How have you improved the quantity and quality of the value you provide your best clients over the past two years?  I recall several articles this time back in 2008 regarding Russ Prince's study about disappointed clients.  That study was just one of many I've seen over the past two decades which have consistently shown that often affluent clients don't feel the reality of their relationship with their financial advisor lives-up to their expectations.

Could it be that, for most advisors to the affluent, that the value provided doesn't match up with the promises made, or implied, at the inception of the relationship?  This study from two years ago is not much different than research I've seen over the years.  Unfortunately for our beloved industry, affluent potential clients have become accustomed to being disappointed by their financial advisors.

The advice we've given advisors over the years is to focus on those things within your control and not obsess about things outside of your control, such as financial market performance, terrorism, oil spills or other world events that affect our clients' financial affairs.  That said, the studies always describe clients' disappointment in things that are indeed within your control, as an advisor.

So the question is, "how much have you increased the value you bring to your clients' lives over the past two years?"  Back when Russ Prince's study came out, a piece ran on ConsumerAffairs.com entitled Is It Time to Fire Your Financial Advisor? which encouraged affluent readers to answer these questions and fire their advisor if they answered "no" to more than one:

• Do you find yourself always calling your advisor and not the other way around?
• Are you reaching your investment or financial goals, with performance that is within your realistic expectations?
• Did you and your advisor have discussions that led to rebalancing your asset allocation and did these changes get you back on track toward your goals?
• Did your advisor accomplish all of this while maintaining a strategy that fell within your risk tolerance or, put simply, that allowed you to sleep at night?

Some of this is silly media perspective that misses the real issues, so let me tell you how I read this from a Trusted Advisor's perspective:

• Are you meeting with every Ideal Client on a regular basis (at least three times per year)?  Do you schedule these meetings at least six months out so your best clients never have to wonder when they are going to be meeting with their Trusted Advisor?
• Are you measuring progress for clients bench-marked against their goals, rather than "the markets" or other irrelevant measures? (EX: Here's where you were financially when we first met, here's where you are financially now.  Now here's where you need to be financially to accomplish the financial goals you shared with me.  Just 3 numbers!).
• Do you have an expert providing oversight and due diligence over the places your Ideal Client's have their money invested? In other words, do you have a dispassionate, conflict-free expert assessing whether the mutual funds, ETF's, private money managers, turn-key asset management programs (wherever your clients are invested) and their asset allocations are suitable?
• Does every one of your ideal clients have a sensible and comprehensive written lifetime financial plan?