Genworth Financial Wealth Management is selling its advisors on a boating analogy it hopes will comfort their clients otherwise left at sea by market conditions: Sail when the wind’s in your favor, row when it isn’t.

Sure, it sounds a little hokey. But it opens up a client conversation to discuss a four-pronged asset allocation strategy the firm hopes will enable clients to benefit from bull markets while girding them against the bears, panelists said at a news conference in New York City yesterday.

The first goal is to stop clients thinking in terms of how their portfolio is performing and comparing it to what’s happening in the current market. After all, a 20% loss is still a 20% loss, even if the benchmark has lost double that amount. Far better, panelists said, to talk in terms of overarching strategy based on a client’s life goals.

The four basic components of this strategy are traditional buy-and-hold investing; “tactical constrained,” which gives asset managers the freedom to change equity allocations at will; “tactical unconstrained,” which allows managers to invest in any asset class they think will perform better than the market such as gold or energy, or back to equities if they see fit; and absolute return, which is mainly concerned with asset preservation. By allocating assets in these four categories, clients’ buy-and-hold investments will sail when times are good and the active strategies fight the headwind when times are bad. That’s the theory, anyway.

Two planners at the event, speaking at Genworth’s behest, say it works. Carol Rogers, president, Rogers & Co. in St. Louis, Mo., and Michael Fischer, founder of Sequoia Financial Advisors in Phoenix, Ariz., both essentially use the same strategy after 30 years of market ups and downs: Build a laddered fixed-income strategy for six years out and invest the rest as Genworth suggests.

The one downside—increased tax liability due to active managers’ higher turnover—isn’t a big deal. “If we create a tax liability in this market, clients don’t care,” Rogers says. “They either have plenty of losses to offset the capital gains exposure or they’re ahead of the market.”

What’s more, Genworth’s approach gives advisors a good reason to call their clients and a plan of action that will help get revenue rolling again. “People are happy we’re doing something actively to mitigate this [market] going forward,” Fischer says.