financial advisors

New Advisors Can Matter a Lot

Posted by Mike McLaughlin on Oct 14, 2010, in Thoughts , tagged with , , ,

Yesterday I had a conversation with a wirehouse advisor, Advisor X.  On the surface, he’s not someone an asset manager would focus on.  He’s:

  • New, with just one year of experience under his belt
  • Managing a book of business in line with his experience

If you asked most firms, Advisor X would not be someone to prioritize.  And yet, he profiles as a good target.  Why?  There are several reasons, but the most important is his affiliation with one of the biggest-producing teams in one of the biggest-producing branches in the country.  He’s closer to top producers than most every wholesaler who comes to the office.

Week after week Advisor X sits in on wholesaler presentations alongside numerous other less-tenured advisors and others looking for a free lunch.  And he blends in.  Wholesaler after wholesaler fails to recognize that he is a potential gateway to the most attractive advisors in the office.

This situation represents a challenge for sales teams.  On a broad scale it requires:

  • Improved understanding of team dynamics among advisors
  • Effective segmentation and profiling of advisors
  • Extensive coaching of wholesalers to enable recognition of these opportunities

More tactically, however, it requires wholesalers to take simple actions and improve the way they decipher branch dynamics.  Identifying Advisor X can be done by:

  • Grabbing 5 minutes of a branch manager’s time to discuss newer staff
  • Using existing advisor relationships to get insight on potential up-and-comers

Established advisors know very quickly who will and won’t succeed.  They know Advisor X.  And since most firms know and target the same advisors, an investment in digging a level deeper can unearth opportunities other firms miss.

Aim for Simpler Value-Added Offerings

Posted by Mike McLaughlin on Sep 30, 2010, in Thoughts , tagged with , ,

For fund and insurance marketers funneling products through intermediaries, value-added programs present a classic “damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t” situation:

  • If You Do: Developing and deploying value-added offerings comes with a big expense and, unfortunately, frequently limited uptake.
  • If You Don’t: A lack of value-added offerings means a potential competitive disadvantage and the dangerous appearance of being less-than-committed to help advisors/producers.

So what do we do? Think smaller.

I think part of the problem is that the value-added aspirations of fund and insurance companies are too grandiose.  For example, we worked with a top financial advisor this summer:  15+ years of experience, $100M+ in AUM.  Among the things we did, the one that made him happiest was the reinvention of his client materials.

Take, for example, the previous one-page annual review summary (PDF) he used for a $5M+ client*:

Original review template. Click to view PDF.

Then consider the updated version (PDF) we provided*:

Updated review template. Click to view PDF.

The use of graphics and clean presentation clearly provides an improvement over the original version.  In short order we gave the advisor a template to use as part of the basis of important conversations with his 100+ clients.

Of course there are compliance challenges when it comes to client-ready materials.  Even so, many everyday challenges facing financial advisors and insurance producers require relatively simple, straightforward solutions.

So instead of devising a robust, complex program for segmenting client bases, why not focus on simple tools to support the annual review process or offer 5 concise ideas for developing a good introductory presentation?  Doing so gives solutions to very common problems.  More importantly, this approach fits with the nature of advisors and producers, who usually want quick-wins, not long conversations, from product providers.

The point is:  mutual fund and insurance companies can be much more successful with value-added offerings by thinking simple.

* Sample data used.  Naissance branding used in place of client branding.