What's your main goal when meeting with clients?Given the beating their portfolios have taken and the general mood of pessimism, often it's to have them leave feeling more optimistic and upbeat about their future prospects and in particular about your role as their advisor.

After all, people shouldn't see meeting with their advisor as a prescription for pain, similar to going to the dentist. Instead, your goal should be to have clients walk away from meetings feeling better than they did when they came in.

Here are three ways to do that, without pretending we aren't facing real issues putting our credibility at risk.Help clients regain control

These days, many investors feel powerless and out of control of their financial futures, victims of forces beyond their control. That sense of powerlessness weighs down on clients and creates stress and a pessimistic outlook.

Often, the first step to inspiring clients is to help them regain control of their financial future by taking a planning approach to their affairs.

When you work through how much money clients will need to retire when and how they want to and compare that to a conservative estimate of how much they'll have, there will often be a gap between those two numbers

That means they feel powerless - and here's where you can roll up your sleeves and work with clients to help them regain control of their future.

Financial planning is all about identifying tradeoffs ... so if there's a gap, clients can cut back on spending and save more. If one member of a couple isn't working, they can get a part time job. They can extend the age at which they plan to retire, cut back on how much they plan to spend after retiring or decide they're going to work part time after they retire.

The final resort is to change the expected return on their savings by altering the asset mix, either before retiring, after retiring or both.

The point is that most people aren't powerless, they aren't victims, and it's an advisors job to help them understand that.

Clients will feel better as a result - and given the level of doom and gloom out there, many will find that they're actually in better shape than they feared.

Focusing on positive prospects for the mid term

Many clients today are overwhelmed by anxiety and bad news about the economy - 60% of Canadians are concerned about someone in their household losing their job.

An advisor's job is to help clients maintain their emotional equilibrium, keep highs from being too high, lows from being too low. A year ago, our job was keeping the highs from being too high - today it's to keep the lows from being too low.

There are many positive mid term stories that are being ignored by clients. Many of the things that made the markets hugely bullish a year ago are still largely in place - not $200 oil of course, but productivity increases from technology, the growing pace of innovation, globalization and the emerging middle classes in China and India.

Here's an Globe and Mail article from last December making the case for long term optimism, still relevant today.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/partners/free/globeinvestor/investment/nov08/online/goodnews.html

But we don't just have to focus on the future. There are some solid good news stories in the real economy today that we can talk to clients about. One tack to consider is talking about individual companies that are doing well even in the face of the gloom. To buttress your case, consider using positive articles on companies; the recent Fortune article on Johnson and Johnson below is just one example.

5 rules that make Johnson & Johnson a winner - Apr. 22, 2009*

Maintaining a positive mindset yourself

For clients to leave meetings positive, you first have to seem reasonably upbeat and positive yourself, hard as that might be some days. Few things are more important.

Before every meeting and every phone call, remind yourself - BE POSITIVE. (One advisor put a sign beside his phone with the letters BP as an ongoing reminder of this.)

No matter how lousy you might be feeling, force yourself to smile and to crank up your energy level.

Some specific tactics to help you project a positive outlook to clients:

1. Start your day off with exercise, even a brisk walk will help.

2. Build in mid morning and mid afternoon breaks for fresh air and sunshine.

3. Seek out positive people and stay away from negative ones.

4. Book a four day long weekend once a month to recharge your batteries.

Here are some recent articles on strategies to stay positive:

Ten tips to stay positive http://www.strategicimperatives.ca/blog/?p=120

Lessons from the NHL playoffs: http://www.strategicimperatives.ca/blog/?p=168

Steps to boost your resiliency: http://www.strategicimperatives.ca/blog/?p=144

Framing events to increase motivation http://www.strategicimperatives.ca/blog/?p=151

The last resort for achieving motivation http://www.strategicimperatives.ca/blog/?p=158