I learned a few interesting aspects of business in recent meetings with Sales & Marketing folks at a few recordkeepers. Not surprisingly, recordkeepers with a majority of business in small plans are concerned about growth. Where will the next set of small plans come from?
In the previous post, we examined the experience of searching for a recordkeeper. In this post, we’ll consider another common experience – the referral. Many people will look for a referral from anyone they deem qualified to provide a starting point. With a referral mindset, I asked a few DCIO wholesalers to recommend recordkeepers for small and new plans. I heard three firms repeatedly (and reasons why):
From reviewing the firms’ Web sites, online marketing has not been a major focus to-date. None of the top firms’ sites provides a comprehensive pre-sale experience.
The 401(k) market is massive. There’s nearly $3 trillion dollars in 401(k) plans. For white-collar America, it’s simply part of the on-boarding process at a new job. And those recordkeepers that sell primarily small plans, I think there’s an opportunity to increase sales from optimizing parts of the Web site. By “optimizing,” I mean improving sales leads in two ways:
This week’s best feature a few definitions. I’m torn on this. Is it helpful or condescending (leave a comment) to define a twenty-five cent word?
American Century – The post provides six reasons why the businesses are bouncing back from recession faster than consumer. (Defining word: dichotomy)
Russell – This post shares an interesting impact of mentally shifting the quarter-end and seeing the impact on quarterly returns influenced by market volatility (Defining word: volatility).
Wells Fargo Advantage Fund – This post is a bit of a bruiser (long, dense). If you stay with it, the author has a few standout points about how and why the Fed is not seeing the Treasury market behave as expected.
A dearth of FA impact this week, as we share two posts that cover super-committee and TIPS. Additionally, we have our first-ever best video.
