How To Create A Compelling Value Proposition For Financial Advisers

Everyone has heard of USP’s. If you haven’t, it’s likely that you will have heard someone speaking about the multiple USP’s of the company, products or services that they are trying to sell you. This in itself is a misnomer as USP stands for unique selling point; i.e. a single thing that makes you different from your competition, so by that logic it is impossible to have more than one. The next generation of wealth management clients need more than what was offered to their parents. They need to understand the intrinsic value that you are going to be bringing to them whilst managing their money. Creating a compelling value proposition for financial advisers is an essential part of your marketing plan. If you don’t know what this is, don’t worry. We’re going to give you all the info you need to understand and create your value proposition, so that your prospects know exactly how you will be helping them.

What Is A Value Proposition?

In a nutshell, a value proposition statement summarises the service and financial products that you use to help your ideal client to achieve their goals. It’s a tool that you should be able to reel off to anyone you speak to in an instant that frames the work you do and the conversation you will be having with that person. A quality value proposition for financial advisers should be easy to understand and concise. It should make it clear and obvious what you do and succinctly answer the following questions:

• Who you are
• What you do
• Who you help
• What your process is
• Why they should work with you

One thing to remember when creating your value proposition is that it is not a pitch. Nobody wants to hear about how much AUM you have, nor do they want to know about the features and benefits of the products you’re trying to sell to them. This is a statement that lets people know about the value you will bring to them as their adviser. 

Why Do You Need One?

Creating a compelling value proposition for financial advisers is essential in the modern world of marketing. Don’t forget, even though you work in sales, you don’t hold all the cards. The internet has democratised information, meaning if someone wants to find something out about their finances, they can simply get on Google and look it up for themselves. The majority of people who reach out to you already have some idea of what they are looking for. They want to know why they should work with you and not someone else. 

When someone reaches out to you, your value proposition needs to be the best first impression. Now, many advisers out there have moved on from things like, ‘I offer a personalised service,’ or, ‘I always work with the best interests of my clients in mind.’ Frankly, this is the bare minimum you’d expect from the person handling your money. Your value proposition needs to let people know why you are the superior choice and how you are going to help them achieve their goals. 

What specifically do you do that your competitors can’t or won’t?

Things To Avoid When Creating A Value Proposition For Financial Advisers

Before we get into the nitty gritty of creating a value proposition for financial advisers, we want to talk a little bit about the things to avoid. Creating a VPS (Value Proposition Statement) might seem like an easy thing to do, but it’s equally easy to slide back into speaking about how great you are, how much money you manage and why you’re such a great person. Here are a few guidelines that will help you on your path to writing a compelling VPS.

Rule 1: Don’t talk about products. Ever. Literally no one cares. They assume that you know which one is best and that at some point you will need to speak to them about which financial service product will be used. In a value proposition, it’s the one thing that will make people switch off immediately.

Rule 2: Don’t make it about yourself. We’ve already covered this, but it’s so important. You are dealing with a super emotional subject and people want to know that you will be taking as much care with it as if it were your own. Don’t talk about your achievements or the awards you’ve won. They sound good but really all a prospect hears is ‘don’t I sound impressive?!’

Rule 3: Don’t make people feel stupid. Advisers forget that most of their clients, if not all, are not their peers when it comes to financial knowledge. They don’t understand the jargon or the technical terms so don’t make someone feel stupid when talking about who you work with and how you help them. Especially if they are your target audience. 

We could go on with these rules, but these are pretty good reference points to help keep you on course when you are creating your own value statement. 

How To Create A Value Proposition

There’s a considerable amount of thought that goes into creating a value proposition for financial advisers. It’s not just stringing together a few sentences that talk about how you help people. You really need to dive into your ideal customer profile, their goals and objectives and how you solve those problems for them. In order to do this you’re going to need to create two separate maps. A value map and customer profile. Now, assuming you’ve been following the work we’ve been doing, you’ve already made your own customer profile. If you haven’t you can download our template here.

The Value Map

The value map has 3 specific sections that will help you to think about the benefits of what your service does for people. They are:

• Gain creators
• Pain relievers
• Products & services

Gain creators: These are features of your product and services that help to make your clients happy. Think about what would make your client happy and how working with you will do that.

Pain relievers: How does your product or service help to remove pain from their life? What is particularly stress free about working with you in particular?

Products & services: Don’t list everything here. Also, don’t think about them as typical products and services. Think of them more like packages that help people achieve particular goals.

This is going to take a bit of thought. We didn’t say it would be easy, but it will be enlightening to think about how you really do help people.

Identify Their Problems

You should already know the major challenges that your ideal client has. You should know what frustrates them, worries them and keeps them up at night. Now whittle it down to the one thing that causes the most amount of stress for your buyer persona. What is it that you do that immediately solves this problem for them? Is it a knowledge thing? Is it a consistency thing? Talk specifically about how you solve that issue.

Identify The Benefits 

List the benefits of working the way you do. Think about how using this particular product in this particular way has made working with you a delight. How does this benefit align with the problem solving you do for your buyer persona. Do you have numbers to back this up? Shine a light on what impact you have made as well as can replicate.

Describe The Value

Why is what you do more valuable than the next adviser? What impact has this had for them? People need to have these things spelled out for them, so make sure you tell them why what you did for these people is so valuable. The benefits of your service should be outlined to people so they understand why it matters to them.

Value Proposition Example

There’s more than one way to write a compelling value proposition for financial advisers. There’s no one magical statement that will have prospects instantly falling in love with you and clamouring to have you manage their money. The key thing here is to make it personal to the people you work best with and do the best work for. We’ve given an example below. If you want to see some of the very finest examples, check out this link here.

“I work with expats who are looking to buy their first investment property whilst living overseas. I help to identify what investment they want to make based on their lifestyle and revenue goals. I also take care of 99% of the paperwork and payments so they don’t have to deal with any additional stress. In doing so I’ve helped over 30 expat families in the past year start their passive income portfolio.”

Here are a few other ways to think about creating a value proposition for financial advisers:

“We help (X) do (Y) by doing (Z)”

“For [target customer] who [needs or wants X], our

What is my brand offering?

What job does the customer hire my brand to do?

What companies and products compete with my brand to do this job for the customer?

What sets my brand apart from competitors?

Final words

A value proposition for financial advisers is really an essential positioning and marketing tool. If you are wanting to take your business to the next level and have more meaningful conversations with prospects then you need to understand why you deserve to be trusted with someone’s money and financial future. 

To learn more about how Adviser Leads can help you, book in a strategy session (worth $500) today by clicking the link below.