Sunday Morning Quick Hits # 10: Treat You Like You'd Treat You.

I love the Discover Card commercials where they feature the client talking on the phone with a customer service representative. The theme of the commercials is that Discover Card treats you like you’d treat you. They are great commercials and a great theme for all customer service teams to emulate.

At TruNorth, we approach our clients similarly and make sure we discuss investment themes in terms our clients can understand.

For example, if we meet with a medical professional, we correlate our investment strategies with the way a doctor treats a patient. For instance, our use of financial science and investment tools is required to properly diagnose an investor’s condition. A doctor would not prescribe a drug or treatment without utilizing the finest equipment and diagnostic tools available to him/her. Speculation about the future price of a stock and purchasing it for an investor is akin to malpractice in our opinion. "We wouldn’t dare prescribe a stock purchase based on speculation for our clients". That’s what we told a recent client in the medical field.

No matter what the profession, it is important to talk to people in terms they understand and to treat them like you want to be treated. Discover Card has it right. And, your financial advisor should get it right too.