Peter Answers: Financial advisor asks whether he should qualify his elevator speech

Question:

“I am a financial advisor. When I introduce myself using my elevator speech, I mention that I will help them achieve their financial goals, but sometimes that may not be possible. Their situation may be complicated or they may have a lot of debt, or they just are not saving enough to make their goals a reality. I almost feel like I should qualify my promise in my elevator speech because I feel guilty. Is this false advertising? Am I misleading people?”

Peter Answers:

Before I respond, let me remind you that the purpose of your elevator speech is NOT to make a sale. It is to ask them to take the next step with you.

Given this, the only job of your elevator speech is to attract interest. They’ll only be interested if you are selling something they want, usually some happy result, or “end-state”. If you are a personal trainer, your end-state might be a healthy body. If you sell parts for a manufacturing process, it may be a headache-free supply chain. In your case, as a financial advisor, that may be peace of mind that loved will be taken care of, should something bad happen. Either way, your elevator speech is meant encourage the right people to take the next step with you.

So, the elevator speech is NOT the time to qualify anything. You can take as much time as you need to qualify your
client in the next step of the sales process. This is usually your first meeting. If unusual situations exist that prevent the typical results from occurring, it is at this meeting when you would identify and discuss them. You are NOT misleading anyone if you don’t bring up every contingency within your first 30 seconds or meeting them.
In fact, you are shooting yourself in the marketing foot, if you do.

When a personal trainer promises she’ll whip you into shape, she doesn’t need to qualify that it won’t work as effectively for the lazy, the injured, or those with bad backs, in her elevator speech (unless, of course, her speciality is working with the lazy, the injured, or people with bad backs).  She is simply reporting the typical results of her service.

After all, she can provide the process, the know-how, the gentle (or not-so-gentle) motivation — in short, all the ingredients for success — but she can’t foresee every unusual situation because you control the most important ingredient of all. You and your choices. You still have to choose to eat right and get yourself out of bed and go train.
If you don’t and wonder why you are not getting results, it ain’t her process, skippy. It’s you. Similarly, if people don’t save or are spending themselves into debt, no amount of financial advising pixie dust is going to help them. But don’t feel like you have to warn them of this, you don’t.

Agreed, there are sometimes unusual circumstances. But these are exceptions and once again, you are not responsible for listing all contingencies in your elevator speech. For example, if a financial advising client is trying to come out of a financial hole and there is simply no way to reach their their goals before they retire, it’s okay
to tell them once you’ve assessed their situation and figure out what *is* possible.  As long as you haven’t strung them along with promises that won’t become reality just to make the sale, you are not acting inappropriately.

To recap, there is no need to qualify in your elevator speech that people with unusual circumstances may not see all the intended results. You must however, be honest and truthful early in your sales process if you don’t think you can help them as much as they hope.

Now, there is another dimension to your question that the coach in me found intriguing. You mentioned “I feel guilty”. Please ask yourself why? Is your message truthful? If so, then you have nothing to feel guilty about.
If you still do, then this is worth exploring with a good coach.

Wishing you all the success,
Peter Vogopoulos

Have a marketing question?  Ask me at http://www.AskPeterNow.com