Greg recently asked:

"...Mark Little he mentions identifying 17 ideal clients and then "disengaging" the rest. What exactly does an advisor do to disengage a client? Was part of the practice sold or were clients simply removed from their service frequencies causing them to leave and seek advice elsewhere?"

This is a great question, and since it comes up often, I decided to share my answer here with you today.

The basic choices for dealing with your existing Non-Ideal Clients are:

1. Keep them, but don't serve them at a high level (compliance problem & potential integrity "issue").

2. Bring in a "Junior Associate" to serve them (the financial services industry equivalent of "latrine duty").

3. Politely disengage (This is what I did, I pointed Non-Ideal Clients in the direction of other advisors.  The biggest benefit is the immediate "gift of time" to devote to client acquisition activities and serving my best clients at an even higher level).

4. Sell them (a growing trend and I like this option too since you get to screen the new advisors and insist your clients be handled a certain way... or you don't sell).

All the best in implementing,

Mark