spending the bulk of his time working solely with professionals and business owners. He always found working with such clients challenging, fulfilling, enjoyable and, not surprisingly, profitable. While he had some clients who fit that bill, he unfortunately had far too few, and even fewer such prospects. Now that he was about to head into the latter half of his career, he decided to make a concerted effort to at last build the kind of practice he had always envisioned.

Glenn had heard about how my storytelling—or storyselling—strategy had helped other advisors grow their businesses, and so he approached me to explore solutions for him. After learning more about Glenn’s practice, I saw that his lack of ideal clients was largely due to two essential factors: one, low awareness in the marketplace for Glenn’s expertise; and two, Glenn’s inability to quickly and easily show professionals and business owners how he could help them. Both problems are common and usually thorny ones for advisors. Raising awareness is challenging in a highly competitive marketplace like the financial advisory world. And it is always difficult for anyone providing intangible solutions to explain what they do, especially when what they do is often different from one client to the next.

To help solve both of Glenn’s problems we applied a number of the storyselling strategies I regularly use with other advisors and entrepreneurs.

One of the first things we did was start producing a bi-monthly series of case studies. Each case study, a thousand-word story illustrating Glenn’s work with a typical professional or business-owner client, shows readers two essential things: one, Glenn’s understanding of the challenges and risks professionals and business owners face; and two, Glenn’s expertise in providing solutions to meet those challenges and offset those risks.

Using case studies has allowed Glenn to communicate his services far more effectively than the method he’d been using before, which was to merely tell his prospects that he was an expert who could help them. Doing that had never really resulted in the development of a strong connection with a prospect. Now, by reading or hearing Glenn speak about one of his case studies, his prospects are able to identify with the clients in the stories and readily acknowledge their own problems and needs. They see exactly how Glenn’s solutions apply to their own business, and how Glenn’s expertise would be useful to them. It’s the difference between telling and showing. Telling rarely motivates anyone to act, because it doesn’t affect them or engage them at an emotional level the way stories do.

One of the great benefits to a case study is that it can be used in a variety of effective ways, and Glenn has been taking advantage of many of them. For example, he has:

• posted them on his website
• included them in prospect and client mailings
• included them in his general marketing package
• used them as take-aways in appointments with clients and prospects
• used them as take-aways for influencers who could arrange introductions and referrals
• used them as handouts at media appearances
• used them as handouts at speaking engagements
• published them in his local paper, trade journals, etc.

Within a few months of first using case studies, Glenn had built up a great deal of awareness in the marketplace for his services. This was evidenced by the fact that numerous people who had read his case studies called him up with inquiries or to set up appointments. As well, when he met new professionals and business owners, he discovered that many were familiar with his name and thus receptive to meeting with him. He also had an easier time gaining introductions through influencers in his network who now saw Glenn as a more established expert with publishing credits. And a significant milestone was achieved when a television producer, who had read one of his stories, called to interview him as an expert for a news show, further raising his name recognition.

Another initiative we undertook was a seminar series designed to help Glenn penetrate the physicians market. The seminar involves a presentation and is supported by a case study used as pre-reading material to encourage participation. Both the presentation and the case study are opportunities for Glenn to tell stories about clients of his, doctors who have faced specific financial risks, and how he has helped them develop strategies to protect against those risks. Through this seminar series—which Glenn has been running every few weeks for the past year to groups of doctors at hospitals around the city—Glenn has gained numerous clients and a pipeline that is always full of doctor prospects.

Because of the success of the physicians’ seminar series, Glenn decided to add more such programs. We are currently in the process of launching a seminar series targeted at lawyers.

On top of the case studies and seminars, I also coach Glenn on a regular basis on how to use the power of stories in appointments with specific prospects and clients.

Since adopting a storyselling approach, Glenn has been able to increase the professional and business-owner segment of his clientele by over 20%.