Of course, the profession started out squarely rooted in sales. No shame there. Financial planning contains some great sales tools. But it is more. Since its beginning, more and more practitioners have recognized its potential as a learned profession and have sought to elevate it. It has gained footholds in colleges and universities and spread throughout the world. It has declared itself to comprise fiduciaries and become effectively sophisticated in its controlling principles. We are starting to grasp its importance in the scheme of things. But the confusion remains and is not only tolerated but encouraged.

I remember the early days when my first manager declared to my recently recruited cohorts, “Financial planning is the greatest product delivery system ever created. If you do your data collection right, you will know everything of importance there is to know about the client. That knowledge should always lead to a “buy” decision. If you know that much about someone together with their most intimate priorities, you can overcome almost any objection.”

He regularly regaled us with heroic tales of his successful closes. My favorite was when he bragged about getting the app by keeping his client up past midnight, too tired to resist. The next Monday he waved the signed document proudly at our regular sales meeting and declared, “If that is not financial planning, I don’t know what is.” He was half right, of course—it wasn’t, and he didn’t.

Another favorite memory was when the titular head of my first major broker-dealer referred to financial planners en masse. “After it is said and done, aren’t we all just really in the sales business?” Wow.

As I have discussed previously, the financial services industry works overtime to create the impression that it is in the financial planning business in addition to its product manufacturing and sales functions. To counter, neither the CFP Board nor its coalition partners have yet to figure out how to effectively separate salespeople from advisors without gutting its rolls—an unacceptable act for many reasons.

The result is the sort of mishmash that fairly exemplifies “confusion.” Indeed, we have moved from “likelihood of confusion” to a virtual “certainty of confusion.”

Honestly, is this any way to run an authentic profession? I suggest that the financial planning profession has nothing more important than resolving this inherent disorder.

Remember, this is why we have trademark law. There are several good, accessible essays on the relevant issues of trademark. For my own research, I Googled “likelihood of confusion” and found excellent essays at Marklaw.com, Findlaw.com and, of course, Wikipedia. The upshot is that the entire body of trademark law is premised on the notion of avoiding confusion between products and services attempting to appeal to similar markets. Unfortunately, trademark law does not apply to occupations or vocational endeavors such as financial planning. For that we need something more—such as state licensure.

Remember, people cannot call themselves dentists, barbers or many other occupations without getting a license. Those terms are regulated through state law and generally premised on demonstrations of competency and legally established definitions. Unfortunately, it remains a sad truth that anyone can, with impunity, label himself a “financial planner.”

It is fun to look into the word “confusion.” As if to prove the point, a Google search produces some 39,400,000 results. An AOL search yields 147,000,000. (Yes, that is “million” with an “M.”) The clip art alone is worth the price of admission.