Clients are upset and they’re voting with their feet. But instead of bemoaning your woes, you should view this as a time to prove your worth and snag a few new clients.

Asset allocation isn’t dead, but you have to use it right and you have to communicate more with your clients. Playtime is over so get to work (after you read this article).

The Financial Crisis has sure taken its toll on the wealthy. Last year, the number of millionaires in the world plunged 14.9%, according to the 2009 Merrill Lynch/Capgemini World Wealth Report. There are now fewer millionaires than there were in 2005. And many of those who are left aren’t happy with the investment advice they’re getting. Last year, almost 25% of millionaire clients moved some or all of their assets to a new advisor.

Indeed, the overwhelming feeling is that high-net-worth investors have lost faith in their advisors over the past year. Turns out, advisors didn’t have any deeper knowledge of investments than did clients, says Michael

Sonnenfeldt, founder of high-end investment club Tiger 21. “It wasn’t supposed to be like that,” Sonnenfeldt says. “For a long time, advisors held themselves out as having a specialized knowledge,” he says. “The last year has blown that mystique away.” This has put even the best advisors under scrutiny, Sonnenfeldt says, as investors have re-thought the overall relationship. Sonnenfeldt notes that Tiger 21 members are inclined to take an especially active hand in their investments. Indeed, an attraction of the club is the detailed feedback members get from other high-net-worth investors. (Read about four members of Tiger 21, who talked about their portfolios and what they’ve learned from the financial crisis, at the end of this article.)

Still, it’s not all gloom and doom. After all, with all of those assets in motion, there’s a huge opportunity for advisors to snag new business. In fact, a group of advisors from a variety of firms managed to increase their new client intake significantly over the past year.

Find Your Inner Teenager, Talk More On The Phone

Yes, it’s financial advising 101, but amazingly some advisors still aren’t communicating enough with their clients. A recent survey by Spectrem Group found that more than half of clients expect their advisor to return their phone call within a day. Moreover, 36% of those surveyed expected their call to be returned in one to three hours.

It’s a message that rings true with advisors who have managed to capture the assets of clients dissatisfied with their current advisors during the downturn. Mark Donohue of RBC Wealth Management in New York City has added

$108 million in assets from new clients since July 2008. Donohue, who has been in the business for 27 years, says he is working harder than ever, going to the office six to seven days a week and constantly calling clients to give them his view on the situation. “When you call someone on the weekend and you’re in your office and you take all the time they need to discuss what they need to do, it makes a big difference,” he says. In fact, he’s surprised that all advisors aren’t putting in the extra effort. “I shouldn’t get a gold star for that. It’s what everyone should be doing,” he says.

Richard Zinman, an advisor at Credit Suisse Private Banking USA, added around 25% in new assets over the past year. He says that many of his new clients didn’t leave their old advisors just because they lost money; they left because of a lack of communication and thoughtful ideas about how to get them through the crisis. The worst scenario for advisors is when they don’t make the phone call, and then the client calls them to say their leaving. “The extent you procrastinate will lose you clients and assets,” Zinman says.

John Q Smith, an advisor in UBS’s Private Wealth Management office in Chicago, has attracted over $45 million in net new assets so far this year. He tells a similar story of one of his new clients. She had left her previous advisor at a major trust bank and moved her assets over to Smith (who was her son’s advisor) because she didn’t receive one phone call during the market meltdown.