wholesalers

If You Want the Meeting, YOU Set the Meeting

Posted by Mike McLaughlin on Mar 28, 2011, in Thoughts , tagged with , ,

A recent Your Q&A on Ignites (subscription) focuses on ensuring accountability within a sales team, in part by having clear role expectations. As an illustration, the piece says, “For example, some teams require the internal wholesaler to call the advisor in advance of a meeting with the field wholesaler.”

The example leapt off the page for me. Why? Because I believe the external wholesaler should always be the point-person when it comes to initiating, confirming, and communicating an agenda for his/her own appointments.

The reason is perception. By having an internal wholesaler handle these tasks, the importance of the client is undermined. A signal is sent that the external’s time is too valuable to be successfully setting the table for an important prospect/client conversation.

Recently I was in an advisor’s office when a hot-selling fund family came up in conversation. The advisor said he’d never met with the wholesaler from the firm:

He’s always having his assistant call and try to schedule time with me. I don’t work that way. I want to deal direct.

The advisor felt slighted by the lack of genuine interest shown by the wholesaler. He views the wholesaler’s approach as saying “my time is more important than yours.” A harsh interpretation? Sure. An uncommon one? I don’t think so.

Salespeople, of course, want to send the exact opposite message. It’s the nature of being a product/service provider.  The wholesaler who wants the meeting (and the client), should make sure his commitment is clear to the client. Direct communication is a simple and important way to do that.

Sales & the blog

Posted by Anu Heda on Feb 08, 2011, in Thoughts , tagged with

Earlier this week, we tweeted a well written piece on sales people and blogs.   The author argues that sales people should not be forced to blog professionally. He gives a few reasons, two strong ones include:

  • Blogging is effective for reaching a large audience with the same message; perfect for the Marketing team.
  • Sales people can use the time more efficiently – either focusing on specifics with clients or listening for needs via social media.

By and large, we agree.

In numerous organizations we’ve seen, sales people already feel (perception being reality) there are too many non-client obligations.  Adding a required blog post periodically adds to that perception and is unlikely to drive flows and client loyalty.

The One Question to Ask Passive-Leaning Advisors

Posted by Mike McLaughlin on Jan 26, 2011, in Thoughts , tagged with , , ,

Second in a series of posts on the sales and marketing implications of the ongoing debate between active and passive management.  Read the first here.

A client came to us with an issue – internal wholesalers were repeatedly encountering the same objection when discussing the firm’s emerging markets products with advisors.  The objection:  I use index products for emerging markets exposure.

We suggested a number of ways to address this objection with facts (more on those later this week).  But given the relative inexperience of many internal wholesalers, we suggested that they pose the objecting advisor a simple question:

Do you use actively-managed products anywhere in client portfolios?

Why is this type of question effective?  Two reasons:

  1. If the answer is no, the wholesaler immediately knows that there’s not much point in further engaging the advisor.  No further, unnecessary investment of time by anyone.

  2. In the more-likely scenario where the answer is yes, the wholesaler can open up a conversation on the criteria the advisor uses in evaluating active products.  The discussion becomes advisor-centric, not product-centric, and sets the table for the wholesaler to better position the firm’s products.

So much of the active vs. passive management discussion is one that revolves around analytics and data.  And for good reason.  However, for firms dealing with this discussion in day-to-day field and phone interactions, it’s best to first focus on the client.

Best of Q4 Blogs – A Few More

Posted by Mike McLaughlin on Dec 30, 2010, in Best Blogs of the Week , tagged with , , ,

Last week Anu revisited a few of his favorite posts from our blog over the last three months.  He promised I’d do the same, so here we go with three of my favorites so far:

  1. Spend More Time with the Best Wholesalers:  Most Sales teams we work with know their stuff, so the best way to get better is to consider new approaches for the same old activities.  Our thought on the pastime of coaching wholesalers fits the bill.

  2. Regulation is a People Business:  I tend to think that simple ideas are best.  They’re easier to come up with, easier to understand, and can have a big impact.  The insight from Anu regarding regulation is a forehead-slapper for me.

  3. Pitch Book Length:  With every blog post I write I ask myself “how can I make this more concise?”  Attention spans are shorter than even the most realistic person believes.  Pitch books included.

We’ll revisit the “Best Of” our blog at the end of Q1 next year.  After all, good/interesting ideas (at least in our minds) shouldn’t be lost just because they’re more than a week old. Gawker reminded me of that just a few weeks ago.

Happy New Year!

Spend More Time with the Best Wholesalers

Posted by Mike McLaughlin on Nov 29, 2010, in Thoughts , tagged with , ,

Can sales managers get more out of their coaching efforts?  After reading Switch by Chip and Dan Heath, I think the answer is yes.

Switch makes the great point that human beings typically focus on identifying and analyzing things that go poorly as opposed to things that go well.  The authors propose that positive change and improvement is borne out of finding and maximizing bright spots instead of mulling over problems.

Now consider how sales managers coach and develop wholesalers.  At most firms there exists a very egalitarian approach.  For example, if an internal sales manager has 12 direct reports, he will spend 1 hour on the phones with each wholesaler each month.

I think there’s an argument to be made that sales managers should focus most of their coaching time and effort on their best wholesalers.  Two reasons why:

  1. Increased Development of the Best Wholesalers: The individuals with the most talent today have the greatest probability of growing and making a bigger impact on the firm moving forward.  Nurturing the best talent offers maximum long-term value for the firm.  Put another way:  are the worst wholesalers worth the same time/investment as the best?

  2. Better Ammunition for Improving Laggards: More time with top performers will yield more insight into what makes them so good.  Managers will gather more and better tactical ideas to improve development of lagging performers, even if they spend less time on them.

A change like this does not need to be obvious to the team, nor overly dramatic.  For the example cited earlier, the manager could spend 2 hours with the top 4 wholesalers and 30 minutes with the remaining 8 instead of 1 hour with each.  It’s not more time, but potentially more effective.

While the bright spots approach doesn’t guarantee better overall performance, the logic behind it makes it a worthwhile idea for sales managers to consider.