However, he used a much simpler story: “The Boys Who Played”. football on Mars.”
To understand the story completely, one needs to know some facts about Mars. For example, to know why boys playing football on Mars kept bouncing off the surface, one would need to know that the gravity on Mars is only 38 percent of the gravity on Earth and that if you jumped on Mars, you Let’s take two – it will take one and a half times longer to come back to the surface than it would take to come back to the surface on Earth.
Combining these facts with an activity that the spectators (football) could engage in gave him a whole lot of room to engage in a conversation that many of them would have found boring. Children began to imagine that she was playing football on Mars and she could easily incorporate all of the above facts and figures into a story that was really enjoyed by most of the audience there.
When we consider the above anecdote, we can draw a parallel to the way we explain financial concepts and advice to investors. Like space science, finance is also made up of many essential but difficult concepts to understand. Like space science, many financial concepts have been derived by in-depth analysis of complex data, which may not be very easy for the investor to understand or maintain. But when we turn concepts into a story, we can use the power of a story to enable an investor to dig something into their life story to connect with the concept and, therefore, call it a “sticky” memory. Create and maintain.
Stories force the investor to question his assumptions and understand the consequences of certain behavior.
Writers Rosemary Smith and Aaron Huse with their vast experience in coaching financial advisor and recommend sales managers in the financial services sector Tell a story to financial advisors. He says, “Stories have a beginning, a middle and a highly anticipated conclusion and investors (or people more generally) want to hear the whole thing, which allows the advisor to clearly articulate and have their say. Gives enough time. Ideas and recommendations. ”
And that means mentors who can create and share good stories have a powerful advantage over others.
Stories work in a two-pronged way. They link our feelings together as well as explain concepts, leading our brains to believe that the story is a part of our own personal experience and that it prompts us to act as such. that logic-based reasoning (no matter how well corroborated by facts and numbers) cannot.
Interestingly, in doing so, stories can actually benefit us from that emotional part of ourselves that leads us to make the wrong decisions when investing (such as panic selling or following the herd).
how to tell a good story
- What is the essence of the story: It would be best to start the storytelling practice by knowing your audience and being clear on the message that one wants the story to deliver. Once this is clear, it will be easy to determine the best way to portray it. It helps if the message can be squeezed into a single emphatic statement.
- Keeping it simple and concise: Stories don’t need to be long and elaborate. We need to remember that the essence of a story is not the quality or length of the story itself. Instead, there should be an effort to communicate one’s message and recommendations in a narrative that is interesting enough to get your client to focus on the point under discussion. Anything that is irrelevant to the story should be removed. The famous Russian playwright and short story writer Anton Chekhov said: “‘If you say in the first chapter that a rifle is hanging on the wall, then in the second or third chapter, it must go off course. If it is not being fired. so it shouldn’t hang there.”
- The best stories come from own experiences: The essential question to ask here is “What event happened in one’s own life that made one cringe at the idea that he was trying to convey through story?”
- Create tension, highlight the issue and then the solution: The story isn’t interesting at all without a central issue or challenge. Good storytellers understand that a story needs a conflict. The classic story structure of setting up the desired objective, building tension where the outcome is uncertain and then resolving the story to the end as familiar and gratifying to the audience as possible.
- Make Relationships: An advisor must ensure that the parallels between the story and the concept he is trying to explain are clear to the investor. One may know the gist of their story, but it may not be immediately apparent to an investor.
- Practice, practice, practice: Storytelling is an art that will be perfected over and over again. Even when one has a clear crisp story that brilliantly highlights the point it is trying to make, the impact of the story is greatly increased if it is done correctly. To be told And it requires practice.
(Akansha Singh is Associate Director Investment Product Management, Morningstar Investment Advisor India. Views are her own)