Selling: Not a dirty word

A little over a week ago, in front of an audience of financial advisers, Jon Pittham, director of marketing agency ClientsFirst, said something controversial. Advisers should not avoid selling, Pittham said, but embrace it. Reaction to his remarks, made at a meeting of members of the Institute of Financial Planning (IFP), was far from negative. During his talk, Pittham stressed the need for advisers to get out to clients and advertise both themselves and the products they believe in. The feeling in the room, he later observed, was that he “had touched on something”. Dennis Hall,...