I realize that FA is a dirty word around here, especially FAs whose fees are a % of AUM. I'm fully in that camp.
Much of my business comes from networking and word of mouth from what I like to call professional friends. Part of the quid pro quid nature of all this means that sometimes these professional friends need to bank their own goodwill by referring me or my business as potential customers to someone else. Sometimes these are financial advisers of one ilk or another.
Since I value my relatively small number of solid professional friends, I can't be totally brutal with these FAs like I otherwise might I used to like to spar a little with folks, but now my time is too valuable to waste on this. I'm sure I'm not the only one in this position. How do you handle it? More specifically, what is the best and quickest way to shut down an FA sales pitch without being unduly mean? I've found that saying something like "I believe that active funds and actively-managed portfolios don't beat simple indexing in the long run" a surefire way to prolong the conversation past my pain threshold.
Much of my business comes from networking and word of mouth from what I like to call professional friends. Part of the quid pro quid nature of all this means that sometimes these professional friends need to bank their own goodwill by referring me or my business as potential customers to someone else. Sometimes these are financial advisers of one ilk or another.
Since I value my relatively small number of solid professional friends, I can't be totally brutal with these FAs like I otherwise might I used to like to spar a little with folks, but now my time is too valuable to waste on this. I'm sure I'm not the only one in this position. How do you handle it? More specifically, what is the best and quickest way to shut down an FA sales pitch without being unduly mean? I've found that saying something like "I believe that active funds and actively-managed portfolios don't beat simple indexing in the long run" a surefire way to prolong the conversation past my pain threshold.