Stop Selling Drills & Start Selling Holes Instead
When was the last time you bought a drill?
Why did you buy it? Did you really care about the drill?
The truth is that you didn’t want a drill. You wanted a hole. And not even just a hole. You wanted to hang a picture, mount a shelf, or build something meaningful to you.
The drill was only the tool that made the outcome possible.
That’s how people buy.
Most advisors don’t understand this when it comes to marketing for financial advisors.
They lead with products and features. Life insurance. Health and disability coverage. Mutual funds and managed accounts. Annuities. Riders and allocations. Specs and structures.
But clients are not shopping for products. They are looking for outcomes they can feel in their real life.
Clarity. Control. Confidence. Peace of mind. Time freedom. Status. Options.
If your message leads with the drill, you lose the person who came for the hole.
Why Your Messages Miss the Mark
In 1990, Stanford psychologist Elizabeth Newton ran a simple but eye-opening experiment.
She divided participants into two groups: “tappers” and “listeners.”
The tappers were given a list of well-known songs—things everyone has heard hundreds of times, like “Happy Birthday” or “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Their job was to pick one and tap out the rhythm on a table. The listeners’ job was to guess the song.
It sounds easy. After all, the songs are famous, and the beat should be obvious.
And here’s the twist to the study: before starting, the tappers were asked to predict how well they thought the listeners would identify the right song. They predicted that the listeners would accurately guess 50 percent of the time.
But here’s what happened: Out of 120 songs tapped, listeners guessed correctly only 3 times. That’s a success rate of 2.5 percent.
The tappers thought one out of two guesses would be right. Instead, it was one out of forty.
Why the huge disconnect?
Because when you’re the tapper, you can’t help but hear the tune in your head as you tap.
You assume the listener hears it too. But they don’t. To them, it’s just an uneven series of knocks, like a broken Morse Code.
This is the Curse of Knowledge. Once you know something, it’s almost impossible to imagine what it feels like not to know it. And that curse makes communication break down.
Now think about how often this plays out in financial advising. You, the advisor, are the tapper.
You know the rhythm of life insurance, mutual funds, annuities, and asset allocations. You’ve studied the rules and mechanics for years. The tune is crystal clear in your mind.
But your prospects? They’re the listeners. All they hear are disjointed taps—phrases like “asset class diversification,” “living benefits,” or “non-correlated asset.”
To you, these sound like music. To them, they sound like noise.
And just like the tappers in the study, advisors constantly overestimate how clear their message is. You think your prospects “get it” when in reality they’re guessing—and usually guessing wrong.
That’s why your message falls flat. Not because your product is bad, but because you’re talking in drills when your clients are searching for holes.
Translate Drills Into Holes
Below are common ways advisors sell the drill, followed by language that sells the hole. The right column names the felt experience your client actually wants.
The Payoff for You
Outcome-driven messaging does three things. It earns attention. It lowers resistance. It creates qualified conversations.
People do not book a call to hear about a product. They book a call to get a better life. When your words describe that life, your funnel stops leaking and your pipeline gets predictable.
Remember: Clients don’t want drills, they want holes. And the advisors who understand that are the ones who grow.
Ready to Translate Features Into Felt Outcomes?
Discover where your funnel is leaking—and how to fix it. Take the Inbound Marketing Fitness Assessment to see if your message is truly attracting the right prospects or repelling them with product-speak.
