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25th March, 2026 - Webinar replay

In conversation with Steve Martin – how to use ethical influence to build trust, convert more prospects, and generate referrals

Phil Bray

Good morning, everybody, and welcome to sunny Nottingham. It’s our March webinar, third of the year, and we have another very, very special guest for you. Steve Martin is here to talk about ethical influence, building trust, and using those two things to help us convert more prospects into clients and generate more referrals from existing clients. Steve, welcome. 

Steve Martin 

Hi Phil. Lovely to see you. 

Phil Bray 

Thank you very much for doing this. For those of you who don’t know Steve, he is a contemporary of Robert Cialdini, who many of you will have heard of, CEO of Influence at Work, New York Times best selling author, just found out in the conversation we’re having before has given evidence at Congress, so we might have a conversation about that. Be interested for that. And he’s definitely one of the leading voices on the psychology of influence, persuasion and change. So really excited to dive into this today. It’s a little bit different to what we normally do. Dan one thing that isn’t different from what we normally do is our housekeeping. But just remind everybody of where we are. 

Dan Campbell 

Yeah, sure thing. Thanks Phil. Sunny Nottingham, it was snowing in Derby this morning, and people might not believe me, but I saw it with my own eyes. Yeah? Real snow, nearly April.

Phil Bray 

Blue sky. 

Dan Campbell 

I’m very jealous. Yeah, I’m very, very happy for you, Phil. So yeah, let’s do some housekeeping, shall we? So what do we all need to know for today’s session? Well, of course, we’ve got a special guest with us, which means Phil will lead with his own questions, and I’ll be reading yours out at regular intervals. So don’t hold back. Get stuck in. Throw your comments questions into the ring and make sure you get the best out of the next hour really. No such thing as a silly question. So be brave and ask away. Steve has just assured us that he will answer questions as challenging as you want to make them. So don’t hold back. And of course, you can do that by using the Q&A box or the chat function, speaking of which, if anybody in the crowd can just give me a “hello” or a “good morning” in the chat box, just to test out if it’s working, that’d be great, because ever since zoom changed its default settings on webinars, I don’t trust that we’ve pressed the right buttons. There we go. Melissa, Kareem, Josh, Matt, Richard, thank you. Yeah, there we go it’s working so use that for your questions. And as usual, we’ll be recording the webinar, which means you’ll receive a neatly packaged up email with the video link and all the important notes and resources we mentioned. Of course, Abi will be hard at work making that happen. So a big thank you to her, as always. So there we go. That’s enough of me. Phil, over to you. 

Phil Bray 

Yes, Dan, thank you very much. Okay, so Steve, as you know, our audience here today is financial services people, financial advisers, financial planners and people who supply services to financial advisers, wealth planners. Now, I suspect when a lot of them hear the word influence, they worry that it sounds a bit manipulative. What’s the difference between ethical persuasion and manipulation?

Steve Martin

Oh, right, we’re going to go straight in then. Phil, good morning. Well, I think there’s probably two answers to that question. There’s a personal answer that I can give, which is that I see that influence as a tool, as a skill, is a ubiquitous skill that applies and without it, nothing gets done. So it’s an essential. Don’t take my word for it. We follow surveys and studies that are run principally by organisations like Harvard Business Review. LinkedIn is a good one actually, every year LinkedIn asks a question “what is the most important skill you require in your workplace for this next year?” a predictive kind of survey. It’s been running for 17/18, years now, as you would imagine with so many millions of people on LinkedIn in so many different jobs, that the answers vary, but there’s one skill that invariably is always in the top three, regardless of the industry you’re in, whether it’s in finance or firefighting, influence is a core skill. In 2025, the latest data we have, it was the number one. It beats AGI. So I think for that reason, we make the case that it’s actually important. You raised an important question about the ethical use of it, because it’s such a powerful tool, it can be used for good. If your listeners, those dialling in today and people in your industry, have a good case to make, it makes sense to have access to good financial advice, good financial planning, good and sound insights about where to manage your wealth so that you can live a financially healthy and prosperous life. That seems important to me, then being able to convey those messages, that proposition in an honest, effective and compelling way. That’s what influence is. So it’s super, super important. But of course, then if we turn to the other answer, which is that influence is something because it’s so powerful, it potentially can be used in more maladaptive ways in the wrong hands. I think our industry, financial services, for example, has a ready case for that. Probably won’t surprise many people, the books that Bob Cialdini and I, and others have read written rather over the years. There’s quite a few of them out there now. They are not only popular books for people in business, they are required reading for scammers. And so in that instance, that will be an example of a maladaptive use of influence. And so often when I’m asked the question about ethics, I have a set of standards that I like to hold myself and our teams to. I suspect that your listeners will as well, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that others do. They’ll often use these principles of influence these approaches for kind of short term wins, “I’m going to win over you. I’m going to win at your expense.” And you typically see that in single transactional contexts. I don’t see much value for that in investment management, financial services, because you don’t just want to convince and influence someone today, you want to keep that relationship long standing. So in that instance, influence is a tool for good, and those that use it in these sinister, irresponsible, unethical ways, typically, they are the ones that pay a price in the future. But if they’re doing millions and millions of transactions, they probably care about that. That’s kind of my point. But the one thing that remains true across all of that is that it is the single most coveted skill in business, in the workplace, and so get good at it. I think this is my key message. 

Phil Bray

That’s fascinating, because if it’s the single most coveted skill in the workplace, whenever I’m chatting to financial advisers, planners, the people on this call, and let’s say we have a conversation about what training you’re doing this year, what conferences you’re doing, what CPD you’re doing, none of them will ever mention influence. None of them will ever mention that they’re studying it and trying to get better at it. 

Steve Martin

Well, they may not mention it explicitly, but they’ll talk about it using other terms. They’ll talk about it in terms of “I’m going to get better at building my network. I want to get better at growing the number of referrals, growing my book, and my assets under management. Or I’m going to get better at communicating or ensuring that when I write a proposal for a client, that it’s written in a really concise, compelling way that convinces them that I am a good partner.” They’ll often describe it as “I’m going to work to be seen as a trusted adviser to my clients.” So if you think about all those different activities, those operations. A key ingredient to it is influence, is the ability to capture attention, build a connection with people. We have this particular framing at my company, where we recognise that in a world where there’s so many options, there are so many financial advisers, firms you can actually go to for what, from a consumer or a client’s perspective, is probably very similar advice. That’s the perfect example where influence is the key differentiator. You might have a good case to make about why someone would want to work with you, but having a good case to make is not the same as making that good case well, and that is where influence falls. So I’m not surprised that people don’t use the term explicitly, but it manifests itself in lots and lots of different ways. 

Phil Bray

I guess it’s also about influencing clients during their relationship with a financial adviser or planner. And we’ve seen over the past three or four weeks war in the Middle East, that creating volatility in stock markets can create nervousness amongst some clients. So the adviser, planner there, their job is to influence the client. No knee jerk reactions, good behavior, etc.

Steve Martin

Indeed, in fact, I’d go one stage further. One thing is that all humans are certainty seekers. We seek the answer to something in the future that we have no control over, and that environmentally, whether it’s kind of culturally, societally or geopolitically, we have no agency over whatsoever. Yet that feeling of wanting to be certain about what’s actually going to happen, and that is a key role of a financial adviser, an investment manager or whatever you want to call yourselves in your industry, is how do you convey that sense of “look, things are going to be okay in the longer term.” For those people that, and we all do it, that are looking for that reassurance, that certainty and who are primarily present tense orientated. We know that all of us essentially wait for what’s happening to us today and tomorrow, significantly more than what’s going to happen next week, next month, two years, five years, 10 years time. Which is why it’s so hard to get people to think about the future and invest in pensions and different investment vehicles for the future. So that’s the thing we’re actually contending with. We’re contending with that human, the natural human reaction to prioritise what’s actually happening now and to want to feel certain about things in an environment where we don’t know what’s happening now, we don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow. We can’t be certain about things. It’s a really crucial role that the financial services profession actually plays is to provide that reassurance and if people are coming to you for that, that’s a good sign, a clear signal that you do have influence. I’m often asked, “how do I know if I’m good at influence? How do I know if I have influence?” And the answer is, if more people come to you for advice and reassurance than vice versa, then you are a person of influence, at least in that network, in that domain.

Phil Bray

That’s fascinating, because you look at two financial advisers, and I’ve done it a lot, two financial advisers, two financial planners. Ostensibly, they’re doing the same thing for the same people, right? Yet, one just seems to attract new inquiries and retain clients like bees and honey. The other one really struggled and it sounds as though the first one is just better influence than the second one

Steve Martin

Or that they know about influence and the other one doesn’t, or perhaps more likely, they have learned either formally or through some sort of intuition or osmosis, that there are certain factors that are core ingredients to successful influence that are largely hidden. They’re largely hidden. We have this narrative. You see it particularly in big organisations, corporations, that if you want to get an idea or a proposal or a proposition accepted, you essentially need two things. You need a good case to make good evidence, good information, and then you need it to make financial sense. And if you have those two things and you’re able to convey them, then people will be persuaded by your proposition, your idea. And logically and in theory, that sounds perfectly acceptable. But of course, we know in reality it’s absolute nonsense, because oftentimes it’s not the person with the best idea or the best economic proposition that wins. It’s the one that’s presented in the most compelling way. I see an opportunity here. If you have a good case to make, and you can make it well, then you can be the person that wins. And importantly, you’re winning with a really robust proposition, not just something that’s shiny and that has been polished to the point where it’s compelling to people, but there’s no substance underneath it.

Phil Bray

What’s the link between charisma and influence?

Steve Martin

I’ve written about this actually, Joe Marks, one of my colleagues, and I wrote a book in 2019/2020, called Messengers. It’s one of those things that I think seems even more relevant today, this idea that what’s being said typically matters less than who is saying what is being said, and charisma is defined as one of those messenger traits. It’s a characteristic, a trait about a communicator, that allows them to create a connection with an audience in such a way that that audience almost is compelled, not only by their enthusiasm, or in psychology, what we would call their surgency, but their ability to communicate in such a way that they marshal people behind a unifying goal or idea or theme. That’s what charisma is. All the charismatic communicators in history have this trait, this ability to be able to essentially marshal a group behind a unified idea or theme, and in that context, that can be quite compelling for people, particularly in situations where people are looking for a group to coalesce behind. They’re perhaps looking for some sort of identity, and particularly when they are uncertain about something. You see it a lot in politics. Typically, when people look at their politicians and who can marshal behind an idea. “Can I get behind this idea, can I unify behind this idea?” That’s one way and that’s a connected approach. The other way is to play the dominant strong man approach which is more a status orientated messenger trait. “People will listen to me because I have a position, a platform, some sort of status or I’m perceived to have”, and that’s typically the way that charisma is linked to influence in that instance. It’s a trait of a messenger or a communicator that potentially increases the likelihood that the message they give will more likely be accepted.

Phil Bray

I want to talk about trust because financial services has a long standing issue of trust. There’s all sorts of surveys and data to show that financial services struggle on the trust front right? What are the common mistakes that you see financial advisers, financial professionals make that undermine trust? Flip side, what are the positives that you see financial aid and planners doing that help build trust?

Steve Martin

How long have you got? I’ve been looking at trust for certainly the last three or four years in particular, there’s some there’s something actually that has happened societally about trust that I think it might just be worth mentioning Phil to provide a bit of a context to to think about ways in which we can answer those two questions you’ve actually asked. So simply put, it used to be the case that we used to define people in one of two ways. You had high trust people. You had low trust people. High trust people are typically the kind of people that go “I’m gonna I’m open to trusting you. I’m going to trust you until you give me a reason not to.” And then, in contrast, we have people that we define as low trusts, the people that said “look, I’m open to trusting you but you’re going to have to earn it, and that’s probably going to take some time, and it’s probably going to take a number of interactions and relationships.” And although those two starting points are very, very different. It gave us a place to start. Things have changed dramatically in the last 10 years. Organisation that I actually work with in London, in the UK, I share offices with them. We’ve been partnering some work with the University of Cambridge over the last eight or nine years, looking at trust in society, and what we’re finding now is there’s an emerging group in society whose starting point isn’t to be high trust or low trust, but rather to distrust everything. And they represent about a third of the UK population then, but they’re not a UK phenomenon. They’re a cultural phenomena. So we find the same data in most westernised, individualistic countries and cultures. So whether it’s northern Western Europe, whether it’s North America, and of course, the implications for this is bad news. This is particularly bad news for banks and financing, because if people distrust, and there’s lots of reasons why they would distrust things they feel like they’ve been lied to, they feel like whoever they vote for in their politics tells them one thing delivers something else. They defy the lazy stereotype as well, I’m not talking about people 50s plus, who are right wing and voted for Brexit. A significant number of these people are actually Zoomers. They’re young people. They feel like they’re saddled with university debts. They are still living with their parents. The dream of being able to kind of move out, buy a house, get a mortgage, these kinds of things is not available to them. So there’s lots of good reasons why they should feel like they have been lied to, and that’s why they do distrust but of course, these are people that are the future of your industry. These are people that are not just buying current accounts, but will be looking for savings accounts, mortgages, starting to kind of invest and whether it’s in ISA’s, SIP’s, these different things, and if they distrust the industry, then that’s a really difficult starting point. So I think that’s a really important context for the question you ask Phil, is that this number of distrust is growing in society, and it’s going to continue to grow. The implications, of course, are that in a distrusting society, what governments and financial regulators tend to do is over regulate, which makes the problem even worse. Because people don’t feel like they’re trusted. We have to kind of fill out so many more forms, do all sorts of ID checks and these kinds of things. It feels like even doing something as simple as opening a current account is just like having major surgery now. It’s a huge challenge in this instance, and so, of course, that’s going to ripple down to folks that are on this webinar that are thinking about, “well how do I build trust individually?” I think there’s a couple of things to think about. The first is that it can be helpful to actually remind yourself what trust actually is. Okay. It doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with truth or honesty, which can surprise people. There are people that trust politicians that lie to them, and every time they lie, their trust rating goes up. So it can’t really be to do with the truth in this instance. The other thing to remember or to remind yourself of, is that you might be trusted for different reasons. Largely on two spectrums. Sometimes we trust people because we see them as competent. They’re, to use that cricketing term, they’re seen as a safe pair of hands. But sometimes we trust people in organisations, not necessarily because they’re competent, but because we trust their character. They have integrity, they have benevolence. And so I think it can be really helpful to determine why you want to be trusted. Do you want to be trusted because you are seen as competent, or do you want to be trusted because of your character? Now I can almost imagine everybody screaming at their screens at the moment, going “well, I want to be both those things.” That’s a noble endeavour, but the way you go about getting trust for your competence and your character are two very, very different things. And in some instances, your competence is going to be more important than your character and vice versa. The example I actually give is Amazon. You trust Amazon absolutely for its competence. The moment you order something, you know pretty much in your heart of hearts, you’re guaranteed that it’s going to be there within 24 hours. And that’s what trust is. Trust is essentially a risk that we take how confident we feel about someone else’s future behaviour. I can be very confident that Amazon, after I’ve ordered that product, is going to deliver it within 24 hours. Do I trust them for their character? Probably not. So that’s the thing. Now to come to your question in terms of practicalities, I think the first thing to recognise is that trust is a contact sport. It comes about through repeated interactions, and these are personal interactions. I’m not just talking about behind a screen. That’s not contact, that’s familiarity. I think anything that you can do to ensure regular contact is going to be important. Helpfully, I think individual financial advisers and smaller firms listening is a very clear signal that trust is local. We can trust people within an organisation individually and not trust the organisation. The NHS is a good example. The trust scores in the NHS have actually eroded quite considerably these last five to 10 years, but people still largely trust their local hospitals, their local surgeries, these kinds of things. And so it’s entirely possible to distrust an organisation, but trust several or a number of people within it. So maybe there’s an opportunity. What’s one final thing to say about trust is that it is a gift. It’s built on reciprocal exchange. It’s really hard to trust someone who doesn’t trust you, and so there’s something instructive there. If you want people to trust you trust them first.

Phil Bray

Thanks, Steve. And most of the financial advisers and planners on this call would say that a referral from an existing client, clearly, somebody who trusts them to come back to your point is the best type of new inquiry. And some of those people who are referred to a financial adviser will trust the person who made the introduction enough that they just pick up the phone to the financial adviser. Others though, will maybe be a little more distrustful, or looking at two or three different options, because the last two or three people they trust through a recommendation, and therefore they start doing some due diligence, a bit of Googling, a bit of AI’ing to try and understand who they’re going to get in touch with, right? That means they’re probably going to end up on the financial adviser or planner’s website. So from a trust perspective, what are the things that the people on this call can do on their websites to boost credibility, increase trust, and exert some influence over people that they’ve never met before?

Steve Martin

Yeah, two ideas come to mind. The first actually, before they even land on a website or some registry or directory of financial advisers is you don’t actually have to wait for someone to refer you. There are moments in your interactions, in your consultations, your conversations with people that we know are important, because if you were to ask for a referral or a testimonial in that moment, the likelihood that that current client of yours would say yes is significantly higher. And so think about referrals and testimonials from a proactive perspective, I’ll give you an example. We’ve known for years now that there are certain moments in communications where people’s receptivity to a request or an offer or a suggestion are significantly heightened. One is immediately after someone has thanked you for something or a moment of appreciation. Now, I’m sure that pretty much everyone who’s listening or reviewing the recording will have moments where they’ve gone beyond the call of duty for one of their customers, and it’s been appreciated. And maybe that clients actually said “oh, I really appreciate it. I was stuck. I didn’t know what direction to go in. I was confused. I was getting conflicting advice, and you’ve really made things clear for me. I know exactly what I need to do now so, Phil, I really appreciate it. Thank you very much indeed.” Pay attention to what you say in that moment, is my advice. Throwing it away and saying “hey, of course, no problem at all” is probably not optimal. Now just to be clear, I’m not suggesting that you instead turn around to someone and say “yeah I have helped you, and now you owe me.” I’m not suggesting that’s something that is welcome in this instance, but notice that after people have appreciated what you’ve done, their tendency to be willing to provide a testimonial, or perhaps mention your services to a friend who might be in a similar position to them, or something goes up, and so a little moment that says “of course, I’m happy to help. And I’m going to help you first, you are my client. But, if you’ve got friends or if you’ve got family members that would welcome a conversation or have a similar situation, please feel free to give them my number”. So there’s a proactivity to that referral generation. And then you talked about what if they got two or three names and they come across you online on either LinkedIn or on one of the directories, or whatever the case may be, pay attention to your biography, would be the advice here. And I think one of the things is that we’ve got lots of data. For example, I’ve worked with investment managers, financial planners for quite a few years now, and we have lots of data on errors and mistakes that people make in their biographies, in their LinkedIn profiles and things like this. They tend to try and come across as “I’m a likeable expert”, and I don’t see anything wrong with that. But anything that they can do in their biographies to convert how their expertise is helping people like them, as opposed to just setting out “I have this qualification. I’ve been doing it for 15 years. I’ve done this, I’ve done that, and look I’ve got a nice, crisp, starch shirt and tie on in my profile”, and these kind of things, all these things are kind of important. But I think most people in those uncertain situations are looking for not evidence of what the expert can do for them, but rather what the expert has done for others like them. I know it’s a nuance, but anything that you can do to include, particularly in the opening lines of sometimes you just get two or three sentences max can be super helpful.

Phil Bray

I love that. What the expert has done for people like them, we’ve got some data that shows only 3% of financial advice and planning firms have client testimonial videos on their website, and for me, that’s one of the best ways of showing what that particular adviser has done for people like the prospect who’s potentially on their website, it’s a really teeny tiny number that actually invest in client testimonial videos. 

Steve Martin

And the key to that, is to use it. So the obvious next question is, what is the best testimonial? So use testimonials, tick. What is the best testimonial? The best testimonial is not the testimonial that you are the proudest of. The testimonial that is best is the one that best reflects the situation and circumstances of the people that are looking at it. So you might have done a great job for an A list Hollywood film star. You’ve organised all their finances. You’ve got all their tax affairs in order. And rightly, you should feel good and proud about that. And that’s the testimonials you use if you’re selling to other A listers in that instance. But most of us are not. So I think that’s good advice that The Yardstick Agency is providing. Have a ready set of testimonials. What I would add to that is, use the testimonials that most reflect the circumstances of the group that is actually going to be reading it, not the one that you are the proudest of. 

Phil Bray

That’s great advice. We’ve got a firm in Yorkshire called Philpott Financial. I don’t think the guys are on the call today, and they won a client at the back end of last year because the person who referred to them went on their website, looked at a video and apparently she said to the guys at Philpott, “I saw me on that video.” And yeah, I completely get that. Dan, I just want to make sure that we cover off questions that people have got already. I think we’ve had a question from Ian, and there might be another one as well. So we’ll do that. Then Abi will come to you, if we can just put up the details of something else that Steve wants to talk about today that looks really cool, and then we’ll come back to my questions. 

Dan Campbell

Perfect, yes, I’ll choose a few questions for now. I’ve got a great question from Ian. And Ian says “to what extent do physical characteristics impact on influence for better or for worse, for example, appearance, accent, or even the environment?”

Steve Martin

The answer is, significantly. It’s a really good question. So I mentioned a few moments ago. We were talking about when someone asked about charisma, another messenger trait is attractiveness. We are attracted to those faces and images that are deemed to be attractive. Attractiveness, by the way, is largely defined as symmetry, usefulness and averageness, which is the surprising thing, but it makes sense evolutionary if you think about it. You want someone that’s on average looks odd. There’s probably something to be avoiding. There’s a really interesting set of studies, actually, that have been conducted in financial services looking at the impact of attractiveness. There were some researchers in Chicago a few years ago that wanted to understand, are people willing to take out a loan or a credit card that has higher interest rates, basically it’s worse value, if the person that is promoting it is attractive? And the answer is absolutely yes. And the way they studied this was they sent out mailings for credit cards with a new introductory rate. And on the envelopes of these mailings they had pictures of an attractive lady, in this instance, who was representative of the bank. They were dressed in the bank’s livery and uniform, and the different people were previously assessed as being average attractiveness, quite attractive, very attractive, extremely attractive. And then they altered the introductory rate of the interest for these loans and these credit cards and found that they could actually increase the interest rate by up to 25%, so not 25% interest rate, but 25% on the base point of the interest on the basis of how attractive the person was that was making the offer. So, there you go. But attractiveness actually comes in other forms as well. It’s not just the physical attribute. You mentioned, environmental characteristics, similarity is attractive. So the extent to which birds of a feather flock together, and you can demonstrate that you have genuine similarity with others, falls into that category of kind of connection, attractiveness, liking in those instances and the environment too. Who we are is often a function of where we are. And so no surprise that lawyers and some financial services will have really quite posh offices and fancy cappuccino machines and Italian cookies and these kinds of things. These are all examples of essentially communicating that sense of attractiveness. The advice, of course, is that, what do you do when you don’t have those facilities when you don’t have the kind of resources to actually do that, and it’s to recognise that there are other functions and features of attractiveness that you might have. You don’t actually have to be genetically blessed, all of us. You can be attractive in other ways. It could be through your humour. It could be through your accent, similar accents, these kinds of things. It could be similar values, these kinds of things. It’s really important stuff that you can find out on initial calls and interactions with people. But the default, of course, to attractiveness is that it’s always there. You can see it straight away, whereas these other factors require a little bit of contact in an exchange.

Dan Campbell 

Brilliant, Thanks, Steve. And just to caveat that, Ian has since said “I’m screwed then”, and that’s not true Ian at all, because Steve says humour also counts, and you’ll never fail to make us laugh Ian clearly. Brilliant, thanks for that, Steve. And then, interestingly, our audience now over-analysing everything. And Dean has subsequently asked, on the theme of appearance “is two shirt buttons undone deliberate for influence?” 

Steve Martin

Oh, dear God, no. This is it. I often get the “oh, you’re wearing a blue tie today. What does that mean?” And these kinds of things. I think one of the downsides or the frustrations of working in social and political science, which is what I do, is that over the years it’s become a real area of academic interest, and so they’re kind of like measuring the nuances of the minutiae of everything. “Oh you wore this tie versus that tie. He’s got two buttons undone.” These are just so below the surface of immateriality that it doesn’t matter the core things, like trust, if you want people to give you information, give them information first. If you want to build connections, there are fundamental principles that are significantly more important and that will crowd out any of these, over-analysing these kinds of things. Everything else has to be so parroted for that tiny little difference to make any significant impact. But it’s a function of academia. It’s a function of “we want to know the ins and outs of everything.” I have no evidence that it counts for much at all.

Dan Campbell

Brilliant. Thanks, Steve. So Dean, any number of buttons will do so you can’t go wrong. 

Steve Martin

I’m not saying that, Dean speaking to you personally now, probably best to avoid the completely open shirt and definitely leave the medallion at home. But yeah, if your advice is sound and people trust you, I think they’re probably going to prioritise that first. There’s that saying, isn’t there about doctors? The best doctor to choose in a hospital is a doctor that’s been doing it for 30 years, but looks slightly disheveled and untidy. And the rationale being, is that if they’ve been a doctor in that hospital for 30 years, and they look like that. They must be a bloody good doctor.

Dan Campbell

Brilliant. Let’s carry on, and we’ll sweep up any further questions at the end, if that’s okay Phil, because I’m conscious of keeping on track. 

Phil Bray

Yeah. Thanks, Dan. Talking of keeping on track. Steve, tell us a little bit more about how we can become better influences using what you have done.

Steve Martin

I am not just a professor at Columbia Business School. I have a company. It’s based here in the UK, in London. We are called Influence at Work. We work all over the world. We do a significant amount of work in banking, financial services, primarily for big firms. So if there are big firms out there, or people in marketing functions, these things, we provide consulting and training services based on principles of influence, persuasion and change. I also recognise that The Yardstick Agency has a significant number of its members and partners that are in smaller firms and things like this. So it’s not that we don’t work with smaller firms. There are different ways in which you can access us. You can follow us on LinkedIn. There’s a barcode there, or you can go to the website. We have books. Of course, our suite of books, I understand, is the best selling set of books on influence, persuasion and change globally. There’s about eight and a half million of our album out there. Books like influence, Influence at Work and Messengers written by Bob Cialdini and myself. And for those of you that are interested in maybe more personal development. We have a number of partners that we actually work with. Last year, I wrote a program for The Economist so The Economist Education has a program on influence and persuasion that I think is particularly well suited to independent financial advisers. And you can enrol on that program at your leisure, at your time of choosing just you can find us via the website, or you can go to The Economist and type in influence and persuasion skills, and you’ll see us there. So there’s lots of ways in which you can connect with us, from big global organisations down to the latest book, which was actually published by The Economist last year is called Influence at Work, so you can find that there as well.

Phil Bray

Thank you, Steve, we were saying earlier on, before we started the list of people you’ve got adding value in that course is just immense. The names on there. Look at that person, that person looks fabulous. 

Steve Martin

Yeah, we got lucky. We got the who’s who of the world of business and academia in there.

Phil Bray

So before we did the questions, we were talking about influence on websites. So if we continue that journey through somebody who’s been referred to a financial adviser, they’ve been on their website, they then got in touch with that financial adviser, and they started that process of having a conversation. We know during that process, some clients disappear, don’t engage immediately, ghost the financial adviser, which can be incredibly frustrating when the adviser knows that they can add value, knows that they can help the person, but for whatever reason, the person doesn’t engage. One of the key things that people on this call can do to influence people to make quicker, maybe better decisions and work with them.

Steve Martin

I think we’ve already spoken about two of them, which is your good advice from your agency about the careful use of good testimonials and the biography is important too. I think there’s a real skill, some would maybe argue an art as well, to being able to say enough about yourself, but to not over present. What can you say in a couple of sentences? So I think it can be really helpful to look at those two things straight away. The general advice to anyone that is looking to influence a behaviour is to make it easy. Make it as easy as possible. So I’ve been to websites sometimes where I might be interested in something, and then I’m having to kind of take exam questions to fill in forms and things like this, or they’re demanding too much of me before there’s any kind of reciprocation. So I think it can be helpful to think about that. The starting point for any connection is a gift. And I’m talking about the word gift in a broader psychological sense, not just in a “hey I’m going to wrap something up and give it to you”. We have this effect in psychology. We call it the first mover effect. It’s this idea “if I do something for you, then there’s an obligation that I install in you to do something for me.” Everyday examples, you put the recycling out for your neighbour when they’re on holiday, just doing that installs in them an obligation that they should do the same when you go on your holiday, these kinds of things. If you invite someone to your house and they bring wine, that’s an exchange of sorts. I think it can be helpful to think about that in the context of how you build initial connection. “What could I give? What could I provide?” And it’s not an offer to put someone’s recycling out or take wine. “Is there a useful piece of information that I can actually provide? Is there an insight I can give? If I want someone to give me their email address, do I maybe give my email address first?” I think that can be helpful, Phil, is to think about that conversion as a connection of sorts, and notice that the masters of influence don’t go into situations thinking, “who is out there that can help me?” They go into situations asking “who is out there that I can help first?” And so. And I’m pretty sure that a significant number of your viewers, your subscribers, will probably be doing things for their potential clients already, but they may not be optimising that order. They may be thinking, “well if I get their email address first then I get a call, then I’ll do something.” These sorts of things. Have a think about what you can give first that might be meaningful and significant, but isn’t necessarily going to cost you a lot of time and money. I’m not suggesting that you do cash, financial plans, and do your initial assessments on people, these kinds of things that would take far too much time. But I’m sure there’s lots of small, what are seemingly easy things for us to deliver, but that actually could be quite meaningful for people that we hide. Put them up front, try that. The starting point for any meaningful connection is for someone to go first, to take that leap of faith and go “I’m going to help someone else first”, and do so with confidence that not everyone, but a significant number of people, will feel obligated then to do something for me. And that something for me might be “call me before the two other people that you were looking at who hadn’t done something.”

Phil Bray

Would an example of that be, maybe a book giveaway to prospects? So there’s various different books that have been written in our space, the financial services profession. Could that value up front be a gift of a book in the post while they’re confirming the first meeting, or something like that? 

Steve Martin

It could be I’ve got an example of my own from just literally last month. So we have elderly parents now, and we are essentially in that situation where we’re looking to figure out now the wealth, their pensions, their ISA’s, these kinds of things. The question we’re asking now is, not how much more they will accrue over the years, but rather when they go into care, when will the money run out? Devastating situation. And lots and lots of people are going to be in it or are in it at this moment in time. And I was looking at, I know a fair few people, but it was interesting. I looked at a few people local to where they live, where I don’t have a network. And we looked at a couple of people, and we looked at two websites. And one website said, “hey, we have this handy guide to essentially care, long term care and the implications in finance, and we have someone in our tax office that can provide advice about investments and trusts and blah, blah, blah and all that sorts of stuff. Fill out this form, give us your email address, give us your number, and we will send it to you.” There was another firm that had a similar thing. They had a fact sheet. They just had it on their website. “So here it is yours. If you feel it’s going to be helpful and we can be more helpful, then here’s our number.” I called the second company, not the first.

Phil Bray

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, and it echoes something we’ve talked about for years, about the dangers of gating content. It can clearly, as you’ve just demonstrated, create an issue. One of the key things that some advisers do, only a small proportion about 14%, is that they disclose their fees on their website really early. And it’s something that Marcus Sheridan has talked about a few times on Yardstick webinars, talk to us a bit about how and whether disclosing fees early on a firm’s website before they have to, from a regulatory perspective, does that help to build trust, or doesn’t it make much difference?

Steve Martin

I don’t think that I’m necessarily the person that’s best placed to answer that question, it sounds like you’ve got pretty good data on it. If 14%, so barely just over one in 10 are doing it, that’s sending a normative signal that, because nine out of 10 firms don’t do it, that becomes the industry practice. I can see pros and cons. Obviously the pros are, “oh this is a firm that is open, is transparent.” Of course, the downside is that you’re probably not going to publish your most expensive services. You’re probably going to publish prices that are the lower end of what you would charge. And then that sends a market signal about a reference point for the fee. And then someone goes “oh, this is kind of interesting. This could be quite good value.” And then they end up speaking to someone, and they find that their situation is much more complex, rather like the airlines, isn’t it? It’s just like, flight to Bucharest for nine quid. But then by the time you’ve contacted them and added all the options, it’s like a second mortgage you’re taking out. So I can see upsides for transparency. I can see some downsides for then the managing of expectations afterwards. If people have been lulled into a sense that “oh, it’s only going to cost us x” and then suddenly “oh, yeah, but your situation is different.” These kinds of things. By contrast, you can also see the downside to not having fees. I wonder if there’s a middle ground that has I’m sure been tested, where the communication is that, “typically our fees are within the market average for this kind of service, or this kind of client” or whatever the case may be. You’re providing almost a bit of a shortcut to potential interest that, “hey, you’re not going to waste your time contacting us and then subsequently finding out that we’re far too expensive or by contrast, actually, we are not the right provider for you because we tend to have very low transactional fees, because we’re dealing with lots of easy financial cases”, these kinds of things. I wonder if there’s a position there that might certainly not get you the best of both worlds, but it might allow you to pivot between those two things. I’m not convinced I’m in a position to provide good advice on that. 

Phil Bray

Which increases trust because you’ve said that you can’t do it. I think trying to come full circle to what we spoke about earlier on, around referrals. You spoke about when you get positive feedback, compliment, verbal testimonial from a client, not letting that moment pass. Not necessarily diving in, but not letting that moment pass. What are the other key things that advisers and planners on this call can do, practical stuff to increase the influence they have over their clients, to refer and recommend them to other people? 

Steve Martin

Here’s a couple of things that I think and come from data. Okay, so what we’ll often do on our programs is we’ll often give financial advisers, investment managers, planners, experts, whatever they may be, we’ll invite them to take our influence assessment. Okay, so something is done online. It takes about a half an hour, and it actually gives them a very good picture of the approaches they typically take to engage with people, to connect, to win them over. And there’s one approach that, and I’ve got data on about 6,500 people now, in this kind of context, financial services, banking, this kind of thing, there’s one approach that is by far the most common, far the most popular, which is to come across as likeable. And it turns out that that’s a mistake. Now let me be clear here. I’m not suggesting that it’s a mistake and you should be better off coming across as dislikable. That’s not the thing. It’s people’s understanding of liking that I think gets misinterpreted. No doubt, if you’re going to try and engage with someone, it can be helpful to show “hey look, I’m a likeable character, I’m trustworthy, I’m all these kinds of things.” But what we know now from about 60 odd years of research into the psychology of influence, persuasion and connection, is that people are more likely to want to connect with you, not if they see that you are likeable, but rather if they come to learn that you like them. And this is really important, because if you think about it, there’s no reason why I should engage with a financial adviser just because I like them. No reason logically for that. But, there’s a very good reason why I might want to engage with a financial planner or an investment manager if I come to learn that they like me, because if someone, if I know that someone likes me, they’ve probably got my best interests at heart. So that’s the key insight here on this data. No doubt, of course you want to be likeable and you want to be seen as an expert. The likeable expert is almost like the perfect financial adviser, right? Likeable, expert, trustworthy, great, perfect. I don’t need to worry anymore about that. But it’s this likability piece that gets misunderstood. “How do I get people to like me?” That’s not the right question. The right question to ask first is, “what is it about this person I’m dealing with, or these potential clients of mine that I like?” Communicating that is, is the key insight. So there’s something straight away that can be done. The other thing, which comes back, a lot of these things are connected to broader influence and trust is the mistake that we often make when we make a case and we think that actually our job is to present the most important features or attributes of what my firm can do for you, how we work these kind of things. Absolutely, that’s important. That’s important. But actually what’s even more important is to point out something that perhaps is a potential downside to working with you or your company. Now, not something so un-overcomeable that you’ve going to lose them from the outset, but something that you can deal with it but signals “look, I’m not going to give you the full picture that we are perfect, right?” It’s “look, I should probably state up front that we’re probably not going to be the cheapest service provider in this context, but what you get with us”, and then that’s where you list your attributes. So you often see people bowling in and going “we can do this, we can do this, we can do this, we can do this.” And then further down the line, this little niggle emerges and that becomes the focus of attention. Smart communicators are able to essentially dodge that bullet by bringing that niggle up front and say “hey look, this might not be perfect for you, but when you balance it with these things.” So that two balanced approach and essentially going with a weakness or a downside first followed by your two or three top attributes can be helpful as well. They’re really practical tactical things. We are in the domain of tactics now that can be super helpful. 

Phil Bray

Love that. And we love a few tactics for people to take away and start using, straight away. Just conscious of time. Dan just do the last two questions. I can see we’ve got one from our friend Mr. Brady over in Ireland, and we’ve got that famous anonymous attendee, he’s got a question. So let’s do those two. And then Abi, if you can just pop up Steve’s slide so people get that QR code again, and we’ll do one minute on next month’s webinar, and then we’ll let Steve continue with his day. 

Dan Campbell

Sure thing. So let’s do Coman’s question first. So they ask “Steve mentioned core ingredients of successful influence. What are those ingredients?”

Steve Martin

There are seven. They are outlined in Robert Cialdini, who by the way full disclosure I trained under Cialdini 25 years ago, and subsequently I picked up the mantle there. So beyond information and incentives, so evidence and economics, there are a set of universal principles that reliably guide people to a yes or an acceptance of an idea. We’ve spoken about several of them actually today, but not explicitly. Reciprocation being one, one way in which people decide who to work with is to ask the question, “has that person done something for me first?” There’s reciprocity. Liking is another, “does this person like me?” Unity, “are they able to essentially show me how what they are offering makes it part of a sense of my identity?” Authority, people look to credible, knowledgeable experts when they are deciding what to do. Social proof being the other one, that’s the version of testimonials. One way that people decide “what is the right thing for me to do?” when they’re uncertain, if they don’t look up to the expert, they look to the side, to people around them. Consistency is an interesting one. It’s just people’s desire to live up to their self ascribed traits, their values. And so if you write or present a proposition that’s in line with that, it becomes more attractive. And scarcity is the last one, people essentially are more interested and will act more to avoid losses than they will to accrue gains. So it presents an interesting situation when you’re talking about not having a pension, not having a life plan, not having a financial plan. What you expose yourself to in terms of loss, that can be very action orientating to people, but it also comes at a cost of you sometimes get shot for being the person that says “hey, you’re at risk here” in that instance. So balancing that. So there are seven. You can see them on the website. You can see them in the latest Influence at Work book within The Economist. If you want a real deep dive, then the original book Influence is still out there. Those are the core principles beyond a good case that makes financial sense. How do people navigate the world?

Dan Campbell

Brilliant. Thanks, Steve. And then final question, before we wrap up from our anonymous attendee, we always get one anonymous one makes it very mysterious. I promise you, it’s not me. 

Steve Martin

Phil’s mum, right? 

Dan Campbell

Yeah, it could be anyone, right? They ask, “can real contact only take place in person?” Big question, isn’t it?

Steve Martin

Okay, we don’t have long, do we? It’s a different type of contact. I just came back from Australia. I was in Australia for a couple of weeks. We were speaking at some events and things. I shared a stage. So I’m about to give someone else’s quote here, which I absolutely love, and I don’t mind citing this person, either. So I shared a stage with Esther Perel, who I didn’t know too much about before I went out there and “oh God you know?” She said something really interesting. She said “an environment that’s lacking in contacts, and an environment that is essentially not open to opportunities of chance is also an environment where chance doesn’t happen.” And so that’s the key difference here. In a face to face, real life environment, there’s other things that are going on that are uncontrollable. Someone else walks in the room, someone else gets invited to a meeting. You bump into someone in the corridor. These kinds of things don’t happen on Zoom calls and Teams calls where you know who’s going to be there. You know what time we start talking, you know what time we leave. That, as Esther Perel would say, the opportunities for chance encounters are eliminated, and therefore those chances don’t emerge. That’s the key difference. That’s the key difference, beyond the fact that it’s pretty hard to assess someone’s situation, personality, just from the neck up, you don’t see all the other things that are actually going on around you. So it’s an artificial piece. I don’t think we’re ever going to get back to everyone fully working in the office anymore. But I think it’s important to recognise that there are things that are accomplished so much more productively and humanly when we are with each other, as opposed to just being in the presence digitally with each other.

Phil Bray

Fabulous Steve. Thank you very much for that answer. Love that. Abi, stick the slides up if you would, let’s talk about next month’s webinar.

Abi Robinson

I’ll talk on 1.5. So yes, if anybody has ever been on the phone with me or Phil and you’ve said “really want to start posting on Tiktok, or I really want to get in the press, or I want to win an award”, the next thing we’re probably going to say to you is “why?” And I think that’s been a bit of a motivator for next month’s webinar, is the power of a marketing strategy over what makes you feel good, which is just diving straight into tactics without knowing why you’re doing them and who you’re doing them for. So it’s very similar. I’m sure you will see the parallels with the work that you do. Somebody came to you and asked, “what do I need to do to retire at 55?” You’re not going to hit them with a list of tactics. You’re going to sit down and make a financial plan, and that’s what we recommend for your marketing. So next month, we’re going to be talking about the difference between tactics and strategies, the things that should go into an effective strategy, why it needs to evolve, to consider the impact that AI is having, and why in the long run, it’s going to save you time, save you energy, and probably work out cheaper and reducing your return on investment if you go straight into the tactics front So 22nd of April, it’s just me, Phil and Dan next month, but looking forward to it. You can scan the QR code there. I will also put the link in the follow up email, as always.

Phil Bray

Thank you, Abi. Steve, that’s been a wonderful hour and ten minutes. Thank you so much for being generous with your time. I could have stayed here forever, but I’m sure you’ve got other things to do. Dan, thank you as always. Abi, thank you as always. Everybody, thank you for your questions. And most of all, thanks again Steve, that was absolutely fabulous, and I really appreciate you spending your time with us.

Steve Martin

Good to be welcomed and invited onto the program. Thank you.

Phil Bray

Thanks everybody. Have a great day.