When Charles Miller decided to leave the financial advisory profession to head an international non-profit heart foundation, he spent six weeks convincing his clients to stay with his former advisory firm.
Having worked happily at Veros Partners Inc. for 10 years, Mr. Miller felt the right thing to do was to meet with his 80 clients individually to match them with advisers at the firm.
“I created a spreadsheet with clients' names, ages and who I think the new adviser should be within the firm,” said Mr. Miller, whose last day at Veros, which manages $75 million in assets, was Dec. 31. “That was based on the personality of the clients.”
Not every adviser follows Mr. Miller's steps. Too often, advisers fail to handle their departures professionally, according to practice-management experts.
For example, many advisers become emotional and make poor decisions when leaving a firm, said Rich DeSalvo, founder and president of an eponymous consulting practice. They may inadvertently say something negative about the firm which could violate their employment contract, he said.
“You can tell the quality of an employee not by the first day on the job but on the last day,” he said. Even if an adviser is planning to leave the industry like Mr. Miller, he must still be professional, Mr. DeSalvo said. If an adviser burns bridges with an employer, it will be difficult to return to the industry, he said.
“The first thing is, we can't forget who the client really is,” he said. “It's not the adviser's client as much as they want to believe it is. It all falls on the broker-dealer because it's their client.”
It's also important that advisers meet with a human-resources representative to secure documentation proving that they're leaving on their own, and aren't being fired.
Mr. Miller decided to leave the profession to become director of development for the International Children's Heart Foundation. He will be in charge of finances and fundraising for the group, and is familiar with heart issues because his 18-year-old daughter has a lifelong heart condition. His clients all knew about his daughter's heart condition and understood why he left.
For his former colleagues, Mr. Miller identified eight clients he was worried might leave the firm. He also wrote notes describing clients' personalities and interests, and pointed out those clients who complain a lot.
“I told them [his former colleagues] that if some of these people leave, then it's OK because they suck up your time and don't have a lot of assets,” Mr. Miller said.
Shop Talk is a regular column detailing how financial advisers run their businesses. The column focuses on unusual or innovative ways to attract more clients. Suggestions or tips for Shop Talk? Please e-mail
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