A recent conversation drove home how easy it is to cross wires when communicating with existing and prospective clients.

Late last fall, I had a conversation with a good friend, a successful lawyer in his 60s who I've known for over 30 years. He has been managing his own money for the last while but markets over the past couple of years persuaded him he should look at working with a financial advisor.

He mentioned that he had sat down with one advisor (as it happens someone I know quite well) for ninety minutes, had enjoyed their conversation and been leaning towards working with him. In fact, he had agreed to a follow-up meeting the next week to talk about a specific plan.

This all fell apart at the very end of the meeting, as he became concerned about this advisor's strong emphasis on junior resources ("Moose Pasture Mines" was how my friend described these stocks) that he saw as being too risky for someone in his sixties. As a result, he had decided not to move forward with this advisor and had cancelled the follow up meeting.

How this went wrong

Knowing the advisor in question, this just didn't sound right. I called him, mentioned I knew the prospective client he'd talked to - and asked for his take on the conversation.

It turns out that he had thought the meeting went well and was baffled by my friend's decision to cancel the follow up meeting.

In talking further, he did say that he'd made an offhand comment that he'd successfully used flow throughs as a vehicle to help some clients save taxes .... And yes, he had told my friend that these flow throughs did consist of junior resource stocks.

Two important lessons

I did ultimately get this advisor and my friend back together for a coffee to clear the air - and we identified the source of the misunderstanding.

When they met, the very last thing they'd talked was the flow through share opportunity - it turns out that by leaving this to the end of the meeting, this was what the prospective client walked away remembering.

There are two important lessons for advisors from this.

First, in structuring agendas for meetings with existing and prospective clients, be sure that you end on the right note - often advisors will leave the least important item to the end of the agenda and risk that being what the people you're talking to take away.

And second, you need to be sure to summarize what you've covered at the end of every meeting (and ideally recap this in a short email immediately afterwards.). You can't assume that people you meet with will remember all the things you discussed - you need to take two minutes at the conclusion to summarize the key points you talked about

You can never eliminate the chances of miscommunication - but you can reduce them.

One way to do that is to learn from what happened to this advisor.

Whether meeting with an existing or prospective client, be sure to end every meeting on a positive note that is consistent with your overall approach.

And having done that, take the time to summarize what you covered after meetings.

Do those two things and you'll significantly reduce the chances of an expensive misunderstanding.