How to Become Your Clients' Chief Trusted Advisor -- An Argument for Radical Change in Intentions and Collaboration

Head-on Collision
If you were able to see what’s going on in our industry, from a higher altitude it would become obvious that the wealthy and their advisors appear to be on course for a head-on collision. Both are going at each other at 90 mph and neither seem to be easing up on the pedal or making any effort to avoid an inevitable crash. Studies suggest that most wealthy clients are displeased with and don’t trust their advisors.
Advisors are tired and frustrated because they have put so much into their careers, but feel they haven’t been receiving the respect and appreciation from their clients they believe they deserve. Most advisors intellectually understand why clients don’t trust their advisors in general, but most don’t see themselves as part of “the problem.” They justify, “It’s the scammers and our industry’s executives’ greed that have caused the current distrust in our industry.”
As the financial and economic dramas of the last couple of years have unfolded, there have been some attempts at reconciliation from family office professionals and their firms, but none seem meaningful or game changing. Reducing and managing risk has been the popular focus for our industry in an attempt to “regain” clients’ trust, but many of the wealthy believe this focus is “too little, too late.” So for the most part it is business as usual, and yet both advisors and their wealthy clients still have a yearning for better relations and better results in the coming months and years.
In order for relations and results to change in any dramatic way, advisors are going to have to change in dramatic ways. They are going to have to grab the steering wheel and make an abrupt, dramatic, and potentially painful turn before things get even worse. In other words, in order for family office advisors to really gain the trust and respect of their clients, they will have to start doing some things they have really never done before.
Admittedly, it sounds quite dramatic and sensational to suggest that advisors must do things they’ve never done before. Wouldn’t it be okay if we could just get back to the quality of client relations we had before September 2008? The problem with that line of thinking is that most wealthy clients have never fully trusted their advisors in the past. When markets and clients’ net worth were increasing, the wealthy tolerated their advisors. But for the most part, clients have never fully trusted their advisors. Therefore, it is imperative that advisors start to do things they have never done before if they desire to enter new territories of client relationships of trust and respect.

The Heart of the Problem
It seems simple. If clients don’t trust their advisors, then advisors should find out what is causing this distrust and change it! As mentioned earlier, one of the main issues is that most advisors don’t see themselves as contributing to our industry’s lack of trust between clients and their advisors. The other main problem, and the reason it is so difficult for advisors to make the appropriate changes, is that they have acquired some bad habits spawned from our industry’s use of a dysfunctional sales process. More specifically, financial services professionals have falsely believed that they could place their full intention on helping themselves, their employers, and their clients – in that particular order.
This dysfunctional order of advisors’ intentions has been confirmed in my eight years of recruiting. When looking at advisors’ resumes it has always struck me to see the blatant absence of advisors choosing to include anything that speaks to the service and value they render their clients. If the industry was set up to focus on helping their clients succeed first and foremost, the only thing candidates would have to list in their resumes would be all the ways they have helped their clients succeed in the past.

The Remedy
In order to gain the respect and trust advisors seek from their clients, they must focus their sole intention on helping their clients obtain the most optimal solutions to their complex lifestyle and financial issues. The litmus test: Having the sole intention to help their clients succeed – even if all or part of their recommended solutions come through other advisors or firms.
If high net worth family’s lifestyle and financial situations are as complex as everyone says they are (and advisors really do want to gain their clients’ trust and respect), this dramatic shift in the priority of advisors’ intentions must occur.
Ironically, by making this dramatic shift in intentions, advisors will help themselves and their firms in much more dramatic ways than continuing to use the outdated and dysfunctional sales model.
But how is this done? How do advisors all of a sudden start taking their focus off their own needs and the needs of their firm who provides their livelihood especially in the uncertain times we find ourselves in currently?
The best way to make this break is for advisors to officially declare that their sole focus is on finding and providing the most optimal solutions for their clients from this day forward. That they will never again make any recommendations that are half-baked and not 100% designed to provide the absolute best outcomes for their clients. Advisors will “make haste” when they have taken some time to objectively look at the future benefits that will come to them when this commitment has been officially made and executed.

The Huge Payoff
Clients will intuitively know when you have officially changed the order of where your intentions are placed. They will fully appreciate finally finding an advisor who is truly attempting to help them obtain the most optimal solutions to their complex issues. When your intentions to help your clients succeed are so strong – that you are willing to trust other advisors in helping you accomplish the task at hand – you will then become your clients’ (often talked about, but seldom attained) Trusted Chief Advisor.