If you have had a candid discussion with a financial advisor recently you will know they are all looking for that prospect with a net worth of $1 Million in liquid assets. Yup $1 Million plus is the magic number. Liquid assists does not include your residence, yacht, timeshares or fancy cars. We are talking about Stocks, Bonds, Commodities and other assets minus all debt including mortgages on all those toys & bling. Since this is the sacred cow of the sales folks in the financial world you would think that once they got one they would work hard to keep them right? Well in one case not so much.

I was chatting with a colleague about our recent Salesforce CRM consulting engagements and she shared an interesting story. A Global Financial Institution hired her on a contract. As part of that contract she had to disclose all of her brokerage accounts and positions etc. This is typical when working for a Big 4 Consulting Firm or any other Financial Institution or Firm where you have access to non public information that is considered insider info which could influence stock prices.

As a result the compliance division of the new client required her to switch to a different agent to hold & custody all of her Assets. She had been happy with the firm holding her assets for 10 years, they are a well known firm. So far so good, I said. She said well not so much the new client insisted that she move all of her assets to one of their preferred vendors or she would be off the job. Well after she moved all $1.4 Million to the new firm she was rather shocked that the old firm Never contacted her to ask why she left. I was incredulous, are you kidding me? She said No they did’t call or email or anything just let her go out the door.

It sounds to me like that advisory firm has plenty of folks that claim to be in sales but are nothing more than order takers and 3rd rate customerservice people. She agreed and she said she was actually happier with the new firm which had lower fees and a better website. It is much easier to keep a customer than get a new one. If you loose a customer you better find out why, yes it takes a lot of guts to make that call and some real finesse to get the conversation going. Yet you will learn a lot on how to keep your clients and maybe even get them back with a little TLC.