From the Editor: How to lose clients and influence people

Some words commonly used in financial services have become synonymous with wrongdoing but, in most cases, describe fair and, often, essential practices.

Scott Sinclair
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Some words commonly used in financial services have become synonymous with wrongdoing but, in most cases, describe fair and, often, essential practices.

‘Selling' is one of them, ‘charging' another. So how about cross-selling? That's got to be bad, conjuring images as it may do of unscrupulous advisers and providers flogging products to existing clients solely to supplement their incomes. Yet cross-selling, done properly, is one of the purest examples of a practice that can be beneficial to both the client and firm. It is surely reasonable for advisers to scan clients' financial plans for gaps which, for whatever reason, have not previously been filled. Is it wrong to contact a customer so-far unwilling to buy protection to restate its i...

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