Would you like to have more meaningful conversations with your clients? What if those conversations led to more referrals, more of the right-fit clients and, ultimately, a more profitable business? We have quadrupled our referral rate by changing the way we communicate with clients and thinking more about the words we use.

The limbic part of your brain makes decisions. The neocortex deals with language and analytical thought. But it’s that limbic part of the brain that is responsible for our emotions and decision-making. When we are throwing heaps of facts and figures at clients and telling them how wonderful we are, it just doesn’t get through. It doesn’t drive their behavior. We need to use language that is going to get right through to that limbic part of the brain, the emotional part. They need to feel what we are saying to them. They need to believe it, and they need to experience it. People make decisions on what they feel, not what they know.

We want to uncover the emotional attachments that our clients have connected to money. We want to help them navigate their own emotions and try to get them to change their behavior. They have come to us because they want to make a change. Our job is to inspire clients to make those changes.

Think about the headlines that you see in the media, such as “Nightmare on Wall Street,” “Wall Street in panic as stocks crash” and “Economy falls into a recession.” We see them all the time, but how do they make you feel? They make you feel anxious. They make you panic, but you want to read on. Think about how you could rephrase those headlines: “Sale time on Wall Street, buy now.” Our language can make made-up things seem real.

In 1974 Dr. Elizabeth Loftus carried out a study asking people to watch a short video of a car crash. Some students were asked if they’d seen the broken headlight. Another group of students were asked if they’d seen a broken headlight. The students who were asked the “a” question were two to three times more likely to select the “I don’t know” box than the ones who were asked the “the” question. In fact, there was no broken headlight. By using a subtle change in language, it’s amazing how made-up things can appear real. By being asked if they’d seen the broken headlight, they assumed there must be one.

How do we know that what we think is actually what we think and not just what we’ve been told to think? It doesn’t take much for us to think something that we didn’t before. Have you ever had a situation where somebody hasn’t called you when you’re expecting them to? You start to think, Have I done something wrong? Have I upset them? Have I put my foot in it? Chances are it probably just slipped their mind. But our minds are designed or biased to work against us. Our minds are looking for confirmation. It’s called “confirmation bias.” It’s about telling ourselves a believable story. But we need to question that story with our clients and ask them, “Is it true?” We need to help our clients become free of any negative or survival emotions that they might be displaying and allow them to see what they could actually achieve with our help.

What are their dreams? What are their hopes? Questions are a useful tool to explore clients’ thinking, and the words that they use in their responses will give meaning to their thoughts. Their responses allow us to tell if they are in a survival state. The words that they use, such as “I hate when that happens” or “That really scares me,” will show a survival response. It allows us to help our clients explore why they feel like that and develop the capacity to respond differently to their feelings or challenges around money and other areas of their lives.

There is so much information out there for clients, and it can be really confusing. We might say to clients, “Let’s put this into a portfolio of investments,” but where does the word “portfolio” come from? If we say to clients, “What we’re going to do is find you a number of investments and put them all together into what we call a portfolio,” suddenly it starts to make sense. We don’t want to patronize them; we want to avoid jargon where we can, but if we have to use it, we need to explain it immediately afterward to the client.

If people have too much information, they will become paralyzed by indecision. If we say to our clients, “Look, you’ve got some choices to make,” then that’s a good thing. Choices are good. Choices are where you are going to go on your holiday or what restaurant you are going to eat at. If we say to clients, “You need to make a decision” or “You’ve got some decisions to make,” that’s quite onerous. The word “decision” is very different from the word “choice.” But if we say, “I’m going to help you make some choices about what you need to do,” that’s a good thing. The client feels more confident to make choices rather than run away from a decision.

The language is about building the relationship, but it’s also about building the client’s confidence. What if you meet with a new client and say, “What I’m going to do today is ask you lots of questions. You’ve got some crucial decisions to make. I’m going to give you an appropriate investment strategy. It’s going to be a portfolio of investments, taking into account macroenvironments and microenvironments. It’s very volatile; it’s a long-term commitment”? How’s your client going to feel? You might feel clever, but do they feel clever? They probably feel terrified. They know you are going to solve the problem, but are they confident, and have they bought into you?

Instead, what if you say, “What I’d like to do is spend the next hour finding out a bit more about you. Money is just a means to achieving things you want to do in life, so I want to talk to you about what money means and about your aims and objectives, your hopes and dreams. We’ll talk a bit about what you’ve currently got, but then we’ll talk about how it’s working for you. We’re going to work together to build a plan to get you to where you want to be”? How does that sound? You’ve made the client feel as though you are going to be working together. It’s almost as though you’ve gone around and sat next to them, put your arm around them or held their hand. They feel confident.

We’ve seen a huge increase in the number of clients referred to us since we started really thinking about the language that we are using with them. How we talk to them is important. They want us to know them. They want us to listen to them. And they want us to understand them. They want us to be part of their tribe.