Life Lessons from a Hot Dog

Absolutely no trouble with your COMPLIANCE department. Thankfully, caring is one thing that Ideal Clients crave from Financial Advisors like us, yet our compliance departments can’t seem to come up with any rules to prevent it. So make it your competitive advantage to care more about your clients than any other Financial Advisor in town. Before the end of the week make a pledge to each of your Ideal Clients, which will then put you in a category of one.

1. PROTECTION: Pledge to each one that you’ll “have their back.” As recommendations come to them from others, I to let you know so you can assess each one. Pledge to do a cost-to-benefit analysis on each one, dispassionately comparing the cost of each recommendation against the payoff, in light of the financial goals they’ve set for themselves.

2. ATTENTION: Pledge to pay close attention to their situation. Promise that you will proactively assess whether or not they’re on track to the financial goals they’ve shared with you at least 3 times a year. Further, if ever they drift off-track, you agree to call them proactively, armed with a series of Action Items & recommendations designed to get them back on track to their objectives.

3. COORDINATION: Pledge that you will coordinate all the people and elements in their financial lives. That, even though they never call you, you promise to proactively call the other key advisors in your client’s life (their CPA, estate lawyer, etc), to ensure they’re well-aligned with the comprehensive written lifetime financial strategy you’ve been hired to create.

4. TRANSPARENCY: Pledge that you will be fully transparent when it comes to identifying how your client is compensating everyone on the team. That you agree to work with all their advisors to establish an amount of total costs your client is paying for all financial products and services over the last year and an estimate for the next 12 months.

If you want to drive your compliance people nuts, why don’t you tell your client that you care so much you’ll GUARANTEE to deliver on The Four Client Expectations listed over the next 12 months?

Anyway, no matter how hard they try, the regulators cannot restrict the amount you care about your clients. Thankfully, caring in this way will radically differentiate you from the other Financial Advisors in town who are neither able nor willing to deliver on all 4 of these promises.

Some Financial Advisors or firms may claim to deliver on one, or possibly two of these promises. But the chances of finding another Financial Advisor who will commit to all 4 of these client expectations are *statistically zero*. Now you know how to become The Only Game in Town.