Boone for example, is generating 2% to 3% returns for clients on a net-of-fees basis. "We're doing really well in a hard market. We're not only paying for ourselves, but we're adding value. If we couldn't add bottom-line value, our clients would essentially be paying for birthday cards and flowers for Christmas, and they'd be paying too much," Boone says.

William Michael Guthrie, a planner in Pittsburgh, outperformed the markets on the growth and growth-and-value sides, underperforming just slightly on the value side. "My goal is controlling risk and volatility. I'm not trying to hit home runs," Guthrie explains. "We add value by coupling low volatility with consistent returns and tax efficiency, and that's what I tell clients."

It really is critical that you tell clients what it is you're doing for them. Communicate news about new products and services to your clients. Whether you're offering tax preparation, real estate analysis, a hedge fund or insurance, make sure to get the word out to clients.

Sometimes just the art and science of communicating itself is what is important. Morris says her Saturday morning bagel breakfasts give clients a chance to hash out their concerns. In their February meeting, the group of 40 clients and spouses went step by step through economic news, from gross domestic product to housing starts, looking for answers and new opportunities.

Their final answer? "Diversification," says Morris. "That's where we wound up. It's the old basic of planning. You don't know where you'll end up, so diversify."

Getting Investors To Stay The Course

Michael T. Ryan, a planner with the Professional Planning Group in Westerly, R.I., uses every bit of data he can find to demonstrate to clients why it would be a mistake to get out of the stock market now. His favorite piece is a table showing clients what $10,000 would be worth if they missed the best 10, 20 and 30 days in the stock market from 1991 to 2001. If they missed the best 30 days, their investment would be worth $9,918, or under water.

That contrasts nicely with the fact that their $10,000 would be worth $27,526 if they had simply stayed invested the entire period. Clients often respond by telling Ryan they just want to get out of the market now for a little while and that he can reinvest for them when the time is right. "I tell them pointblank that if I could time the market I wouldn't be in Rhode Island, I'd be in the Caribbean on my yacht," says Ryan.

The planner also uses asset allocation to get them to focus on the big picture, rather than any one piece of their portfolio. "I think the asset allocation approach takes the crystal ball out of the equation for them. I tell them that they're always going to have something in their portfolio that they won't like, but their first question has to be: How is the entire portfolio doing?"

To keep investors from locking in losses and instead watching the horizon, planners also are using the fact that surges in the stock market often take place almost immediately when bear markets end, often with little or no warning. For instance, in past bear-market-ending years, the Dow Jones Industrial Average surged 20% in 1991, 38% in 1975 and 67% in 1933. Get out now and you could miss the best part of the ride, planners are saying.

Read Between The Lines

Listen, counsel and, finally, acknowledge this simple fact: The client is the boss. Several planners we talked to had either lost clients after counseling them to stay invested in the stock market or had allowed clients who could no longer stand the volatility to bail out. The fact the stock market has tumbled almost 50% since the late 1990s has been a telling test for investors' risk tolerance and their advisors' reading of that endurance. "It's one thing to show clients a chart illustrating potential losses of 15%, but when reality strikes, it's different," says Ryan.