What continues to surprise me is how misaligned many financial advisors are with what their Ideal Clients truly value in them.

What many Advisors believe clients value most:

• Ability to select better investments than most other advisors
• Access to better financial products
• Ability to explain the markets and "the way finance works"
• Provide explanations & thorough "client education"
• Custom newsletters written by the advisor explaining or predicting "market conditions"

What Ideal Clients actually value most:

• Process to coordinate all my finances (take advantage of opportunities & avoid pitfalls)
• Skill and ability to coordinate all the financial people in my life (Tax people, investment people, attorneys & insurance people).
• Thorough checklists to ensure that my "financial house" is in perfect order & stays that way forever.
• Save me time, as in, "I could do much of this myself, but I'd rather hire someone to do it so I can focus my time & energies on things that matter more than money to me."
• Highly competent & worthy of my trust (has a team of experts & can be counted upon).
• My advisor is conflict free (will find the best, most suitable, financial products at the lowest overall cost). Establishes & discloses who is being compensated for every financial product & service utilized by each Ideal Client. 
• Asks me (the client) to do those things only I can do.  Frames & positions issues in a highly skilled manner in order to help me make the most intelligent decisions.
• Measures progress benchmarked against my goals (in dollars).
• Provides regular interactions; that said, understands that scheduling fewer,  better organized meetings, per year is better than more meetings which are less-client-focused.
• My advisor insists that all our conversations focus on things which can be controlled, rather than things which cannot be controlled (like "market" performance, interest rates, tsunamis or nuclear reactor emergencies). 
• Uses our meeting time to discuss my progress, my action items & recommendations for me; little or no "chit chat."
• My advisor's actions show a belief that:
• Simple is better than complex 
• Fast service is better than slow
• Focus on client's aspirations & interests come ahead of the advisor's personal or business interests

After contemplating the two views do you agree they are substantially different views; night and day?