The circle of trust

With the media plastering negative stories about annuity advisors – even if they only focused on the small sample size containing bad apples – consumers paid attention. They were wary of strangers with retirement promises. They were "watching you." And what they were looking for was someone they could trust with their retirement money. 

The Mama Test

We decided we'd tweak our coverage of advisors. We'd continue to run success stories. We'd explain the strategies successful advisors used to win clients. With one very important addition – we'd also talk about trust, how it was gained, how it could be lost.

Oh, and we'd talk about the clients as well. With the advisor-client relationship, two parties are at stake and we'd hear about the client's success story, too.

I added one more unscientific element to the process. Any advisor I wrote about had to pass "The Mama Test." It goes like this. As I spoke to an advisor, I asked myself one and only one question: Would I want this person to handle my mama's money? 

The Rule of 1
After the dust settled that first January, I had a conversation with an advisor who told me he planned to have 500 client meetings that year.

"How is that even possible?" I asked.

"It's taken years," he said, "And I never would have made it without gaining the trust of my clients who then are glad to give me referrals."

"How'd you gain their trust?"

"One way is how I treat people in those client meetings. When someone walks through those doors that may be the only time they meet with a financial advisor all year. So it doesn't matter if I have 50, 100 or 500 client meetings in a year. When they sit down across from me, I treat it like that meeting is the most important one I'll ever have."