The best advisors often suffer a systemic disadvantage, he said.

"The problem is that high-value advisors are equated with low-value advisors," Harvey said. "It is absolutely essential that advisors highlight and document the value they bring for sponsors and participants."

Though that may seem a given, too often Harvey sees advisors going beyond the call of duty, unbeknownst to their sponsor clients.

"In most business structures the differentiation of quality of service is achieved through pricing differentials, but alas, most advisor compensation is not differentiated by the value they provide," he said.

That has made for an "illogical" market. "If I offer the services of a fully responsible co-fiduciary, my compensation doesn't change one iota from that advisor who is selling a sponsor on starting a plan," he said.

That may change some day. In fact, Harvey said he already sees indications that the future holds pricing advantages for the most proactive advisors. Until it does, there's more evidence showing sponsors are becoming more attuned to the question of advisors' value.

Newly released data from InHub, an online RFP platform that was founded in 2014 by two former plan advisors, shows that eight in 10 requests for proposals resulted in a new advisor hire.

And it is not just sponsors of large plans that are leading a prospective turnover trend. Plans with as little as $1 million in assets were part of the survey; the median plan size was $35 million.

Sponsors said a reduction in "proactive" services and response rates, as well as the need for greater plan expertise, were the reasons driving new RFPs.

When Harvey and his team set out to take the measure of an advisor for sponsor clients, they of course take into account the type of advisor in question, whether they are simply "salespeople" working under the moniker of an advisor or offer the range of fiduciary support available from 3(16), 3(21) or 3(38) advisors.

He has some advice for plan specialists selling their range of support: Keep it simple when explaining what you can do for plan sponsors.

"It is hard for a sponsor to know all that an advisor may be capable of doing if they don't fully understand what you are," Harvey said. "There has been a failure in the industry, an unwillingness to express the different concepts of fiduciary care in terms that employers can easily grasp and follow."

Presuming all sponsors "speak ERISA" does a lot of advisors in, Harvey says.

Even a term like "co-fiduciary"—staple language in the advisor community—is too vague and often leaves sponsors scratching their head.

"Advisors must begin to recast the definition of what they do in terms of a business proposition," Harvey said. "Their sponsor prospects are business leaders — they don't have time to be investment or ERISA experts."

Does a sponsor want the responsibility of choosing investments for a plan? That's a simple question that needs to elicit a clear response, Harvey says.

"The key is clarity — I have the skills to guide your employees into better investments so you don't have to, and I will share in those risks with you. That is unambiguous language an employer will understand, and connect with. Now you are communicating," Harvey explained.

"On the other hand, if as an advisor I go into a meeting and say I'm a 3(21) fiduciary and I'm going to charge you 53 basis points for that — clearly a lot of employers are not prepared to begin to understand that," he said.

Too often, advisors' compliance departments restrict the language they can use. That's helped perpetuate a culture of advisors that try to teach ERISA, a tactic Harvey says has proven to be an "abject failure."

The law actually allows for much more discretion in how advisors communicate compliance issues than most are willing to use, he says.

Leading advisors are using that discretion. What else are they doing? Of the thousands of plans he has seen, the best are focused on contribution levels. Size doesn't matter, says Harvey, as he sees many small plans succeeding on overall contribution rates.

"The best plans are designed on the realization that when left to their own devices, participants won't save enough," said Harvey.

Convincing business owners of that is clearly a challenge in a world where they have little incentive to sponsor a plan, as Harvey sees it.

But his experience proves it is doable. "The best advisors are continuously improving the standard of care they deliver for participants," he said. "And they're supporting sponsors with services that relieve them of the burdens of sponsoring a plan."