Recently, I was talking to a successful advisor who met with one of his top clients – and made a mistake that he vowed never to repeat.



In reviewing performance of the client's portfolio, he said: "Your portfolio was down 15% last year, which was pretty good in the circumstances."

The client looked at him, paused and said: "It may have been 15% to you, but it was $300,000 to me."

The advisor recovered and the meeting wrapped up amicably, but this advisor walked away with two resolutions.

First, never again to diminish the amount of money a client loses.

And second, to remember that while we often think about performance in percentages, clients tend to think about their portfolios in dollar terms.

As you think about your conversations with clients over the past while, consider whether you've fallen into the same traps of diminishing losses and talking in percentages vs dollars – and whether you too need to be more aware of this going forward.