Joe Duran: How Advisors Can Rise Above the 'Sea of Sameness'

That is a big mistake, according to Duran, who pointed out: “We’re not doctors. There are a lot of people who can do what you can do.”

What an advisor can do differently, however, is effectively communicate to clients “what I do to show you the value” of his or her services and how they can make clients’ financial plans better and “train my team to know that that’s what we’re going to do.”

It is important that advisors understand they’re “not here to outperform the market” or “deliver a financial plan that we know is wrong,” he said. Rather, “We’re here to help people feel better and make better decisions for their client. And so we’re solving a different problem than everyone else is.”

However, advisors seem to have decided they’re “all going to use blue” and feature the “same smiling, retired people” in their advertising, he said, letting attendees in on what he called a “great secret,” which is that “nobody wants to be those retired people on a park bench.”

What clients actually want to be, he explained amid laughter from the audience, is “what they are right now but a little happier,” he said. They don’t want to be an 80-year-old person “walking on the beach.” They want to be “more dynamic,” he added.

After all, “people’s retirements don’t look anything like they did 30 years ago but our industry still talks like that,” he added.

(Pictured: Joe Duran, head of Goldman Sachs Personal Financial Management; Photo: Jeff Berman)