I sat in on a review once that I still think about. Lovely couple, late seventies, been with the same Advisor for twenty-two years. He knew their grandkids’ names. He’d talked the husband out of selling everything in 2008. Real loyalty, the kind you can’t buy.
Their daughter was there that day, because her dad’s memory was starting to slip. She was polite. She took notes on her phone. She asked one question about fees. And on the drive home, she told her mother, kindly, that once things were settled she’d probably move everything to the person she already used.
She’d never been in that office before. Twenty-two years, and nobody had ever asked to meet her.
That’s the part of this business nobody wants to say out loud at the conference. You don’t really have a relationship with a family. You have a relationship with one or two people in it. And when those people die, the money goes to someone who doesn’t owe you a thing.
The loyalty doesn’t transfer
We talk about client retention like it’s one number. It isn’t. You can hold on to a couple for thirty years and still lose the whole account in eighteen months, because the loyalty was theirs. It was never the kids’.
And the kids usually aren’t hostile. That’s what makes it sneaky. They just don’t know you. To them you’re Mom’s guy. Maybe a nice guy. But they’ve got their own Advisor, or an app, or a friend from college who does this now. When the estate settles, they go with what’s familiar. You were never familiar.
I’ll be honest, I did this for years. I’d ask about the kids in reviews. Where are they living, how’s the new job. I thought that counted. It doesn’t. Knowing about somebody isn’t the same as them knowing you.
Why we avoid it
Part of it is awkward. It feels a little morbid to say, hey, can we bring your son in, you know, for when you’re gone. Part of it is we’re busy, and the kids aren’t paying us yet. So it slides. Every year it slides.
And part of it, if I’m being straight, is that the kids scare us a bit. They’re younger, they ask sharper questions about fees, they’ve read things online. It’s easier to keep serving the parents who already trust us.
But every year you skip it, the clock keeps running. Your book is aging whether you plan for it or not.
The stuff nobody says on stage is what The Chairman’s Council is for. Paid members get the full playbook, and every one after it.
Keeping one family’s money through a single inheritance is worth years of membership. Upgrade and read how.
