Are You a Missionary or a Mercenary?

Mark DiGiovanni, CFP, ChFC, MBA

President, Marathon Financial Strategies

When someone is looking for the right financial advisor, the most important question that should be asked is one that almost never is: are you a missionary or a mercenary? It’s not a question potential clients would necessarily think to ask you; instead, the question is generally answered by how you act towards them.

By missionary, I mean an advisor who sees what he or she does as more than a way to make money. They see their job as a way to help people develop a better quality of life––that is their driving force, not how much income they make. I’m not saying that making money isn’t a motivator to the missionary advisor; it just isn’t the primary motivator.

Advisors who are more mercenary than missionary are more likely to focus on numbers, and primarily numbers with dollar signs in front of them. One of their first questions may be “how much money do you have to invest?” They may start talking about products early in the conversation, before they have gotten to know a client’s situation in detail. They may tout their success in selecting investments for their current clients. They may refer to their large number of clients and the large amount of assets under management as proof of their expertise and worthiness. 

Advisors who are more missionary than mercenary are more likely to focus on the person and qualitative issues before they focus on money and quantitative issues. The missionary advisor understands that a client drives his or her money decisions, not the other way around. Until an advisor understands a client’s unique situation, it is impossible to devise a financial strategy for him or her. A missionary advisor will always show greater interest in the client than in that client’s money. 

Missionary advisors will also use their expertise in ways that may not generate an income, but that raise the profession in the public’s eye. They may be active in a professional organization, offer pro bono services to low-income families, or speak to church and civic groups without making a sales pitch. Their desire is to sincerely help others, especially those who may not be potential clients. Consumers should be looking for evidence of such activities when evaluating advisors. Where do you fit in?

I believe that the professional financial advisor has three main duties to their clients: steward, teacher, and director. These are also the responsibilities of the missionary advisor. The first and most important role is steward. Stewardship here means protecting the assets of another and enabling those assets to grow and be used to meet the desires of the owner. If you are doing something with a client’s assets that he or she would never do and if those assets belonged to an immediate family member, you are not practicing good stewardship. Stewardship means never putting a client at any risk greater than the minimum needed to reach that client’s goals.

Too often when I talk with new clients, they will tell me about a minor incident that is often the reason they have come to me. They will tell me they called their old advisor with a question or a concern and their advisor replied with a dismissive, “Oh, don’t worry about it.”  Every question from a client merits a proper answer. Every concern from a client merits attention, including concerns that may be based on inadequate or incorrect information. It is our role to educate our clients by answering questions fully, by validating concerns that have merit, and by extinguishing baseless concerns through teaching the truth. 

How would you feel about a doctor who ask you to decide the best way to cure an affliction you had? How would you feel about a doctor asking you to choose the prescribed treatment for that affliction? From my perspective, my confidence in that doctor would be shot. While I expect my doctor to communicate why he is recommending a certain treatment, I expect him to have the confidence and knowledge to do the right thing. Likewise, your clients don’t want you to act that way, either. They want your advice, but they want to be involved in the process and feel that you are making decisions based on their best interests, not yours. They want someone who is confident enough in their knowledge and strong enough in their convictions to give unambiguous directions. 

I like a doctor or an advisor who says, “Here is my assessment of the situation. If you do this, here is the likely outcome. If you don’t do this, here is the likely outcome. There are no guarantees either way, but my expertise and experience tell me this is what we need to do. Shall we proceed?” Any doctor, advisor, or any professional whom I pay for their expertise gains my confidence by such an approach. A professional financial advisor accepts and expects to be the director of the financial plan––but one that emphasizes the goals of his or her client. 

If you’re thinking that being a missionary advisor doesn’t pay, consider this: have you ever heard someone called a mercenary as a compliment, or heard someone called a missionary as an insult? When a potential client is evaluating you, which title would you rather be given?