For advisors, market volatility presents the challenge of preventing clients from incurring losses by selling during market dips. With that in mind, it’s important for advisors to have a well thought-out strategy for convincing clients to stay the course.

Ideally, the process of establishing new clients’ risk tolerance levels should have already prepped clients for volatility. That is, advisors should illustrate the temporary impact of prior market declines on clients’ portfolios when establishing the level of risk that each investor is willing to tolerate.

During the process, advisors should provide various illustrations that show how market volatility is often a temporary condition and that having a long-term perspective can result in recouping losses from market declines. By providing those illustrations at the start of a client relationship, advisors can then simply revisit their prior conversations with investors when markets become turbulent.

With that in mind, advisors should be prepared to make the following points with new clients and with existing clients who are concerned about recent market volatility.

First off, advisors should prepare illustrations that compare the performance of equities to other asset classes over various time periods—including periods that have started with substantially market declines. The idea is to show that in most cases, investors who had bought equities at market peaks and rode out market declines would typically outperform other asset classes over the long term.

In other words, the key is to ride out market downturns. The illustrations should also show that all bull markets include temporary market declines so that investors will understand that volatility is a normal part of equity investing. Ideally advisors should be able to compare the scope of recent market declines to those that have occurred during past bull markets.

Advisors should also illustrate how the largest equity gains typically occur in the days immediately following market declines. By doing so, they can show that pulling out of equity markets with hopes of avoiding further losses may result in missing out on the best days of equity performance.

In a similar manner, advisors should show how market gains are typically clustered within a limited number of days each year. While different studies have reached different conclusions regarding the number of days each year that generate the lion’s share of equity gains, most research pegs the number at 20. It’s also important to help clients keep the big picture in mind. That is, in most cases, clients will need the long-term capital appreciation of equities to reach their long-term savings goals.

With that in mind, advisors should show how missing out on the best 20 days of market gains each year can result in equity gains that are insufficient for reaching long-term goals. Clients may also be reassured by a presentation on how portfolio diversification may help minimize the impact of market volatility on investment returns. For example, bonds may increase in value when equities decline as investors rush to the perceived safety of U.S. Treasury securities.

For advisors, therefore, periods of market volatility may be a strong opportunity to illustrate the value of managing risk by showing how a portfolio’s decline in value may be less than the decline in the broad equity market. In a similar manner, clients may benefit from understanding how market declines may be attractive opportunities for rebalancing portfolios.

Overtime, advisors who are prepared to discuss market volatility by using thoughtful illustrations will find that market turbulence can be an attractive time for strengthening relationships with existing clients.