Just like all of you, I am the recipient of a large quantity of marketing material via email each week.  I find it refreshing each day when I receive the same tired come-ons about Lead Programs, Selling Systems and the ONE RIGHT ANSWER that will solve every client's financial challenges.  Sure they will buddy, and I have a bridge to sell you, cheap.

Of course, once you strip away the packaging, well produced videos or proprietary software what you find is an insurance product.  And the group or individual touting their solution as the best has a vested interest in you picking them over all the rest for your clients.  Am I jaded?  Maybe a little, but that doesn't mean I'm wrong when I am very suspicious of these types of product pitches, and you should be to.  Notice that I have not said a single thing about the technical merits of any "program".  That is not the point.

So what is the point?  There are two today.  First, and most importantly in my mind, is that every client is unique, and simply because a strategy worked for one does not mean that it will work for another.  The logic is flawed, plain and simple.  If you don't recognize that you are bound to spend your days hammering a bunch of square pegs into round holes.  Sure, every once in a while you have a good fit, but the rest of the time you are just wasting your energy.   

The second point is maybe a bit more subtle, and it has to do with the Texas hold 'em, "all in" approach that I see time and time again - Stop funding your qualified plan and put all of your retirement dollars in my solution, the latest cash value life product with absurdly high cash value projections and top compensation!  Really?  Does this not smell funny to anyone else?  Of course it does!  Stop looking the other way!  Again, without debating the merits of the strategy in question, why on earth would you put all of your eggs in this one basket?  It flies in the face of the most fundamental financial planning tenet of diversification.  Ignore it at your own peril!

Now to take on the technical merits of some of these strategies: let's take a look at the classic one of a few years ago - take an equity line on your house and drop the money into a life insurance contract.  Real estate always goes up, right?  Tell that to the people who are upside down in their houses (or lost them all together) and can't get their cash out of the "Investment Grade Life Insurance" they bought three or four years ago without giving up a huge surrender penalty.  It should be criminal.

For those of you saying "sure, but you are pitching something you gigantic hypocrite" I say you're right, I am pitching something: Thoughtfully designed insurance solutions that are part of a client specific strategy.  Guilty as charged.

Back to work.  We have clients to protect from the bad guys.