Tibergien uses brutal honesty to captivate big Schwab RIAs and others at San Francisco event

We too have noticed a difference in the attitudes of the best RIAs — they want the (usually hard) truth, so do their clients.

Unfortunately, in our industry “happy talk” is the dominant sales and marketing strategy. In a “wikileaks” world, that doesn’t work anymore. If you stretch the truth or don’t fully disclose — someone is going to find out, in seconds, and your reputation is permanently tarnished. Good for Mark.

To be even more contrary, we are seeing our clients be effective with frank disclose or their own weaknesses rather than pretending. It’s unique, helps to clearly differentiate them and surprisingly successful.

Look at it another way — do you want to work with clients (or providers) that can’t stomach the truth?

Same old story – zero disclosure and smoke and mirrors.
What part of the talk was “brutally honest”? His goal wasn’t to upset RIAs, it was to get them to convert assets to his firm. Why not just talk about the glaring problems at Schwab and position his firm against them? That would get my attention.

The idea that raising fees now will somehow prevent erosion of profitability once there is fee compression is ridiculous. We’re headed to a fixed pricing model based on government mandated numbers no matter what we do.

Quite frankly I would enjoy being on a panel with the other custody providers in front of a large audience of prospective (or existing RIAs) and let the Advisors start asking their questions. No marketing; straight talk, frank answers. Count TradePMR in!

I’m HAPPY to sit next to my friends at Pershing, Schwab, TD, Fidelity and the others.

Brooke — maybe you can moderate and have the first meet-up in San Francisco? Call it Custodian Olympics.