Hartford — “It seems that we’re in one of the most unfriendly professions,” groaned Kelly with an accompanying eye-roll of annoyance. “Why is it that financial advisors don’t give each other the time of day, they’re often not even civil, until they need something?”
Kelly is an independent financial advisor who, after six years in the industry, has raised over $70 million in assets (the hard way); one client at a time. He posed this question at a break during a LinkedIn Marketing Symposium we were conducting. Apparently, Kelly knew two veteran advisors (wirehouse team) from church, who prior to him becoming a financial advisor, were always friendly.
“As soon as they learned I was in the business, neither would have anything to do with me. I tried to solicit their advice during my first year and got nowhere – I assumed they were too busy. Finally it was during my second year when I realized that they viewed me as a competitor – and apparently they don’t like competitors.”
What prompted Kelly’s question was now these same two veterans who’d blown him off had recently been calling his office to take him to lunch. What were they after? According to Kelly, they wanted to pick his brain about going independent. Apparently his success in building a business from scratch hadn’t gone unnoticed.
In asking our advice, we shared with Kelly five rules uncovered by the Oechsli Institute over the years regarding advisor-to-advisor interaction.