DeMoss: I’d like to, if I could, whenever I do this presentation, have the opportunity to talk about this topic. I like to open up with a story. I’m from Chicago. Do we have anybody from Chicago? Any Chicago folks here at all? OK, very good. I’m from the Chicagoland area, and my co-presenter here, Rob Kochel, who’s been a part of our consulting group for a decade, with over 30 years of experience in the business, actually lives up in Canada and runs our consult operation in the Canadian neck of the woods. I’m grateful to have Rob here; he’s going to be co-presenting with me.

Rob is in Toronto and, as I said, I’m in Chicago. One of the reasons I love Chicago is that I’m a pretty big sports fan. I love the Bears, OK? I love the Bears. They’ve had some rough times here recently, but I’m reminded of a story that I read in the “Chicago Tribune” as we move into this topic.

It reminds me of this story about a very fanatical Chicago Bears fan. Just a nut case. So he goes to Soldier Field — where the Bears play. His tickets were on the 47 yard line, six rows up from the field. He had awesome, awesome seats. He gets to the stadium, and he sits down, ready for the game. We’re playing the Packers, by the way, for the divisional championship. Big game, of course. He sits down, and the seat next to him is wide open. There’s nobody there. He turns to the gentleman on the other side of that seat, and he says, “Hey. Can you believe that whoever owns this seat for the Bears and the Packers game is not going to use it on a day like today? This is like 47 yard line.” The guy turns to him and says, “That’s my seat. My wife and I have owned these seats for the last 17 years, and this is the first game that she’s missed because she passed away.” He feels horrible for even asking the question in the first place.

A few more minutes goes by. The kickoff takes place. He turns back to the gentleman, and he says, “Hey, I’ve got to ask you one more question. Do you mean to tell me that for a game like this, the Bears and the Packers, you couldn’t get a friend, a neighbor or a relative to come to this game?” He goes, “Nope. They’re all at the funeral.”

Kochel: You could substitute the Toronto Maple Leafs for that as well.

DeMoss: So it generally takes about three to four seconds for that to sink in. Like, “What did he just say?” And the reason that I call that a hypothetical story, in a sense, is that there’s a real, solid moral to that story, and it’s this. Many times, we focus on the wrong things. Our focus is on the wrong things, and it can get us in trouble.

You heard me in the previous discussion say that being a great communicator takes time and effort. Really, that’s what we want to talk about here. We want to put some focus on that critical element. I know you have a lot of other things to do in this business, and we want to make sure that we stay focused on that.

What’s at stake for us as communicators, especially when we’re talking to prospective clients? Our brand is at stake. That brand is a dynamic brand. It’s either going up or down. As I mentioned earlier, the goal of our session, what Rob and I hope to accomplish here, very simply, is to help us in organizing our thinking as you tell your important story to clients in a way that is very compelling to them. That’s really what we want to do today. So I’m going to ask Rob to take us through where this all comes from very quickly.

Kochel: The methodology comes from Maslansky + Partners out of New York. They’re the word experts that we introduced to the financial services business about 12 years ago. Essentially, they have been helping us discover the emotional language behind financial language. The reality now is, if you’ve been to a typical focus group, you’ll notice that what we do are in-depth interviews of people beforehand to get the language down. Then we bring these dial sessions in, where we bring actual investors and people who are putting their money with you, and we test them by way of these perception analyzers.

They put them to 50. They can dial up; they can dial down. We say, “If you like what you want, dial up from 50. If you don’t, dial down.” What’s interesting is that we started this research in the United States. Then eight years ago, we brought it up to Canada. Maslansky had never been outside of the United States. He came up to Canada, and he was very buoyed by the experience because the principals were the same. What’s also interesting is that we took him to Montreal where they speak French. You’d better speak French. He didn’t speak French, and he was worried, so we had translators, and it went amazingly well. Now, the reality is, they’re in 16 countries around the world with us. It’s been fabulous to understand the communication.

What I find fascinating, and what Gary would certainly be aware of too, is that culturally, when you go to different countries, people will dial up to a certain level and dial down. In Canada, Canadians will not dial past 80. They can go to 100, but they won’t. Like that high school teacher you used to have who didn’t give out A-pluses — remember them? The other thing is, we will not dial beneath 30 because we’re too nice. The Japanese are like us. But, as Gary knows, you go to Brooklyn, and they’ll dial you right down to zero. They don’t care. They don’t care what’s going on in Brooklyn.

The Brooklyn dials are unbelievable. So the magic is we get the response instantaneously. Unlike a traditional focus group, you’re seeing them. They ask for somebody’s opinion, and somebody puts up their hand right away. They sound very smart, and they sound very intelligent. What happens to the rest of the participants? They don’t say anything.

This is magical because everybody’s anonymous, and we see it by the second. Then when we come out of that, we obviously have a hypothesis in terms of where things are at. We can tell exactly when the dials go up and when they go down. Then we talk to the moderator when this is going on to see that something happened there. We’re able to, quite frankly, at a granular level, get the information very quickly and develop a hypothesis about it, whereby we will take it to a national survey to validate the findings.

Now, one of the things that I should’ve mentioned is that the people who participate in our dial sessions are all paying for professional advice. There are no do-it-yourselfers. They’re all paying for professional advice. So that’s the methodology that we use. Since that time, we now have the largest study ever done on financial language. We can tell you the words that work, and we can tell you the words that don’t work. So, Gary, I think I’ll turn it back to you.

DeMoss: Again, what we’re going to talk about with this format is really designed to do the following. It is to help you tell — help you create — your story in a way that’s clear, concise and compelling.

No. 2, to be able to tell your story with constancy. Once you have your story down, you only have to change it on the margins. No. 3, to be able to do this in deck format or be able to do it verbally. Almost everybody here just does it verbally without a deck. It’ll gives you tremendous flexibility to deliver this presentation in 15 minutes, 30 minutes or 45 minutes. You see, when you have structure and when you have flow to a presentation, it doesn’t make any difference how much time you have to speak. If they say, “You’ve got 20 minutes to speak,” I can make that happen. If I’ve got 90 minutes to speak, I can make that happen. As long as I have my structure and my flow, I know where I’m going to go.

Then, finally, it’s designed to answer the three questions that prospective clients want to know from us in that initial interview. It’s really important that we memorize these to go over those again. These are the three questions that prospective clients want to know from us.

No. 1, do you understand the complexity that comes with my situation? I’ll be that prospective client. This is the credibility piece of this. I’ve got to make sure that you’re credible; that you know what you’re talking about; that you can handle the complexities that come with my situation. No. 2, in all the coaching that I’ve done, I find it really interesting that people have a really difficult time in 30 to 45 seconds explaining my money. So we’re going to talk about that in a just a few minutes. Then the last thing is, what other services do you provide in addition to investments?

With the focus on fees, like no other time in our industry, people are starting to question, When I pay you that fee that you charge, what else am I getting besides the investment piece? What else do you bring to the table here? So this last part, how to talk about the services that you bring to the table beyond the investment piece, is really, really important.

These three questions are how we frame it. Everybody should have their copy of this on your desk. [visual]

I’m actually going to have you fill it in along the way and have you fill in the boxes. Imagine that this is going to be your deck. [visual] This is going to be the deck that you would build out. But the fact of the matter is, it’s going to give you the landing spots for that client conversation to be that prospective client.

In the last session, I did a quick, high-level run-through on each one of the nine boxes. Remember, I talked about the whole idea. Speakers — we always speak in threes, right? Three points, three subpoints. I don’t want to give away the shop here, but that’s what we do. That’s easy for audiences to remember and easy for us to communicate. That’s why we put it into this specific format.

Kochel: The other thing that we would tell you is that we’ve been talking about doing this in a formal deck. This is a coffee conversation as well. This will show you the road map in terms of a coffee conversation and what we get indicted for all the time from clients and potential clients; they say we talk too much. One of the things they say is, “It’s like you’ve got too much to say and too little time to say it.” Anytime that the client or prospect is talking, you’re winning. So this format is obviously for formal situations. I want you to think about this in Starbucks as well. Because the reality is, it doesn’t change. So we’re going to take you through each one of these boxes. Gary and I are going to rotate back and forth. I’m going to take you through the first one.

I want you to write in the first box “core team bios.” All right? Core team bios. We’re going to take you through biographies. Now, we were struck by the fact that no one in our industry had ever researched whether clients and prospects liked our bios. It turns out they don’t. Well, what happened here? How did we lose them? Let me show you. What they like are three paragraphs and notice the picture as well. [visual]

In terms of the first paragraph, when you read a financial planner’s biography or when you read an insurance professional’s biography, what is the first paragraph always about? Themselves, right? Where I went to school, my experience, my designations and everything else. What they took issue with is, they said, “The bio is for me. It’s not for you to brag about yourselves in the first paragraph.” But we said, “We’re not bragging.” And they said, “It just doesn’t come off right. I need to see the benefit. What is it that you do for clients? Are you an insurance professional? Are you a financial planner? Are you an associate? What is it that you do because I want to be able to connect on the benefits.” So we said, “Fair enough. We can get better at that. When do we tell you about our education and our designations and all that I’ve experienced?” And they said, “Please, if you could do that in the second paragraph.” All right? And it’s just a little subtle thing, but the reality is that they said, “I want you to be concise with that. I don’t need to hear your life story that you started in Des Moines, and then you move here. Then you moved to Grand Rapids. Just give it to me concisely.”

The other thing that they told us, and this is critical in the insurance industry, is this: When people get our cards, they see that we have all of the brackets behind our name with all of our designations, whether they are CRM, CLU or ARM, or whatever it may be, and they don’t understand what those are. What they said to us was, “When we you writing about that, if you could spell it out, and tell me that you’re a certificated financial planner or you’re a certified life fund writer or you’re a certified risk manager. Tell me what the acronym means because I don’t understand it.” We said, “Fair enough.”

Of all three paragraphs, the last one had the highest dials. Now, can you imagine what the last paragraph may be about? What do you do outside of work? I’m trying to make a connection to you. If you are analytical, I know that you’re wiggling in your seat right now, and you’re thinking, I don’t do that. But you’re going to have to. It’s 2018, and they want to know your family. They want to know your hobbies. They want to know what you do outside of work. It’s very important, by the way — Gary and I were stunned — but the ages of the children are a big deal. Like if I said to you, “I have two girls; one’s 7 and one’s 3,” what are you going to say? Well, let’s be honest. You’re looking at me, and you’re seeing some gray hair, and you’re thinking, Got to be a story there. Let’s be honest.

We won’t go there. I do have two girls. One’s 35, and one’s 33. Now, what’s the question? “Are you a grandfather yet?” “Yeah.” “Congratulations. Baby girl?” “Yeah, baby girl.” See what happens here? If you own a dog, tell people. I have a Dalmatian. By the way, the dogs they loved were Golden Retrievers and Dalmatians. They weren’t big on Rottweilers. But, at any rate, my point is give them something personal. That’s the whole thing. Gary, I’m going to turn it over to you.

DeMoss: Yeah, just a couple more comments. As Rob mentioned, you see where the experience piece is. What paragraph is it in? Two. In most bios, what paragraph you see — I’ve been in this 37 years — is one. We found, as Rob mentioned, that they actually thought you’re old, you’re not going to listen and you don’t care about changing. Don’t shoot the messenger here, but the fact of the matter is, they do value experience. This is really interesting. So, basically, when it comes to that number, they almost felt like you’re lording it over them. Just because you’ve been around so much and you know everything. These are some of the very little subtleties that we have to be aware of when we construct a bio that is based on the research.

Kochel: There is one other subtlety, and it’s not so subtle. When you get a LinkedIn invitation without a picture, what do you do with it? Delete it. They said the same thing. If they cannot see an updated picture of us, they’re gone. Here is the reality. Gary and I see this all over the place. We will see a picture of someone online, and we’ll go and meet and say, “Whoa. When did you take this picture?” “Oh, I should update.” “Yeah, when?”

DeMoss: I think it’s like in our brochure when they looked at us.

Kochel: Yeah. You need to update that picture. It’s 2018. Believe me, when you have an old picture on your bio or on your website, you think that’s a thumbs up? Or do you think that’s a thumbs down? You bet. Because it’s an indication of trust. You are not who you said you were by that picture. So this picture is even more important. What they are telling us is this: We don’t have to do the big corporate picture in the boardroom with the mahogany table. They said, “We would like to see the camera looking at you, not you looking at the camera.” So for the gentlemen, if you don’t wear ties, don’t dress up for the picture. Be you. For the women in the room, if you don’t wear very conservative clothing, then don’t wear it for the picture. Be you. That’s what they said.

DeMoss: We chatted with several different photographers and asked them what kind of pictures are in and which aren’t. It is definitely not what we call the “corporate key card look.”

Kochel: No.

DeMoss: Just looking straight ahead, that is not what we’re talking about here. Can you see here, this little bit of an action photo, something looking away in another direction? [visual] It should be somewhat of an action-oriented picture. We can talk to you more about that offline, but as Rob mentioned, that picture’s really, really important — how it looks — and make sure that it is updated, especially on LinkedIn.

So the first thing I do is put the bio at the very front of the deck, because where are most bios? They’re at the very back of the deck. Our research says people want to know about you, by you. Here’s the second thing: support resources. I need to articulate in some element that there is some depth behind me, that there’s some depth to me. We’ve got to project that. So we do a lot of consulting with a group called 5W. Their specialty is infographics and how you put infographics in a way that you can actually see and understand them.

We’re going to suggest to you that you develop a deck that looks look like this. [video] It’s what we call our “infield, outfield,” and it moved left to right. Most of the time when you see or charge for organizations, you see top to bottom, which says, “Some people are up here, and other people are way down here.” The infield, outfield puts everybody on the same plain. So we call this infield, outfield.

The first layer — these are the people. You see Mike Smith and Jennifer. [visual] These are the people whom they would come into contact with. These are the primary contacts who would be involved with the client. That second line — and, by the way, this is all going to be customized. You put whatever you want to put here, but these are some of the team resources that you have available through your organization. It could be right there. It could be if it’s estate planning or insurance, or if you are insurance, that obviously is not going to be it. These are resources that you have to draw upon. Then the last line there is what we call strategic partners. It could be that you’re going to work with their CPA or with their attorney. But it’s designed to show layers of support behind you as the primary contact. I want to show, in this slide, the depth of resources and whom they’re going to be dealing with on an ongoing basis.

Kochel: Now, the other little addendum to this is when, on your website, you list your team vertically, and that person is on the bottom. Do you think that they were happy the first day they saw that? They’ve never mentioned it to you, but they haven’t been happy. Now, here’s how it can manifest itself when you bring a new client onboard. You’ll bring those people in, and what do we often do? We often hand them off that to that person to onboard them with the paperwork. So you have just told that prospect, in the very first hour, “You’re going to get the last-place member on this team.” It’s the wrong thing, and it’s exactly what we don’t want to do. So Gary’s point about doing this horizontally is a more malleable situation and obviously what people like.

And I can tell you, you have a huge opportunity, because let me ask you this: In your firms, can it be too complicated for the average investor to figure out? Absolutely. They can’t figure it out. So this is an opportunity for us to tell them how we’re organized. To tell them how we fit into the firm and to talk specifically about our group, because what they said to us was this: “I need to know that my money in in a safe and stable place because Bernie Madoff did something that is in the back of my mind every time I make an investment decision. If you’re telling me that I’m going to put the money with the ABC Group, I don’t know who those people are.” So the point is, you can brag about your firm. You can talk about your firm. How you fit in. Essentially who you are, but make sure that you start with the firm.

DeMoss: I think one other thing on that to Rob’s point about the whole Bernie Madoff thing is, I’m sure that they trust you with the money, but then where does the money go after that? And who is providing the regulatory oversight to make sure that that money gets to where it needs to be? This slide is put in here for safety and security on behalf of the client. It doesn’t mean that your firm, the firm that you’re associated with, has to steal the show in any way. But they want to know that there is a solid, stable, safe organization behind what you are offering there. That’s why we put that in there. That’s why that’s a third part on that. Make sure that we’re always talking about this in a benefit form of what this means to the client.

Kochel: You saw that we used triangles here. If you can illustrate it, it’s going to help you. If your company logo ID is a rectangle, use a rectangle, but use the illustration. Because a lot of people are visual learners, they’ll remember that. All right?

DeMoss: Absolutely. So, as I mentioned before, this is not a 45-minute presentation you’re going to give the client. This is designed to be a conversation. It could be at a club or at a restaurant. It could be in your office. I’m going to show you the Client-Centered Opener and the Benefit-Base Close in just a minute. But I would stop here, and I would pause, and you can pause at any one of these points and say, “OK, so one of the things that we want to make sure of if you’re to become a prospective client of ours is that you understand that we understand the complexities that come with your situation. So based on what we covered here, we talked about what my role is. We’ve talked about the support staff and resources that we bring to bear and what it means to be a client of my firm and the firm that I’m associated with. Do we have any questions before we move on?” I do my check-in question right there at the end of Q1. I’m always checking in, and they’re going to say, “So I do a have a question. If I had day-to-day issues, who would I chat with?”

So the point of this is that this is a consultative conversation; it’s not a speech. What we’re giving you here is direction on where to go in the conversation. So on to point No. 2. And that very simply is, what will you do with the money? What are you going to do with the money? OK? Let’s talk about question No. 2. First thing, the assessment process. Now, I said this in my earlier talk to you. We coach a multitude of top teams throughout the United States. I’m just amazed that when we ask them the question, “What do you do?” they say, “Well, I’m not really sure. I do know, but we do this, and this.” And their thinking is just all over the map. OK? All over the map. So I’m going to give you a couple of ways to talk about that.

Here’s the first way. How many have ever seen this diagram before or some form of this? [visual] It’s discover. We do a proposal, we implement and then we do monitor. We actually tested this with our focus groups. Do you think they liked it? They definitely thought it was not good because they thought it was a circle, and they’re going nowhere. They’re just going around and around and don’t get anywhere in the process. So there’s another way to clearly articulate that on a deck in visual form. It looks a little bit like this. [visual] So I talk about there’s high-level. There are basically four steps that we do.

Whenever we think about the investment process, the first thing I want to do is your discovery work. We want to make sure that we understand your personal goals, your situation. That’s what really matters most to us. Then we come back to you. Once we know what your goals are, once we know what you want to accomplish with your finances, we’ll come back and give you a proposal. The next step we do is implement. We implement our proposal. Then, finally, what we do is monitor the results on at least an annual basis, maybe even quarterly, depending upon how often you like to meet.

Did you hear what I just said there? How many of us do annual reviews? What’s really important when it comes to annual reviews is No. 1, to make sure that you meet with clients as much as they want to meet, OK? If annually is annually, that’s right. But they’ve told us, “Look, I may want to meet more than annually. Maybe semiannually.” You need to ask them the question. You might also want to ask them, “Hey, how often would you like to be updated on where you’re at?”

This word “monitor” is a huge word. These words are selected for a reason. Of these four words — “discover,” “propose,” “implement” and “monitor” — which one do you think resonates the most with clients?

“Monitor” is one, and besides “monitor,” “discover.” They love the fact that you’re talking about discovery. The more you talk about discovery, the more you talk about what’s important to them, and it’s important that you find out. You cannot land there long enough. The dials just go up.

I want to show you a video. [visual] This is a professional actor. We’ve shown this to focus groups. You can see a 50, which means I have everybody set their dials to neutral. By the way, if you get into the 60s, that means they just love your message, and if it gets below 50 into the 30s, they’re angry. I mean they’re not happy at all.

So I want you to watch what happens. Dials going back just to 50 here. Blue line is accumulators; red lines are retirees in this specific case here. I want you to listen to the message to see if it works. I want you to see if you can pick up what words and what we did here, in this specific video, to get the response that we’ve got. So here we go. [video]

Kochel: One of the things that I want to pivot back on is discover. Gary said, “What’s the most important step?” We have a four-step process, and it begins with discover. An interesting little nuance we just picked up recently is discovery versus discover. “Discovery” has the overhang of a legal term. I had to do eight hours of discovery — best day I’ve ever had. Yeah, no. So we’re just picking up on that right now, but here’s the other thing when you are asking people about their affairs. Let’s just say that you’re talking to us, and you say, “Well, I’m talking with you about $2 million today.” And I should say to you, “Don’t worry about that. We handle $2 million all the time.” “Yes, but we also have property. We’ve sold the place in Tampa. We bought another place in Naples. We’ve got a capital gain situation.” And we should say to you, “Don’t worry about that; we handle that. We’ve got tax experts on site and everything else.” How do you think people reacted to that when we interrupted them when they were telling their story? Telling them that this is not a problem — we do this all the time.

We were interrupting them and we were telling them, “You are not that special.” What they told us was, “Let me tell the story. At the end, thank me for that, and if you want to make a comment, say, ‘That is unique’ or ‘That is detailed.’” They just want to be able to tell their story and, quite frankly, feel a little special. So I was really guilty of that. I can tell you, interrupting people with “Don’t worry, we handle people like that. We handle money like that all the time. We’ve got services” — I’m telling you, you’re not special. So that’s one of the things we have to be aware of in discover.

The other thing that I can tell you in discover is that a lot of people in the first step talk about development of an IPS, an investment policy statement or essentially how they’re going to manage the assets. You want the first step of your process to be about compliance? No. So don’t be putting that in the first step.

DeMoss: I’m going to read you the narrative: “If you come to me with a concern about something happening in the market around the world, my job is to put it into context for you. I believe that we should take a step back and talk about where you are in your financial plan. Because it’s not about my opinion; it’s about your individual goals and how this risk could affect them. So the first thing I will do is work with you to determine your exposure to this risk and how it could or could not affect you personally. I will give you a realistic assessment and have those tough conversations with you so that you won’t be caught off guard. Lastly, I think it’s important to analyze and bring to life the potential benefits of any choice that we make.” Just so you know, there in that dial, the dials end in the 80s. In the 80s. What did we do in that text? What did I do in that text to get the dials in the 80s?

Audience: We talked about you.

DeMoss: We talked about what?

Audience: You.

Kochel: Right.

DeMoss: You. Right. We used the personal pronouns “you” and “your.” “You” and “your.”

Let me just talk about these personal pronouns: “I” versus “we” versus “you.” We have studied the whole usage of personal pronouns when it comes to language. How many of you all are going to dinner tonight? How many of you have ever had to sit next to the I-focused person? You know: “I have been doing this, and I’ve been around this long. I just got this accomplished, and I’ve done this. By the way, I’m a little tired talking about me. Would you talk about me for a while?” How many have ever been around that person? The dials go down. Let me just tell you they go down there. Now you bring up the point about the personal pronoun “we.” That is not so much a bad word, “we,” when it’s about me and my firm and what we’re going to do for you.

Audience: You can also refer to “we” as the client and the advisor.

DeMoss: The client and advisor. Anytime we use that would be absolutely fine. But I can’t emphasize enough — and we’ve seen this in focus group after focus group — that whenever we use the personal pronouns “you” and “your” — and, by the way, not just verbally, but when your literature on your websites, instead of using generic language, “my clients” — why don’t you think about where you can use the personal pronouns “you” and “your”? Let me just tell you, it makes a big difference. We know how this is going to work. Not that you can’t ever use the personal pronoun “I”; you’ve just got to be careful in terms of how it all comes together. As to your point, you see how many times we use this “you” and “your,” and “you” and “your.”

So the point of this is, can I just articulate very simply, very clearly the investment process? How we’re going to do our discovery work? We’re going to come back with a proposal. Then we’re going to implement this. Then we’re going to monitor this on a regular basis to keep you informed. It’s very, very important it doesn’t take that long, and you can go as deep as you want in any of those four areas. But you’ve given them an overview of what you’re going to do with their investments.

Kochel: Add more “you”; add more “your.” Every time, the dial goes up. Every time. So that’s a very simple technique that you can put to work tonight. Let’s get into the next box. This is the middle box where we talk about our investment philosophy. We did some work on this, and we discovered that the average advisor, the average financial planner, takes between three and seven minutes to discuss their investment philosophy. How long do you think the investor listens to an investment philosophy?

One second. One minute maybe. One minute. We’ll say, “Well, we have four principals about managing wealth. No. 1, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. No. 2, blah, blah, blah. The person goes, “Oh, my God, she’s going to go through every one of them.” Here’s what we discovered. If you illustrate your investment philosophy, you are in a more advantageous situation. Now, in this case, this is an actual team we worked with, and they had five principals about managing people’s wealth. They put them like this. [visual] The magic of this is, if I’m having a conversation with you tonight, at a coffee shop or a restaurant, and you say, “How do you manage the money?” to Gary’s point, I say, “We have four steps in our investment process. We have five principles. Let me show you. You can draw this out on a napkin.” The magic is, you can tell them where they are. When you put that down, good. When you put that down and you don’t say anything, what do you think the listener does?

They ask a question. They say, “I don’t understand what you mean about maintaining objectivity.” And that’s where the light goes on, and you say, “Aha. That’s what they’re interested in” or “That’s what they’re most skeptical about.” They have just led you to a place that you can work with. That’s the magic of this. Just so you know, the best number is three. Three principles the beliefs. Four is OK; five is starting to stretch it. But we are conditioned as children to consume data in threes. And if you think about our nursery rhymes, there are always three bears or three pigs. If you think about Greek epics, there were always three trials. We are taught to consume information in three. So three is the best number, but certainly, four is OK; five is starting to stretch it.

If I said to you today, “I have two principals about managing wealth,” what is your reaction? “What? That’s it?” If I said, “I have seven principles about managing wealth,” what is your reaction now? “Oh, this is going to be complicated. I don’t know.” Three, four, five — that’s the reality. But illustrating the philosophy is certainly your best course of action rather than talking about it. Does that make sense?

DeMoss: So one of these that we found when we initially started coaching teams, to Rob’s point, is very text heavy on what they believed, etc. Make it simple. This is the five W’s coming back again. What are the passion points that you believe in when it comes to managing people’s money? Simple, sweet and short.

I want to share something here. How many see the word “fee”? [visual] Isn’t it kind of interesting that they put “fee” there? We’ve found that it is really important to be able to talk about fees in today’s world. The No. 1 thing that people hate, based on our research, is undisclosed and unexpected fees.

Kochel: Yep.

DeMoss: I mean, it’s a deal killer. By the way, how do you think that the word “fee” tested? Up or down?

Down. Follow me on this for a minute. It’s a word that we have to use all the time. But think about it culturally. Right? Since 2008 and 2009, companies have been looking for every which way they can possibly can to fee us to death. I mean, lost revenue — we’ve got to make up for it somehow. How many of you have ever noticed this when you check out of a hotel room? “Well, you know, I thought my room was $125. I come back, and it’s $155.” Why is that? What’s listed there? There are three or four what? Fees. How many ever take a rental car? I do all the time. And I thought it was $47 a day and instead it’s $62 a day. The big, long list of recovery fees and tire fees and you name it. It’s the word “fee,” and I just hate that word. How many of you have checked your phone bill lately? Try to decipher a phone bill for a minute, the most stark example of this. So what happens culturally is they hear this word, and they grow an emotional attachment to it.

For instance, flying out of O’Hare going to San Francisco: The cost of my ticket was $249. The woman in front of me was from Peoria, Illinois. This is in February; from Chicago to Peoria it’s a 25-minute, at most, flight. The cost of her ticket was $950. Go figure out their pricing model. So she gets up to the counter, and she puts her baggage up on the counter, on the weigh station. Do you know where I’m going with this? The attendant goes, “Oh, ma’am, I am so sorry. Unfortunately, you are over the 50-pound limit, and I’m going to have to charge you an additional $75 baggage what?”

Audience: Fee.

DeMoss: You should’ve seen us. Like the Fourth of July in February, right?

So when we talk about fees, they think, “Oh, I’m paying you, and then I have to pay all this extra?” Let me give you the solution to this, OK? I’m not going to leave you hanging here. Because it’s not that you’re going to ever get rid of the word “fee” and all these perspectives. This is our coaching when we coach teams. Whenever you get to the fee conversation in whatever conversation you’re having about whatever product or service you’re going to talk about, don’t ever say, “OK. Now let’s talk about the fees” or “The fees are this.” You want to say, “Well, let me explain. I’d be more than happy to talk about the costs that are associated with the services.”

You heard what I said? “I’m more than happy to talk about the costs.” Here, go ahead and talk about it with me; tell me what those are. They understand costs, but when they hear the word “fee,” they have a totally different and completely emotional response. Just a little trick of the trade here that’ll go a long way. By the way, don’t shy away from it. Tomorrow in my session, I’ll show you a whole statement on how to structure that response when somebody says, “So how much does this cost me?” Based on all of our research, I’ll show you how to respond to that.

Kochel: Here’s an interesting reality in today’s consumers. The moment they hear “fee,” the first thing they think of, in 2018, is the roaming fee on their phones. The second thing is baggage fee, the third thing is bank fee, the fifth is hidden fee, then it’s legal fee. There are another nine. There’s only one word that goes with “fee.” Can you guess what it is? No, fee. So the cost is incredibly powerful.

DeMoss: You’re going to like this one. We torqued it a lot of different ways to talk about fees and talk about this. One of the ways that we said that we tested it is that we want to make sure that you know that we are going to be very transparent with our fees.

Kochel: All right.

DeMoss: We used the word “transparent.” Do you know what happened? Nothing but negative. They absolutely hated that. They didn’t believe it at all. You know what they said to us in our focus groups?

The politicians said that they were going to be transparent. The politicians said that they were going to be transparent about X, Y, Z, and about this and about that. Hey, this is what they’ve said, that basically what has happened is that the politicians have hijacked the word “transparent.” As a matter of fact, we did a man-on-the-street video, and we asked people, “So what do you think “transparent fees” mean?" They said, “Oh, that’s where they try to hide the fees from you.” Seriously. The replacement words for “transparent” that you want to use is “I want to be straightforward.” “I want to be straightforward with you on the fees.” It’s much more believable in that sense. And I could go on and on about all these little nuances of the language we need to use and the words we need to use.

Kochel: Gary’s quite right about the word “transparent.” It’s been hijacked by the politicians. They also said it’s been hijacked by the legal community: “My client will be completely transparent through this court process.” And people say, “I don’t think so.” So that is a word that unfortunately has lost a little bit of its luster from that perspective. Come tomorrow, we’ll share with you a number of other words that work and other words that don’t work.

DeMoss: So we’ve talked about the whole idea of the investment process and philosophy. The last thing that I would highly encourage you to do is learn how to share a case study. How many of you ever used a case study in conversation with clients? Let me show you how to put together a case study real quick. I’m giving you a suggestion. Of course, I’m going to do it in three steps.

Every group of you, every team ought to have three to four of these, in their hip pockets, that you know by memory, depending on the kind of client you’ve got in front of you. There are three components to a great case study that I share with the client.

The first thing I’m going to share with them is the challenges that I saw. I have a lot of clients who are a lot like you. Let me give you an example about Bob and Kathy. I list the challenges that they face.
Next, I give them the recommendation. So based on the challenges that we saw, these are the recommendations that we made. [visual]
Then, finally, what you want to do based on the recommendations, and here are the results.

One, two, three: challenges, recommendations and then results.

Let me just say this. People love to hear stories, right? How many of you like to hear a good story? You love stories, illustrations, metaphors. We have a whole page called “Story selling is about making the unknown known by using what is familiar.” I’ll never forget the power of story and how powerful that really is.

Kochel: The one thing we found out about these case studies is that we discovered that people don’t read text. If you write this case study in paragraphs, they will not read it. Do it in bullet point form. All right? Do it in point form. A lot of white space. Don’t give them text. Another thing I want to comment on as well is testimonials. You know when you go to a website and somebody says that so and so was the best experience they ever had, Carol and Ted? How do you think testimonials tested in 2018?

Yeah, we can thank the travel industry for that online. I went to that hotel in Cancun — that was not five stars. [visual] Who wrote that? I can tell you that testimonials do not have the power that they did. They’re not hurting you; they’re aging you. So we found that with these case studies, people love them. We are getting feedback that people are reading the case studies on their way home from your meeting and saying, “This is us. We’re just like this family.” So to Gary’s point earlier: You don’t need 17 or 20 of them; you probably need three or four — an accumulator, a pre-retiree, maybe a small-business person, whatever your particular business is. So it’s there to help you from that perspective.

DeMoss: I want to go back to how powerful stories and illustrations can be with clients. I’ll never forget when I was speaking at the Montage in California. Has anyone ever been to the Montage? You know what I’m talking about? It is like, hello — one of the nicest places you’ve ever been to.

It was on a Saturday morning about 20 years ago. I was a fairly new speaker at the time, 20 years younger, by the way, and there was a gentleman who was talking on the economy. He was doing a lot of talking about tax strategies and all these very complicated economic theories. The audience was a group of 55 individuals who were about 50 to 60 years old, veterans in the business. I mean senior people, and he was getting up there and talking about this. I am talking on the topic of story selling and I was saying to myself, Are you kidding me? I’m going to have to get up there, and I’m going to have to talk about story selling after listening to that guy get up and talk?

As good speakers do, you always have to have conviction about what you’re going to talk about. So I walked up to the podium. I can still remember this: 25 on that side and 25 on this side, and there were three men in the very back row, on the right-hand side. As I stood at the podium to look up and to open up with my story, all three of them were sitting there. Each one of them had a separate section of “USA Today.” One had Life, one had Sports and one had the front page. You’ve been going to conferences for how many years? You know, you listen to boring speakers all the time, so you’re trying to keep your paper in your lap. We didn’t have phones then. At least put your paper underneath, or you put it on the table to make sure that the speakers don’t know what you’re doing. We all know. This is what they were doing, they just like this. [visual] No, I’m dead serious. All three of them had their newspaper up just like this. [visual] And I’m saying to myself as a speaker, Oh, OK. That’s interesting. But you know you’re trained to kind of just keep going, much like what we’ve got right here going on. At the same time, I’m saying to myself, OK, I’ve got to go.

So this is what I did. I opened up. I was doing a presentation on story selling, so I said, “I’d like to open up my session here today with a story.” I used the word “story.” This is what happened. They went just like this. [visual] They weren’t going to give it up. They’ve got their newspaper. They were just like, “Oh, I want to hear a story, but I don’t want this guy to think that I’m really going to listen to this thing.” Then I said, “How many of you in this room have ever tried to talk to your parents about finances and investment?” Then, all of a sudden, it went down a little bit further. I said, “Well, let me tell you the story about my dad, who was a football coach at Purdue University, and he retired. I had to go down, and I had to talk to them about the whole idea of retirement.” By the end of that, I actually had all their papers down. They were listening to everything that I was saying to them.

Then, here’s the interesting thing. At the very end of my presentation, I do a little thing on diversification. I share this story in my story-selling presentation about an advisor who used an illustration.

This is what they did if they’re going to talk about diversification. By the way, he worked on the 35th floor of the Hancock building in downtown Chicago. He said, “Anytime that I get clients to come in here who have concentrated stock positions whom I want to talk to about diversification, what I do is I draw two rectangles here. So I draw a rectangle here and I draw a rectangle there.” Real technical. I’ve given up on video. We’re just going to go with handwritten notes.

So, this is what he does. He’s got a couple who are sitting in front of him, and he’s shared this. He goes, “So look, I need to ask you a question. I’ve looked at your portfolio. You have a lot of stock in X, Y, Z. I want to ask you the question: If you were like me — and I work on the 35th floor every single day; I have to take the elevator up to this 35th floor — which elevator would you take? Would you take the elevator with one cable? Or would you take the elevator with four cables?” Got that? This is really complicated. They go, “Well, that’s ridiculous. We would take every time the elevator with four cables.” “Well, why?” “Well, if one broke, then the other three would still take the elevator.” He goes, “Can I just tell you something right now? Do you know that right now that your portfolio looks like a one-cable elevator?” It is so simple, and the reason that I bring that little, simple illustration up is because, when we share a case study, people like to hear stories. They don’t like heavy text; they love stories.

Kochel: So we would then confirm with that person, “Are you clear what we would do with your money? We’ve shown you the process. We’ve shown you our investment philosophy, and we’re sharing with you some actual case studies.” At that point: “Yeah. I’m clear with that.” “Great.” Well, let’s get to No. 3. What other services do you provide in addition to investments? If there are two words that you want to write down that today’s investor is interested in hearing about, they are “simplicity” and “convenience.” “One of the things that we’re very proud of is that we’re going to give you greater simplicity in your investment experience and convenience.” Now, what investor is not going to be interested in listening to how you’re going to do that. So I can tell you those two words are very powerful right now. These three boxes, which I’ll take you through, are showing them how you can give them greater simplicity and convenience. [visual]

So let’s go into the first one: financial services, known investment. I want you to write down “financial services, known investment.” “These are the things that I do, and our firm does, beyond just building a portfolio for you. I’ll put up some examples here. Let’s take a peek. Look at all of these services that we also provide for you, which you can take advantage of. You can read all of them up here. It’s quite significant. We do all of that for you. We have people with expertise in this and have people with expertise in that. We can do this.” I’ve had people say, “I’m not in the cash management game so much. I’m not in the consumer loans thing.” And I always say, “But clients sometimes ask you if they should lease the truck or buy the truck.” “Well, that’s true.” You’re in consumer loans. The client asks you, “Should we go fixed or variable on the mortgage?” You’re in consumer loans. Why don’t you tell them that? “This is what we do. These are all the things that we can do to simplify your life. It’s like one-stop shopping with me and my firm.”

I can do all of these things for you. The magic of this is, your firms provide you with this. It’s not like you have to go looking for this. Your firms provide you with this, and there may be some things that you’re not beating the drum on as hard as you should in terms of what’s going on out there. So all of those things I know you’re more than capable of doing.

In the next box, you can write down “wealth transfer and charitable giving.” It’s seemingly quite a complicated box, but when we did our research here, it wasn’t as complicated as we thought. It really came down to four pillars, which you can see here: philanthropy, estate planning, family governance and succession planning.

Let’s get into wealth transfer and charitable giving. I want to talk about this for a few minutes. Philanthropy — when you see the word, you’re probably like most people. You think, Oh, well those are the people who are ultrarich. Those are the people who have their name on the new hospital wing. Philanthropy for my type of client is not something that I would talk about very often.

Do clients provide charitable donations? Is that on their tax form? Absolutely. Do you ever ask the client, “Your charitable donations line — how much was it this year?” “It was $12,000.” “Oh, what did you do?” This was a story I came across. It was a woman who had lost her husband. Every time they got a knock at the door, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang — it was the heart foundation: “Oh, $350.” Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang — “Muscular dystrophy, $350.” Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang — “Kids’ football team going to Evanston, $200.” She gave away $12,000 at the door because she could not say no.

What this advisor said to her was this: “Listen, all of that money that you dispersed at the door — do you think you made any impact on the community?” And she said, “Do you think that every charity in this community knows your number? And what door you’re at? For sure they do.” The advisor then asked, “If you could give $12,000 to one thing, what would it be?” And she said, “I don’t know. I’ve never really thought about it.” They pressed her, and she said, “Children in distress.” She said, “I would give it to the women’s shelter because I was reading that the women’s shelter needs money.” They said, “Well, that’s interesting.” (She was in a women’s shelter when she was a young girl.) They said, “Well, why don’t you give that $12,000 to the women’s shelter and make a difference in the community?” You know what that woman said? “Thank you. Not only will I feel better, but I can tell those people at the door that I’m giving to the women’s shelter.”

So my point about philanthropy is, don’t think about it in the ultra. Think about it in the normal. It could be $1,000 in charitable donations, but find out what they’re doing and how you can help them out. Michael Maslansky, who does the research differently, tells us that we blow it with estate planning. If I was to say to a client, “Now we’ll talk about estate planning,” does the client say, “Oh, my God. I have been waiting for this. Honey, he’s going to finally talk about it”? No. What Michael says to us is this. Don’t talk about estate planning. Ask the client, “Hey, listen. How do you feel about death taxes?” “Pardon?” “How do you feel about death taxes?” “They tax you for dying?” “Mm-hmm.” “Who does that?” “The government.” “Well, that’s a ...” “Yeah.” “Now, I’ve got some strategies that can ...” I have not met an American who is interested in paying a tax on dying. I haven’t met a Canadian who’s interested in paying a tax on dying. I think Michael is right. Don’t talk about estate planning; talk about death taxes.

The next one I want to talk about is family governance. Once again, that must be for a family that has a lot of money? Absolutely, but I want to tell you two stories that I think will resonate with you. I came across an advisor who told me that he had a client who contacted him last year just before the holiday season, and the client said, “I’ve got a problem.” The advisor said, “What is it?” He said, “My two twin boys, who had just been sent to college, had phoned their mother in early December to say, ‘Mom, we have run out of money.’ And their mother said, ‘How’d you run out of money?’ ‘Well, we just ... I don’t know. It just ...’ They had spent the entire financial nest egg in the first three months. And they said, ‘We wanted to tell you because we’re coming home for holidays, and could you kind of smooth it over with Dad? Don’t tell him that we’ve run out of money.’”

So she blew in her husband’s ear. She said, “By the way, the boys have run out of money.” He said, “Are you kidding me?” She said, “Yeah.” He said, “Those two do not have any concept of the value of money.” She said, “Well, you know whose fault that is? Ours.” So he phoned the advisor and said, “Listen, can you help me out? The boys are coming home. I need you to sit down with them and talk to them about the value of money. Because they won’t listen to their mother and me.” The advisor said, “OK, fair enough. I could talk to them during the time that they’re home for the Christmas holidays.”

Then the advisor said something interesting: “How much money are you going to give them when you send them back to school to get them through the winter season and early spring?” And he said, “I don’t know. We haven’t talked about it, but I know their mother will probably give them $4,000.” He said, “$4,000?” “Yeah.” So he said, “How about this? Give me the $4,000, and not only will I sit down and talk to the boys about money, but when they are accessing money, they’ll have to come through me. Believe me, after that January, February and March, they will understand the value of money.” Do you know what this father said to that advisor? “Thank you. You just saved my Christmas vacation.” Are there children out there who do not know the value of money?

Do you think we could possibly help families with those children understand the value of money? Absolutely we can. I’ll give you one other one. I have discovered, and I think you’ll agree, that there are pre-retirees who are giving way too much money to 30-year-old children. Way too much money. “Why are you giving them $50,000?” “Well, it’s their wedding, and the other people gave them $50,000 for a house.” “So you’re going to give them $50,000?” “Well, yeah. We have to.” “No, you don’t. You don’t have the capacity to give them $50,000.” My daughter just had a little baby. She was telling me about a family, a young couple on their street. The parents bought the kids a new Land Rover because they did not want their grandchild to be in a Mazda 3. Their grandchild. It is the only Range Rover on that entire street, and the whole place is talking about it.

If you were to say to people, “That’s how I approach family governance, spendthrift teenagers and sometimes parents who are giving too much money to their kids. It’s one of the services we do,” do you think that anyone would be remotely interested in that? Absolutely. The last one, succession planning, that we cover is a fairly a small business, and that sort of thing is all about charitable giving, or I should say wealth transfer.

The last point I want to make here is concierge services — you can write “concierge services” down here. These are some of the concierge services that a lot of family practices offer. We came across a family that wanted to ship a dog to France. They had a summer villa in France, and the kids missed the dog. So they shipped the dog first class, Air France, to the villa. But here was the problem. The financial advisor said, “Oh, we can do that for you.” But when they took the dog to the airport, they didn’t have the shots for the dog. So they put the dog in quarantine for a month and a half. It was a complete tragedy. These are some of the things that you may encounter if you’re upmarket. By the same token, though, what we have discovered is, if you’re saying, “Well, we don’t really do that,” I can tell you something interesting, and it’s that we discovered that you can put that under concierge services, all of the ways that the clients access their information, their accounts are through your services that you offer on the web.

What I find quite fascinating is that these people have no idea of all the ways that they can access their portfolios on the web. So, when you show them, they’re quite fascinated. That’s a reality that you can be aware of.

DeMoss: We’ve got our completed Nine Box right here for answering the three questions with the three areas that we want to land in. [visual]

Now, I said earlier that there’s this thing called the Client-Centered Opener. Then, of course, we have the main body of our content. Then we have the Benefit-Base Close at the very end here.

You might want to get your cameras out and make sure that you get a picture of the idea that I’ve got to work on my opener. Openers are really important. Let me ask you this question: Why is the opening part of your conversation, or if you’re presenting to a family or a charitable organization, important?

It sets the tone. It makes the client comfortable. What it really does is, if you get off to a smooth start, it makes you feel comfortable. As a presenter, as a conversationalist, you just know that this thing is getting things off on the right foot. So I want to show you that here in just a minute. This is a sample agenda opener. Let’s see how it works and how it tests, OK? [video]

Video: Thank you for your time today. Before we get started I’d like to review the agenda. First I’d like to talk about our team members and resources. Next, I want to provide you with our investment process and philosophy. Finally, I’d like to talk about our services. So in the interest of time, let’s dive right in.

DeMoss: So what are the dials on? Fifty. Yeah, but 50 means neutral. I did that sample Client-Centered Opener, and I don’t feel any different toward you. I just feel neutral. It’s like you haven’t done anything for me at the first part of the presentation. I did the right things. I said, “Hey, we want to talk about the team. We want to talk about how we manage money” — all those things, but I got to 50 there. What if we did something like this, OK? This is Robin Williams kind of stuff; you’ve got to hang with me here.

So let’s say Jim and Sherry come in, and I’m you. I’m that advisor. Jim and Sherry and I have had conversations, and I say to Jim and Sherry, “Jim and Sherry, thanks for coming in. First of all, I really, really appreciate that. You know, any time that we have the opportunity to have a couple like yourselves come into the office for a meeting like this, there are a few things that we’d like for you to leave with.

“First of all, we would like you to be confident that, should you choose me or choose our team, we understand the complexities that come with your situation. So we’re prepared to talk a little bit about each of us on the team, what we’ll do for you, the support resources that you would have and what it means to be a client of our firm. The second thing we want you to leave with here today is a clear understanding of what we’re going to do with your money. So we’ll talk a little bit about the investment process and we’ll talk about the investment philosophy and make sure, again, that you understand what happens with your money. Then the last thing that we’re going to do, because we’re always looking for ways to add simplicity and convenience to your lives, is to talk about all the marvelous services that we offer to you. So with that being said, is there anything else you would like us to cover that I haven’t touched on?”

How does that sound? That sound a little bit better, right? A little bit better. [video]

Video: Thanks for coming in today. Any time I get a couple like yourselves in for the first time, there are a few things I’d like for you to walk away with in the time we have today. First, I want you to leave here confident, should you choose us as your advisor, that we can handle the complexities that come with wealth and your situation. So I’d like to share with you the team members and resources we have and how we can help you achieve your personal financial goals. Second, I want you to have a clear understanding of what we’ll do with your money. So I’d like to share with you the investment process and our core beliefs about managing your money. Finally, we are always looking for ways to add simplicity and convenience to our clients’ lives. So I’d like to conclude with a discussion about the services we offer beyond managing your money. That’s what we are prepared to discuss. But is there anything I’ve missed or anything else you’d like to cover before we get started? If not, we can get started right away.

DeMoss: If not, we can get started right away, right? Were they in there — 74? I was in that exact eye when we were testing this thing, and they’re putting their dial down to go. We love that message. Whoever they are, I want to listen to what they have to say. How about it, huh? Now, there’s something that I did there. There’s a real simple little thing that I did. All I did was I took our agenda item and I put a benefit in front of each one of my topics.

Follow me on this. What did I say to Jim and Sherry? “The first thing we want you to leave with here today is, we want you to leave confident that you’ve made the right decision.” Who doesn’t want to be made to feel confident that they made the right decision to entrust their money to you? The second benefit that I talked about is “I want you to have a clear understanding of what we’re going to do with your money.” Guys, this is the magic, right here. Bingo. Dials in the 70s. The third benefit, and Rob mentioned this earlier on: “We’re always looking for a way to add simplicity and convenience to your lives.” I put a benefit in front of each one of my agenda items, OK?

Now, I know you may say, “Oh well, does all that work?” Trust me, it works. I’m going to talk to you in just a few seconds. Rob will talk about how you can get some information on this. But this is the agenda. This is the Client-Centered Opener at the very beginning, and guess how people are feeling now? How are they feeling? They’re feeling awesome about you and they want to listen to what you have to say.

We are going to close here in just a few minutes. The Client-Centered Opener is one thing, but there is also what I call the Benefit-Base Close. So at the very end of the conversation, this is what I would say if I were in your shoes and I knew what this research said. It says, “Jim and Sherry, first of all, thank you for your time here today. We really do appreciate that. I hope that in the time that we’ve spent here today you can leave here confident that we do have the capabilities to handle your finances. We hope we gave you a clear understanding of what we’re going to do with your money. We hope you can see that we can provide simplicity and convenience based on the services that we offer.”

Based on that, if there is anything else, what do you suggest that the next step should be? Boom, I roll the ball right across the table to them. I’ve opened up with an agenda, all benefit base. I’ve closed with that benefit-base agenda at the very end. Now I’ve got that client in a position where we need to start to talk about the close.

These are the kinds of things that we talk about to help you in that conversation with clients, giving you every chance possible to succeed. We know things come up in conversations that we can’t control, but we want to make sure that we have every opportunity. Because what’s at stake is your brand and your reputation every time you get in front of a client, and I’m going to close with this story.

Has anybody snow skied? Do I have any snow skiers at all? I’ve got a bunch of them. So Rob is a skier, and I am a skier. I love to go skiing every year out in the Beaver Creek, Vail area. So one year I decided that we’re not going to go there, but we’re going to go up to Lake Tahoe. Have you ever been up to Lake Tahoe skiing? I get to Lake Tahoe on a Friday night, and I look up on the top of the mountain, and there are all these lights up there. Just crazy lights. I didn’t know that they had night skiing at Tahoe.

I go to the condo. I get up early the next morning. I love to get up early and read the grooming reports to see what slopes are open. I read what had happened at the top of the mountain the day before. You see, this is where the Squaw Valley high school team practices every single day. At the end of practice, the coach would have to say, “Kids, everybody down the front side of the mountain.” Because there were three boys who would always go up to the top after everybody went down, and they would ski down the backside of the mountain to take a shortcut home. They’re good skiers, they’re young kids, but it’s rather rough. So, on that day, sure enough, they had a ton of sun, and the coach says to them to go down the front side of the mountain, but the three boys kind of snuck back up to the top to take the shortcut down to their house. They lived on the backside of the mountain there. They went 100 yards down the backside of the mountain, and do you know what they triggered?

They triggered an avalanche. The good news is nobody perished, but it took dogs and vents to extract them from the snow. The reason that I close with this is that many times, much like this situation, shortcuts can be deceptively dangerous. Shortcuts can be deceptively dangerous in life, and shortcuts, when it comes to being a communicator in this business, can also be deceptively dangerous.

Our message, when it comes to this topic of presenting your story to your valuable perspective clients, is you work way too hard. Don’t take shortcuts. Make the effort. Talk about what we need to do to delve out that presentation, and above all things, remember that words matter. It’s not what you say that matters, but what people are hearing.

Gary DeMoss is the director of Invesco Consulting.

Rob Kochel is a vice president of Invesco Consulting.