However, when done with finesse, it can help win over potential clients.

Career stories typically involve a discussion of why an individual chose to become an advisor, and why the advisor decided to develop skills that set him or her apart from the competition. Career stories should show the human side of an advisor so that they resonate with their audiences.

The idea is to include components of the story that nearly everyone can relate to. With that in mind, advisors should take time to brush up on their skills at telling their career stories and keep the following tips in mind.

• Keep it Human: advisors should specify what events in their lives resulted in them deciding to pursue their chosen careers. Some investment professionals, for example, may have previously seen family members struggle with their finances or suffer from receiving bad financial advice. Professionals having experienced such tragedies can emphasize how the pain of observing such problems has motivated them to become investment advisors so that they can help other individuals avoid similar problems. Other investment professionals may want to emphasize how they developed a passion for finance that has resulted in them becoming advisors. The key to success, however, is to ensure that the description of the events that drove an individual to become an advisor illustrates the speaker’s human side.
• Competitive Services: An advisor’s career story should also illustrate why they chose to forge competitive services. This characteristic is often closely related to discussing motivations for becoming an advisor. For example, someone who saw family members suffer from bad financial advice may be motivated to not only become an advisor, but to become an advisor that can provide comprehensive services, or full financial planning to ensure that clients are more likely to reach their long-term goals. Other advisors may want to emphasize how their passion for helping clients has motivated them to improve their skills.
• Emphasize Integrity: Clients need to trust their advisors, so career stories need to include a discussion as to why a financial professional believes in maintaining high standards. Advisors who have seen clients or family members harmed by bad advice or unscrupulous behavior can discuss those events. Other advisors can emphasize that they are passionate about their careers and aren’t willing to risk the success of their vocation by engaging in unethical behavior.
• Customize Your Story: In an ideal scenario, an advisor will have enough background information on a prospect to know what makes the individual tick. That way, an advisor can ensure that his or her career story helps form an affinity with a prospect. Advisors can do that picking aspects of their history that they want to emphasize based on their audience. Prospects that are highly passionate about their work, for example, may respond best to advisors who may emphasize having the same characteristic.
• Keep it Short: Advisors need to focus on client needs rather than monopolize conservations with their career stories. With that in mind, advisors should make a round of edits to their career stories to make sure they can be told in less than five minutes.

The goal, of course, is for an advisor to highlight relevant aspects of a career story while illustrating strong interest in learning about a client’s financial planning needs.