Can You Create a Halo?

While Jim Gust was keyboarding the post below, Apple was selling its one millionth iPad!

And that's not the best news for Apple. Buyers of iPhones and such are coming back to buy Macs, thanks to Apple's famous halo effect. They must be telling their brothers and their sisters and their cousins and their aunts to buy Macs as well. In Apple's last quarter, sales of Macs rose 33 percent. Sales of desktops (the kind nobody was supposed to be buying anymore) rose about 40 percent!

Halos are rare in the financial-services sector. More common, unfortunately, is the bad-odor effect. After a megabank repeatedly smacks Jane Q. Public with exorbitant late fees, obscene overdraft fees, etc., she may survive and even prosper. But when Jane does, I bet she won't hold her nose and turn to that megabank for help with investments or estate planning.

Smaller trust companies and advisory firms stand a better chance of creating a halo. Can you figure out a way to offer services meeting the standard set by Apple's Steve Jobs, "insanely great"? If you can, your clients will not only give you more of their wealth to manage, they'll also refer you to their brothers and their sisters and their uncles and their aunts.