Dear friend,
I have asked your financial advisor to send you this letter after you and he have worked together–ideally, long enough that you are now visibly on your way toward achieving your most important financial goals.
I hope the relationship has been good and beneficial for you.If it has, if your advisor has offered you good service and good advice, and if he has put your goals and personal objectives ahead of his own interests, then I have a favor to ask you. Please tell your friends and acquaintances about him. Recommend that they, too, take advantage of his services.
As a financial journalist and 30-year writer in the investment and financial services field, I have seen both the good and the bad. I have seen, first-hand, how the most ethical and people-focused advisors are able to help people transform their lives for the better, through good planning, good advice and good service.
I have also seen people–often salespeople–masquerade as advisors and make terrible recommendations that serve their own interests much more than their customers.
So I’m asking you this favor for two important reasons. First, by my best estimation, more than three quarters of all people who call themselves investment advisors or financial planners are not (despite what they say, despite the advertisements you may have seen) ethical or competent. The chances of your friends finding somebody like your advisor, on their own, are depressingly small. So this would be a significant favor to the people you care about in your life.
The second reason is that every financial planning business has to divide its time between serving its clients and customers–people like you–and marketing its services to the community. The more you refer business to your advisor, the less time he has to spend on these marketing activities, and the more time he can devote to the things that he does best: helping people reach their goals and handling the paperwork of their busy lives.
If you and others spread the word about your advisor, and others like him, then eventually the predators and pretenders in this business will lose market share and be driven out of business. My hope is that someday all financial planners will be like yours, and that finding quality advice and service will be easy.
Thank you for your help in making this important goal a reality.
Sincerely,
Robert N. Veres
Financial Planning magazine columnist
Editor, Inside Information newsletter
