The year that just ended was not just an election year; it was a Leap Year. That meant you had an extra day to achieve your annual goals. Did your business grow by meaningful double digits? Did you have a breakout year for personal income? Did your clients send you twelve referrals? If you’re like most advisors, none of those things happened. But 2025 can be a very different year for you, a Quantum Leap Year. For that to happen, you need to get started now. We will be publishing a blog every week this year in an effort to help you achieve elite-level performance.
Why Start With The Why?
If a friend, or just somebody in an elevator, asked you what you do for a living, would you have your answer ready? If you don’t have a compelling answer ready, you’re missing a great opportunity to grow your business. With this blog, we are going to try to help you craft a winning elevator pitch.
Investors typically have a difficult time explaining exactly what financial advisors do. The best that most of them can come up with, even if they have an advisor, is something like “He/she helps me with my money.” That is hardly a ringing endorsement. The 73% of American families who don’t use an advisor obviously don’t believe that advisors add enough value to even talk about.
Ironically, all this ignorance creates a great opportunity for you—if you’re ready when the opportunity arises. When it does, you have about 30 seconds to convert a simple question into engagement,trust-building, and maybe even long-term business success.
Advisory is a crowded field with lots of different players. Insurance companies, bankers, financial planners, asset managers, and mutual fund companies are all competing for the same account, and the different products and solutions they offer can confuse and confound even very successful and highly educated people. So, the first thing you need to do is stand out from the crowd.
The last thing you want to do in your elevator pitch is talk about anything technical. Your prospect doesn’t care about anything technical; they care about themselves and their families. What they need is the security that they can enjoy a great lifestyle for as long as they live and maybe even leave a legacy for future generations. Understanding this is key: people don’t buy services; they buy stories, missions, and beliefs. When you articulate your purpose, which is another word for your why, you begin to create an emotional connection.
The Three Elements of a Great Elevator Pitch
There are three elements of a great elevator pitch: clarity, relatability, and purpose. When you start with the why, you accomplish all three. If you gain that initial interest and connection, there will be plenty of time later to talk about your credentials, technical skills, and industry experience. Make your elevator pitch about your deeper purpose and motivation.
Here are two different ways of saying the same thing: “We offer personalized financial planning” and “We believe everyone deserves to retire with dignity and peace of mind.” One is much more powerful and memorable. But even though the second is much better, it’s only half of your pitch. It’s the second part and vitally important, but it needs something more to be a real pitch: it needs to follow your contribution.
Let’s look at your contribution and stick with the planning example. You could say, “We use a powerful planning software program to calculate a person’s likelihood of plan failure,” or, “We do all we can to learn what’s really important to our clients.” Again, you see the difference. When we put them together, we can move the cheese:
“We do all we can to learn what’s really important to our clients because we believe that everyone deserves to retire with dignity and peace of mind.” Compare that with “We offer personalized financial planning that calculates a person’s likelihood of plan failure.”
Does the listener to the first one believe you’re an empathetic and caring person who can possibly help them with one of their biggest concerns? How about the second one? The lesson here is simple: drop the stuff about what you do and focus on why you do it.
This same approach works wonderfully well in all your communications and marketing. The goal of those efforts is to inspire action, and to do that, you need an emotional connection.
To find your why, you should start by reflecting on why you became an advisor in the first place. Were there moments in your life that inspired that choice? Consider your core values—the drivers of your culture—things like empowerment, fairness, and security. Sometimes, other people see things more clearly than you do, so ask your clients, friends, and colleagues what they value most about you.
Members of the 10XFA Club get access to dozens of videos on building a thriving advisory practice. Membership in the club is free, and we’re sure your business and job satisfaction will both show meaningful improvement in 2025. Go here to join the 10X Club.
Note: special recognition to leadership expert Simon Sinek for his groundbreaking work in “Start With The Why?”. His books and videos are excellent.
