A Client's Perspective: 20 Years With a Financial Advisor

No two clients are the same. Still, when one of them looks back on a long relationship with their advisor, there’s value for anyone looking to build relationships that last.

Bill Eckles is that client. He’s Executive Chairman of Bevcomm, a broadband company his great-grandfather started in 1895, and he’s worked with the same financial advisor for 20 years. He’s not an advisor, so he won’t hand you a playbook. But what he’s noticed from the other side of the table is worth holding up against your own client relationships.

A Client Who Didn't Know What to Ask

About 20 years ago, Bevcomm had what Bill calls "a kind of a liquidity event." After a century in business, the company had collected investments over the years, and one of them "did really, really well." That left "a lot of cash that we had to do something with," and, Bill says, "the business itself didn't have the need for the cash."

They had no experience to draw on. "We had never thought about having a financial advisor before," Bill says, and the family's own stock market investments were "nothing substantial." They weren't sure what to ask, or even what they did and didn't know.

What they did know was what they wanted: "somebody that we felt we could trust, somebody that was going to have our interests first, that wasn't necessarily just trying to sell us product." They were, in his words, "so uneducated in the whole process that we really needed to work with somebody" who would "be patient with us and would take the time to explain why we're doing different things."

Key Takeaway: A new client who nods along isn't necessarily following. Bill couldn't tell what he didn't know, so he couldn't ask the questions that would have shown it. What he needed was the "why" behind each decision. If a client's questions are few, it may mean they don't know what to ask, not that they've understood. Explaining your reasoning wasn't an extra for Bill. It was what he was looking for.

When Trust Gets Tested, Communication Does the Work

Shortly after Bevcomm started with its new advisor, the Bernie Madoff scandal broke. "You're thinking like, how do I know this isn't a Bernie Madoff?" Bill says. What got them through wasn't a credential or a reassurance: "It just all came down to communication and talking where we realized, okay, yeah, we're okay."

In the early years the advisors were "great about taking phone calls, you know, weekly sometimes." That eased to monthly, then quarterly, and now to a couple of check-ins a year. "It was just all about building that trust and going back and forth and understanding the process and understanding what's happening," Bill says.

He keeps his own check, too. Once a month he logs into the investment portal, which makes it "really easy to look at performance over specific periods of time," and tracks performance against spreadsheets going back 20 years. "I'm able to actually do the math and see it myself and understand it," he says, and that is part of how he trusts what's going on.

Key Takewaway: Bill's account points to two things worth doing deliberately. Communicate most when the relationship is new or the headlines are bad, and let the cadence ease as trust is earned rather than by default. And a client checking your work isn't necessarily a sign of distrust. For Bill, being able to verify it was part of the trust, and the monthly habit is one he's kept for years.

Reachable by Everyone, Not Just the Decision-Maker

For Bill, the advisors' role goes beyond managing investments. "It's been more than just simply managing money for us," he says. "It's been helping with decisions about long term planning." He describes the advisors "helping with liquidity events personally, just going above and beyond just simply the investments."

That extends to the company. The advisors helped Bevcomm identify a 401(k) provider, and then, in his words, "they also make themselves available to all of our employees. So all of our employees have a number to call when they need some financial help and advice." In-person access was a condition. "That was one of the requirements we had was that they have to make themselves available in person," Bill says.

It isn't a token gesture. It's "about a six hour drive for them, but they'll come up a couple times a year, go to all of our offices, meet with everybody that wants to meet with them." Bevcomm builds fiber networks to homes and farms across rural Minnesota and Wisconsin, so those offices are not a short hop apart. The result, Bill says: "the employees appreciate that, that somebody is trying to help them."

Key Takeaway: If you serve a business owner, the people who work for them may be part of how the owner judges the relationship. Bill made employee access a requirement and noticed that the employees appreciate it. For advisors with business-owner or retirement-plan clients, showing up at the client's own offices, on a schedule, is a concrete, visible way to deliver on that.

Built to Last Decades, Not Years

Bill has thought a lot about continuity, because he's had to. Bevcomm was continually family owned and operated for more than a century, and "there isn't a fifth generation that's interested in the business." So the family sold half of it to employees through an ESOP. The goal, he says, was to keep the company from ending up "on the auction block going to the highest bidder" that "guts it," with employees losing their jobs and "the communities we've been supporting" disappearing.

He also handed over day-to-day leadership. As part of the transaction he stepped down as CEO into an executive chair role, and the CEO job went to someone who had been with the company almost 30 years. "He was fantastic," Bill says. "He is ready to move into that role and he was looking forward to it."

So when Bill looks at his advisor relationship, continuity is what he notices. He expects "the same level of service that we've had, that same personal touch, the same trust that we have." And he points to something he finds notable on the advisor's side: "One of the neat things I think with our financial advisor is their children are getting involved in the business. And so where our business has been multi-generational, theirs is turning multi-generational." Those are relationships that "can span generations," he says, and "you're now talking decades."

Key Takeaway: Bill sees the advisor's next generation joining the business as a sign of continuity, a counterpart to his own. For advisors, succession planning isn't only an internal matter. A client who has thought hard about their own transition may notice, and care, whether yours is planned.

Four Questions Worth Asking About Your Own Practice

• When a new client agrees to a recommendation, how do you know they understand why you're making it?
• How often do you communicate in the first year, and when markets or headlines turn ugly? Does your cadence ease deliberately as trust builds?
• If your client owns a business, can their employees reach you, and have you ever shown up where they work?
• Does your client relationship have a plan to span generations, theirs and yours?

None of this requires a platform or a product. It's behavior, and it's what a client was still describing 20 years later.