Slow the Bleeding
Upon a market trigger (which you set in advance, such as a one-day market decline of 5% or more), you send a letter to all clients advising of the situation, with your advice and your assurance that you are diligently performing your responsibilities and will contact them should circumstances warrant. --Stephanie Bogan
When discussing the opportunities presented by these markets, one advisor shared with me, in exasperation, "I'm not looking for opportunity. I'm just looking to stop the bleeding so I have a firm when this is over." It goes without saying that slowing the bleeding is essential to one's survival. What I caution advisors against is mitigating in the wrong manner—in a way that dramatically impairs their ability to survive beyond the immediate circumstances.
The first step to slowing the bleeding is where most of you are now spending your energy: preservation of cash flow. You are spending countless hours hand-holding clients. How you go about doing so, however, has a significant impact on how hard it is on you, your staff and your bottom line. Many advisors have been so busy responding to circumstances that they took scant time to develop a strategy that enables them to move beyond the client call on hold. Consider a more disciplined approach, which might look something like the following: Upon a market trigger (which you set in advance, such as a one-day market decline of 5% or more), you send a letter to all clients advising of the situation, with your advice and your assurance that you are diligently performing your responsibilities and will contact them should circumstances warrant.
-Stephanie Bogan, president of Quantuvis Consulting, in The Three-Step Business Survival Guide
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