Managing the Relationship
At the risk of sounding boorish, client behavior needs to be regulated. We’ve got to be gentle bullies. Every client’s lament is the same: I wish I had started sooner. There is never a convenient time to invest, clients never have enough information to make a decision and clients always have conflicting needs for their money. The client does not know that the biggest single investing mistake is not starting and the second biggest single mistake is not going all the way. When your child is three, college is a mirage. When you’re forty five, the gold watch and rocking chair are mirages as well.
Controlling client behavior is essential to controlling the relationship. If you don’t control the client, he will control you. It’s all too common in down markets that we begin to doubt ourselves. After enough doubt creeps in, we lose our assertiveness. We go to bed one night and things are fine. We wake up in the morning to find the client in charge. He’ll tell us he wants to wait until things get better. He’ll stop contributing to his children’s educational funds. He’ll balk at our recommendations. Because we’ve lost some certainty, we find ourselves powerless to reassert ourselves and our client begins to lose his most precious commodity, time. And left to his own devices, he will undoubtedly fail.