ALL LIST EDITION
Issue 6 | Fall 2011
and more‌ www.icarrythebag.com
4th Quarter | FALL 2011 ISSUE SIX
Editor-in-Chief/Publisher Rob Shore Art Director Lynn Lee
Table of Contents 03
www.lynnleedesign.com
Contributing Writers
04
Mary Allen Michael Bryan JB Bush Don Connelly Edward S. Finocchiaro Dr. Heidi Grant Halvorson Kathy Freeman Kip Gregory
Joe Lukacs Dennis Moseley-Williams Ivy Naistadt To subscribe, visit: www.icarrythebag.com
3 Reasons Top Producers Don’t Make Good Sales Managers
By Kathy Freeman
08
By Michael Bryan
5 Simple Steps to Motivate Your Prospects By J.B. Bush
10
4 Ways to Ride the Wine Wave
The Wholesaler’s 10 Step Repeatable Process By Don Connelly
12 The Secret to Selling Anything: Know Your Audience’s Motivational Focus
By Dr. Heidi Grant Halvorson
Some photos appear under Creative Commons Attribution License: Three Things a 1099 Wholesaler Does Differently
Five Ideas For Your Next ‘Layover’
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aidanmorgan/5524891107/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rosengrant/3085764705/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/quacktaculous/3020750515/
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14
16
06
09
Four Ways to Ride the Wine Wave
By Sara Keagle
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5 Ideas For Your Next ‘Layover’
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4 Systems You Should Implement With Your Internal Partner…NOW
05
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Kris Jaenicke Dividend Capital Securities
By The Anonymous Internal Wholesaler
D. Bruce Johnston Sara Keagle
Profiles of Great Wholesalers
9 Things Advisors Want to Know about Social Media and What You Should Tell Them By Kip Gregory
Speed Kills: 4 Strategies To Find Your Own Speaking Pace By Ivy Naistadt
5 Point Plan To Quickly Build Client Trust By Dennis Moseley-Williams
18
Interview with Jeff Cusack
20
3 Things A 1099 Wholesaler Does Differently
22
24
26
of Forward Management
By Edward S. Finocchiaro
9 Ways to Create More Energy in Your Life By Mary Allen
4 Ways Wholesalers Can Coach Advisors To Success By Joe Lukacs
The 5 Top Reasons Wholesalers Should Ignore Social Media By D. Bruce Johnston
What’s in Your Bag?
Profiles of Great Wholesalers Kris Jaenicke is a Senior Vice President with Dividend Capital Securities, a fullservice investment company focused on developing and managing real estate products that build real value for investors. best year in production? KJ: That was 2007. ICTB: What type of bag do you carry? KJ: It’s a Tumi. I recently had it refurbished. It was looking like it had 800,000 miles on it, and now it’s brand new again. ICTB: What kind of car are you driving?
ICTB: How long have you been wholesaling?
KJ: Since 1986. I was hired back
KJ: 2008 BMW station wagon with 70,000 miles. ICTB: Who makes your suits?
pretty laid back. It’s probably the way the financial media scares the heck out of investors in recent years, when it’s really been one of the best buying opportunities in a generation. ICTB: Favorite travel location, nonwork? KJ: I like to go to the mountains. Colorado is a favorite spot for me. I go skiing in Aspen/Snowmass every year with a group of guys. I’ve done it for years and years. I love to ski.
KJ: Exercise. Go cycling for a couple hours.
ICTB: Alma Mater?
KJ: If you gave me a choice of what I’d want to go do, I’d go cycling. I’m a big bicycle rider.
KJ: The great Harvard of the Midwest, also known as the University of Iowa, Iowa City.
ICTB: Is that cross-country?
ICTB: Final meal request?
KJ: Yep - it’s a road bike. I’ve done several cross-state bicycle trips. I try to log 3,000 or more miles a year. One day I’d like to ride my bicycle across the USA.
KJ: New York Strip steak, medium rare-please, sautéed mushrooms and a great cabernet.
KJ: I’m not sure I have one; I’m
ICTB: All-time favorite movie?
ICTB: Children?
ICTB: Favorite hobby?
ICTB: What do you think was your
KJ: The last book that I read is by C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves. I also just started re-reading The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People by Stephen Covey.
ICTB: How do you work off stress?
ICTB: And your region today encompasses what kind of geography?
ICTB: What’s your pet peeve?
IICTB: Last book that you read?
KJ: Married 30 years.
KJ: Three kids. My sons are 30 and 28. My daughter is 25 and engaged to be married this summer!
KJ: I started out as a wire house wholesaler, but morphed into calling on the independent side back in the early ‘90s.
KJ: Barron’s.
KJ: Braveheart.
KJ: It’s a combination of Joseph A. Bank and a local store in Hudson Ohio that I buy from, which features Jack Victor. I like to support my local merchants.
ICTB: What channel(s) do you cover?
ICTB: Favorite industry read?
ICTB: Marital status?
in the day when I wasn’t even a registered rep, if you can believe it. They were just looking for sales guys back in the ‘80s.
KJ: Ohio, Michigan, Kentucky, and western Pennsylvania. I recently hired a wholesaler to work as my associate in Michigan.
Reserve. If you’re ever in Kentucky, you get into bourbon.
ICTB: Other adult beverage of choice?
ICTB: What’s the number one secret to a successful relationship with your internal wholesaler? KJ: Communicate regularly. Also, have goals and track each other on those goals. ICTB: Childhood hero? KJ: My dad. ICTB: Life after wholesaling? KJ: Teach my (yet unborn) grandkids how to ski.
KJ: If it’s not a great cabernet, it’s a glass of bourbon, Woodford
I CARRY THE BAG | FALL 2011 | 3
Four Systems You Should Implement With Your Internal Partner…NOW Thus far this column has given you some good advice for your relationship with your internal sales partner, and along the way produced a few smirk-worthy anecdotes that could never be repeated to your face. This issue is dedicated to a few business systems and strategies that will make you, your partner, and your territory operate at a higher level of efficiency. These tips are designed to help maximize both your golden hours for selling and your partner’s, while avoiding the dreaded “money left on the table scenarios” often created by weak systematic procedures. The best National Sales Manager I ever had as an internal wholesaler said many times that the key to driving your client’s perception of effective service was to “create presence in your absence.” These strategies are the first steps to making your team appear omnipresent. The Weekly Strategy Call – While I’m sure you and your internal are speaking regularly while you’re trying to kill windshield time and he is running endless Zephyr and Morningstar illustrations, having a set, mutually agreed upon, and unbreakable Weekly Strategy Call will prove to be invaluable. This is the dedicated time that insures that none of the opportunities either of you uncover in a given week slip through the cracks. The focus of this call should be for each of you to share in detail the fine points surrounding the best and most likely to close sales opportunities in your territory. This isn’t the time for you to recount the first touches you had with producers you had not previously broken through to, as those are best discussed on your daily recap calls. In
this weekly call you’ll discuss the producer meetings in which the advisor gave one of you actionable follow-up steps, specifically discussing what they will need to see to seriously consider making a switch from another product to one of yours. Internal Wholesaler Visibility In Your ‘Leave Behinds’ – While your firm may have provided you with the long overdue double-sided business cards that actually list your internal partner’s name and phone number, there are a few more ways to make sure that your follow-up steps will result in a conversation with the producer that makes decisions. Try these simple addendums to your usual routine to be more effective: 1) A cover sheet, stapled to your firm’s propaganda materials, can go a long way towards getting business done. Include your cell phone number, as well your internal partner’s full name, e-mail address, and direct dial phone number. Don’t forget that, if they need to take too much effort, financial advisors will not go the extra mile to get information about a product that they are not yet sold on. 2) Attaching both of your business cards is definitely a plus and shows that you have confidence in your partner’s abilities.
business. (Call being the operative word, since most internal sales desks only count phone calls vs. e-mails as valid activity) Eliminate Windshield Time Voicemails Leaving messages every time you get a lead or sales idea, or find yourself in a rambling mood while stuck in traffic on the 405, 101, 495, or BQE (brace yourself ) is not helpful. This especially applies to those of you on the outside with thick accents from the east coast (even if your internal is originally from that territory too). We cannot possibly decipher correctly what you said in your excited 100 mph recap, particularly if you are telling us to follow up with an advisor possessing an eleven-letter-long last name of an ethnically diverse nature. The time we lose playing guess and check on Salesforce. com would have been better spent going to happy hour and calling you in the morning for an accurate spelling. Seamless Integrations Using Technology Probably the single best way for you to create “presence in your absence” is to start using a Virtual Receptionist Service. This inexpensive tool can give you and your internal
3) You may want to suggest that advisors call your partner to get a specific illustration you know will help close the
continued on page 25…
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PACK YOUR BAG
5 IDEAS FOR YOUR NEXT “LAYOVER” You’re a business traveler; I’m a flight attendant. You have your free time on the plane; I have my free time on the layover. This being the case, I thought that I could offer some advice on how to see a city in limited time, which is something I’ve gotten quite good at. I’m also good at doing this on a limited budget, so save your expense account for a great dinner. Every wholesaler that travels has found himself with a few hours to spare. If you’re in the great city of...insert city here...what do you do? Workout? Work in your room? And yes, I also know what you’re thinking, but don’t do it! Airline crews love the hotel bar as much as business travelers, but there’s too much to see; you can grab a cocktail later! Let’s get out and explore...
• My camera is a must! Whether I have two hours to explore or several, I always take pictures. If you are more of the aspiring professional photographer, why not pack a digital camera in your briefcase that’s always at the ready? One suggestion is the Canon S95. It’s not inexpensive but it takes simply gorgeous photos and also shoots HD video – plus it’s small enough to travel with easily. If you are a fan of taking photos with your smartphone, how about getting creative with your snaps by using instagr.am - a free app available for both iPhone and Android. • Check out what is free. The first thing I do is type, “Things to do for free in _____?” As a result I’ve been to plays,
outdoor concerts, sightseeing tours and museums free, all because of a simple Google search. Also keep in mind that some of the best museums in the world have a free night every week. The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston waves general admission on Wednesdays, and the Guggenheim in New York City offers pay what you wish after 5:45p.m. on Saturdays. • Another great thing I like to do is explore ethnic neighborhoods in big cities. Many have a Little Italy and/or a great Chinatown. The food is amazing and the shopping is fun. I love scoping out the grocery stores, and Chinatown always has fun dollar stores. If you have small children, this is the place to pick up souvenirs. continued on page 7…
I CARRY THE BAG | FALL 2011 | 5
Three Reasons Top Producers Don’t Make Good Sales Managers Oftentimes as they appraise their wholesaling organizations, distribution executives within asset management or insurance firms say “no” to considering the firms’ top producers for the next layer of leadership responsibility. Why is that? It seems logical that if you are top in your field that you’d automatically be considered for the next rung of success or promotion. You work hard, don’t you? You achieve your goals, don’t you? You are a great representative of the company, aren’t you? Well, what’s the problem? Consider three stumbling blocks that keep top producers from being considered for the leadership track. Roadblock #1 Senior Management doesn’t want to lose a top producer’s contributions to his sales goals. If your boss is being held accountable for achieving his numbers, and your contributions as an individual contributor are a major factor to his success, then he may be selfishly reticent to consider lifting you out of production. Roadblock #2 In getting to the top producer position, your demeanor has changed from malleable and inquisitive to confident and demanding. This is normal given that you are working diligently to drive results, but these character traits may be contrary to what your management is looking for in a leader. Roadblock #3 You have shown up to too many company events with a focus on yourself. Of course firms give top producers big accolades and extra attention for their accomplishments, but how you respond to that attention says a lot about your likelihood for leadership.
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Let’s take a look at these roadblocks and outline some steps you can take which will either make you more self-aware or give you some specifics for migrating into leadership. Overcoming Roadblock #1 The most difficult challenge to overcome in attempting to transition from production into leadership is a selfish manager. Time and time again I’ve heard stories of how someone’s career was blocked by a manager who didn’t want to lose production to her bottom line. While you cannot control the actions of others, you can certainly plant direct seeds early on to affect this individual’s mindset. These seeds, planted during your reviews or in casual conversation, state that you are looking forward to mastering your role so that you can have the opportunity to teach others in a leadership
capacity. Your goal is to keep your career objectives front and center in your manager’s mind. Each time you achieve a new sales goal, translate the event into steps for helping others replicate your success. If you find yourself working for an individual that just isn’t going to allow for your upward mobility, then you’ll need to consider posting to another segment of the firm or moving externally to a new organization. Overcoming Roadblock #2 Becoming a top producer in any firm doesn’t happen overnight. It is a process which encompasses numerous steps and countless conversations with people who work to steer you in the right direction and who look out for your success. While coming up the learning curve,
By Kathy Freeman Godfrey your approach is polite and inquisitive. You are a sponge for absorbing knowledge and an inviting audience for those who like to espouse their wisdom. As you start achieving results from your hard work and disciplined approach, you naturally gain confidence. You mature and you don’t ask as many questions, but rather you find yourself on the recipient end of others’ questions. This is gratifying, and for a while you appreciate your newly found success. What happens next is where the roads between a career as a top producer and future sales leader deviate. You have a cognizant choice to become a prima donna, demanding more support, services and special consideration at every turn because of your burgeoning success, or you can continue to be polite, disciplined and successful while turning your attention to mentoring others and driving greater success for the firm as opposed to you individually. Overcoming Roadblock #3 Let’s talk about ME! Maybe you don’t even realize that you are the guy or gal that fits this personification. Think back to the last sales meeting where you were asked to speak, where the firm showered you with recognition, awards and praise. That was the trip where, as long as you were the center of attention, you took it one step further and put on a show by jumping in the pool fully clothed or staying out too late and ending either on top of the bar or perhaps under it. It is very challenging to hold the line between celebrating your successes and realizing that as long as you are representing the firm or being recognized at a firm event, your actions are getting scrutinized. No one seems to be offended by this life of the party activity – yet. Later, though, it plays out when the time comes to talk about who is to move into firm leadership. Does the ME-centric persona, which the firm has helped to create, have the ability to point the attention at others, to support others’ successes, and to radically rationalize the talent in the sales organization? Probably not. Realizing that there are preconceived ideas that leaders have about you or your abilities is an important part of managing your career. Don’t think someone else is looking out for your best interest. The best person to proactively manage your successful career is you!
5 Ideas For Your Next ‘Layover’ continued from page 5…
• Walking around a city with a harbor? Thought it would be nice to get out on the water and maybe catch the sunset, but don’t want to spend the money or the time for a big dinner cruise or tour? Check out the city’s public transportation. When I’m in Boston, San Francisco, Seattle or any other port city, I usually take the public transportation ferry. It’s inexpensive, I get to chat with locals about great places for dinner, and I get a twenty minute or so boat ride. Two examples: In San Francisco you can go to Sausalito and back and have the most amazing views of the city, the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz. Boston’s public transportation ferry will take you to Charlestown, where you can check out the Boston Navy Yard and the Constitution - and it’s free! • Have enough time to explore the outskirts, but didn’t want to rent a car for your entire trip? Check out ZipCar. com. Your company can sign up for an account, and you can rent a Zipcar in most major cities for a few hours or for the day. The price even includes gas and insurance. These are a few ideas that will hopefully get your creative juices flowing. Of course, there is always the standard city tour which I think is truly worth it if it is your first time to a city and you need the overview. However, I think if you only have a few hours to spare, a little wandering and getting lost makes for a memorable visit.
Sara Keagle is a Flight Attendant for a major U.S. Airline with over 20 years in the travel industry. Through her blog, The Flying Pinto, she offers you a glimpse behind the galley curtain. Her podcast, The Crew Lounge, offers listeners a unique look into the life of a flight attendant. Sara freelances for publications such as The Wall Street Journal’s Speak Easy Blog, and she is a resource for various national media outlets, including USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, MSNBC, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. You can find Sara’s blog at TheFlyingPinto.com and find her at facebook.com/theflyingpintoblog
Kathy Freeman Godfrey is the President of The Kathy Freeman Company, a retained executive search practice she opened in 1992 to focus her work exclusively within the investment industry. Since that time, she has completed hundreds of assignments working with premier firms across the country in asset management, wealth management, service provider organizations and investment technology. Functionally, Kathy works with senior sales and marketing executives where she can leverage her extensive assessment process to ascertain best in class talent for her clients and their firms.
I CARRY | FALL 2011 I CARRY THETHE BAGBAG | FALL 2011 | 7| 7
By Michael Bryan FOOD +WINE
4 Ways to Ride the Wine Wave “But I like beer.” Great. Don’t we all? Wine doesn’t ask you to choose sides; it is confident knowing its crimson shimmer, beguiling aromas, layers of flavor, and who’s who of fans are part of a wave rising globally. Your customers seek to understand wine, and they crave its pleasures, so we don’t advise you to sit on the sidelines and watch. If you won’t do it for pleasure’s sake, look at it more as gaining “product knowledge” for this “lingua franca” of business hospitality that is omnipresent. If you are successful in your field, then you entertain customers. The following tips will build comfort and prove economical as well. 1.Do Your Homework When entertaining at home, it is wise to ask guests in advance, “Do you have any aversions or allergies to certain foods?” In the same vein, where do your guests like to eat, and what do they like to drink? Assuming wine will be in the picture, ask for the wine list of the restaurant in advance, make some selections, and ask the restaurant to hold these 2 to 3 selections for you. You can make the decision once you arrive as to which wine(s) to serve, or allow your client to select. Advance decanting of any or all of them is a nice move as well. It looks impressive, and your client will glow with the obvious forethought you’ve put into the evening. 2. Bring Your Own “Brown-bagging” is a way of utilizing a favorite wine, even a special or sentimental wine, at a restaurant. It is not solely about saving money, albeit budget is always a consideration. Restaurants accustomed to corporate dinners will have wine mark-ups of 400-600%. One of our favorite Pinot Noirs, available at a wine store for $65, costs $235 at a restaurant. In this example, if the restaurant assesses you a corkage fee of $20/bottle, you are still ahead $150! That savings will pay for 2 to 4 of your dinners, depending on the costs. Rules for corkage: Call ahead to ensure the restaurant accepts outside wine (it is not your right to bring it, it is your privilege), ask what the corkage fee is so there are no surprises, and inquire if they have the wine(s) in inventory that you plan to bring. Bringing in a wine which they already carry is considered bad form.
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Lastly, make the wine steward or sommelier your friend—offer a taste of your wines to them. This ingratiation could come back in spades. 3. The Sin of Predictability Wine is a symbol of good living—it is in fact a lifestyle, and secondarily a form of lubrication. Others, including your competitors, recognize this and they are all moving to capitalize on its “mojo.” The most overused entertainment setting is a dinner with wine. Strive to make yours different, if not unique. Choose new, exciting restaurants (ideally ones at which you have dined previously), or buy tickets to a public wine dinner where a top visiting winemaker will feature their wines for the evening. Rent out a demonstration kitchen, a chef and a sommelier for the evening, and then recreate your own “chef’s table” experience for 25 guests. Lastly, whichever environment you choose, be mindful that you can only meaningfully touch a limited amount of guests in an evening through conversation, especially in a seated surrounding with the din of diners around you. 4. Wine & Food Togetherness As America’s Golden Age of Wine thrives, there is an increasing awareness of how wine and food work together. One is a manifest of solid flavor, the other of liquid flavor. Singularly they work fine, but together they can quarrel like any married couple. In a dining scenario, this subject is precisely the domain of the sommelier. Based on your budget and meal selections, they pair wines congruent with your criteria—and in general, they are good at it. Are there any cardinal sins in this department? No. If the idea of creating monumental orgasmic pairings (1+1=3) bores you, then simply choose what you like to drink, choose what you like to eat, and live in your contentment. These pointers are designed to increase your ease at entertaining in a business setting, save you some money, and in the end, bring more pleasure to your clientele while solidifying your relationships.
Michael Bryan is the founder and director of the Atlanta Wine School. He helps members of the financial services community host entertaining and educational wine events for their clients. For more information, visit his website: http://www.AtlantaWineSchool.com.
By JB Bush
5
simple steps
to motivate your prospects
Has this ever happened to you? You have been working with a prospect and engaging him for the purpose of selling him your product. Everything seems to be moving along nicely and on track for you to win the business. Every interaction you have had is positive, and your advisor seems ready to buy. Suddenly, he goes dark – dead silence. No response. No conversation. No returned phone calls. No returned emails. Your inner voice is creating doubt and driving you crazy. What have you missed and how can you motivate the prospect to complete the deal and make the sale? Michael M. Grant, a professor at the University of Memphis, defines motivation as “the desire for something and the willingness to take action to achieve it”. By this definition, how do wholesalers ultimately position the purchase of their product as the action their prospect will take? Can you really motivate anyone? I believe the answer is no! Sales professionals can’t get someone to do something that they don’t want to do. Pushing and persuading will not result in success when the prospect really has no perceived reason to act. Yet, everyone is motivated by something. It becomes our job to understand what it is that provides motivation to our individual prospects. It is not until we understand what this motivation is, what our prospect wants and what they are willing to do to get it, that we can leverage that knowledge and make the connection of our solution (product) to their own motivation. Here’s the kicker: your buyer is trying to
make this connection with or without you to determine whether or not to move forward. This leaves you with a choice: either you engage and work to understand this motivation or you leave it to your prospect to figure out the connection on her own. Here are five steps to make sure that you understand what motivates your prospects and their willingness to take action: 1. Ask: The key in every transaction and in every sale is a shared understanding between the buyer and the seller. This understanding happens through the communication process and strategy used by you, the professional wholesaler. Confirmed understanding cannot take
place between the sales professional and the prospective buyer if the sales person is doing all the talking. Simply asking pertinent questions is and has always been the key skill for sales professionals. What you ask and how you ask it will determine your understanding of the buyer’s motivation. 2. Listen: Asking good questions isn’t enough. Effective communication is based on your ability to listen to and understand what the buyer is telling you. The ability to hear is a physical attribute that pays tremendous benefits. Either you hear what is being said or you don’t. Listening is a skill which must be acquired and honed. It requires the sales professional to 16… continued on page 21…
I CARRY THE BAG | FALL 2011 | 9
the wholesaler’s
10 step repeatable
process
The way to succeed in life is to learn to do something right and then do it right every time. Don’t practice until you can do it right. Practice until you can’t get it wrong. That’s especially true when it comes to wholesaling. Advisors are quick to judge, and wholesalers don’t get a lot of second chances. If the word gets out that you are not very good, you will be the victim of perception outweighing reality. Your message will rarely, if ever, get heard. Your goal should be to be so good that Advisors want to watch what you do and urge their fellow Advisors to come watch you
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also. Is it possible to get that good? Yes, if you’re willing to work harder than any other wholesaler in your territory. In this article I will explain how to do it right, but it’s up to you to put these ideas into practice. You must learn a repeatable process and then undertake what professional athletes call deliberate practice. Davis Love does not just practice hitting an eight iron. Rather, he hits three hundred balls with his eight iron, trying to put ninety percent of those balls within ten feet of the flag. That’s deliberate practice. You might argue that you don’t have time
to practice. Davis Love competes on the weekends and has all week to practice; you don’t. Rest assured that every skill you must possess to excel as a wholesaler is improvable on the job. It’s up to you to improve every day. Every time you give a presentation, make sure it’s better than the last presentation you gave. Every time you request a commitment, make sure you are better at it than the last time you asked. Practice while you work. That’s deliberate practice. Ninety-nine percent of all the people on earth try to get by on their talent. Talent’s important to success, but not vital to success.
By Don Connelly Skill is much more important than talent. Lots of people are born with talent and do little with it. There is nothing more common than a talented yet unsuccessful person. Celine Dion was born with talent, but she was not born a great recording artist. She has spent a lifetime developing her skills, as you must. There are ten steps in this repeatable process. Master all ten specific skill sets and repeat this process daily. Remember, truly great wholesalers are blue collar workers. They do the same things every day. The first skill to master is goal-setting. “So-so” goal-setting is easy. Being great at setting manageable goals takes a skill that you can develop over time. If you want to be great, you must establish goals, write them down, and refer to them constantly. When something is in writing, there is no ambiguity, only clarity. Goals are measurable. Dreams are not. Brian Tracy makes the point that if you are not moving toward your goals, you are moving away from them. Your sales manager has given you a sales goal. Take that goal and work backwards. How much business must you do per quarter, per month, per week and per day? How many appointments will that take? How many Advisors must do business with you? Do you want to hit your annual goal on December 31 or September 30? What are your goals for managing your budget? What are your goals for family time? Reaffirm every day that your goals are reasonable. You are where you are today because of decisions you have made in the past. Where you are in five years will be a result of decisions you make today. Make great decisions when setting your goals. The second step in your repeatable process is creating a mission statement. Literally speaking, what is your mission? What is the purpose of what you do? What makes you so unique that an Advisor should choose to do business with you versus the competition? Here is a great mission statement: To combine aggressive strategic marketing with quality products and services at competitive prices to provide the best insurance value for consumers – Aflac. Let me hear your elevator speech. Now write a business plan. That’s step number three. A business plan need not be daunting.
It’s simply an explanation of why your goals are achievable and how you plan to achieve them. Your business plan will guide your decisions. The fourth skill set involves writing your marketing plan, which is a vital part of your business plan. This is your action list. What is your target market? What do your Advisors need that you might supply? How are you going to call on them? What are your timelines? Why does what you plan to do make sense to you? Revisit this plan often. We are out the door and on to a vital part of the Repeatable Process and the fifth skill: prospecting. It’s not hard to find Advisors who should be offering your products to his or her clients. The hard part is finding Advisors who value your opinion and put stock in what you have to say. Sift through the masses and build your herd. It doesn’t have to be a large herd; it has to be a good herd. It is essential that you prospect every day. The problem is not that the world will come to an end if you don’t prospect every day. The problem is that nobody will get in your face if you don’t; there will be no negative consequences. Eventually you will accept this substandard behavior as the norm and you’ll be just another face in the crowd. You will lose your ability to be exceptional. Step six involves getting an appointment at a time when everyone is trying to cut back on wholesaler visits. The first appointment is tough to get, and the second appointment will nearly impossible to get if you fail to impress on the first. Every wholesaler wants in. Make sure you make the cut. Be so compelling that Advisors are willing to stop what they are doing in order to come listen to you. Now we arrive at number seven: your presentation skills. Advisors have heard it all, so you’ve got to be great to get and keep their collective attention. Become a great storyteller. Learn two or three stories that are so good everyone wants to hear them again. Take everything unnecessary out of your presentation so that only the essential is left. Stick to the main point and be brief. Tell the Advisors how to use your ideas to gather new assets and open new accounts. Be a dynamic presenter.
The eighth skill set has two parts. First, become adept at asking for the order. If I could be a fly on the wall and tell you how many times you give a presentation and don’t request a commitment, you’d be embarrassed. Giving a presentation and not asking for a commitment is teaching, not selling. Second, never leave a branch or a rep’s office without asking for referrals. “Who do you know who should know me?” It’s easy not to ask for referrals. Most wholesalers don’t, but the great ones do. Refine your referral request skills so much that the request is natural. Step nine is where you perpetuate the relationship with your Advisor. Perfect your relationship-building skills. Never let your Advisor run the corporate maze if he or she has a problem. Take ownership of all the problems in your territory. Problems do not age well. Don’t ever let your Advisor think you don’t care. Help the Advisor build his or her business. Lastly, be blue collar. Write down your goals, create a mission statement, draft a business plan, and incorporate a marketing plan. Then each day prospect, get appointments, give an exemplary presentation, request a commitment, ask for referrals and maintain your Advisor relationships. When you get up tomorrow, do it again. And do it every day for the rest of your career. Your competition will not be doing this, trust me. Successful wholesalers do what unsuccessful wholesalers won’t do.
Don Connelly is perhaps the nation’s most successful speaker, motivator and mentor to advisors in the financial services industry. His career on Wall Street spans more than 40 years and includes positions as stock broker, financial planner, branch manager, wholesaler, national sales manager and for nearly 19 years a company spokesperson and Senior Marketing Officer for a multi-billion dollar Investment Firm. Find Don and subscribe to his newsletter at www. donconnelly247.com
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By Dr. Heidi Grant Halvorson
The Secret to Selling Anything:
Know Your Audience’s Motivational Focus You’ll never make any money without taking risks, so it’s not surprising that most people drawn to working in the financial sector seem naturally more comfortable with risk-taking than your Average Joe or Jane. Most – but not all. Take a moment to rifle through your mental Rolodex, and you will no doubt come up with quite a few colleagues who are more risk-averse and cautious in their approach to their work. Trying to convince someone like that to take a chance for a potentially big payoff can be as frustrating and futile as banging your head against the wall. How do you sell risk to someone who fears risk? The reason why some of us hate sticking our necks out has everything to do with the psychology of motivation – specifically, how we think about the goals we pursue. The problem, in a nutshell, is simply this: when making decisions, some of us focus much more on what we have to lose than on what we might gain.
Whenever we see our goals – whether they are professional or personal – in terms of what we have to lose, we have what’s called a prevention focus. Prevention motivation is about obtaining security, avoiding mistakes, and fulfilling responsibilities. It’s about trying to hang on to what you’ve already got and keep things running smoothly, and studies show that it isn’t at all conducive to taking chances. Instead, if we see our goals in terms of what we might gain, we have what’s called a promotion focus. Promotion motivation is about getting ahead, maximizing your potential, and reaping the rewards. It’s about never missing an opportunity for a win, even when doing so means taking a leap of faith. In the last decade, researchers in psychology and management departments across the country have conducted hundreds of studies showing that promotion and prevention motivations lead to different strengths and weaknesses, and they use very different strategic approaches. The promotion focus on potential gain leads to speed, creativity, innovation, and embracing risk, while the prevention focus on avoiding loss leads to accuracy, careful deliberation, thoroughness, and a strong preference for the devil-you-know. Coupled with financial and health care reform, the recent recession has left American businesses and individual Americans focused far more on keeping what they’ve got than boldly going where they’ve never gone before. People are less likely to want to rock the boat at a time when consumers and jobs are harder to find, and when risk feels like recklessness. Unfortunately, they forget that big wins are almost never the result of safe bets. If you’ve got a great product on your hands that entails some risk (they usually do), and the reception you are getting from certain quarters is lukewarm at best, you probably need to help your audience get more comfortable with taking a chance. There are really only two solutions:
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get them to adopt the promotion mindset (the harder option, especially in the current climate), or use the right language to work with their prevention mindset instead. You may be thinking of your great product as an opportunity for gain – which would be persuasive to another promotion-minded person - but you can always reframe it as an opportunity for avoiding loss. To persuade the prevention-minded person to take a risk, recent research by Columbia University Business School professor E. Tory Higgins and his colleagues suggests that you should emphasize how a course of action can keep your potential client safe and secure - how it will help them to avoid making a terrible mistake. Investing in a new stock or fund isn’t a chance to get in front of the pack, but a way to not fall behind. Use phrases such as: “Everyone is moving in this direction. It’s inevitable. You’ll need to pay a lot more for this later if you don’t act now.” Tailoring your pitch to the listener’s current motivation is the key to effective persuasion. When you’re talking to a born risk-taker, emphasize what your product offers in terms of gain. When you’re talking to someone who is more of a Nervous Nelly or Cautious Carl, emphasize how your product can help them avoid loss. Research shows that even the most timid, prevention-minded person among us will gladly take a risk, once you help him understand why it would be a greater risk not to step out in faith.
Dr. Heidi Grant Halvorson is a motivational psychologist, speaker, and author of Succeed: How We Can Reach Our Goals. She is a popular blogger for Harvard Business Review, Huffington Post, Fast Company, and SmartBrief, a contributor to the BBC World Service’s Business Daily, and a member of the Board of Advisors to Columbia Business School’s Motivation Science Center. www.heidigranthalvorson.com
By Kip Gregory
9 Things Advisors Want to Know About Social Media and What You Should Tell Them Cracking the code to compliance-friendly use of social media remains a white-hot topic across the industry. Everywhere I go, advisors are eager to learn how to make it work for them. At the same time, many are confused and uncertain about where and how to start. This article spotlights nine questions advisors consistently raise—in presentations, workshops, and oneon-one conversations—and spells out ways you can respond, both to help them capitalize on this exciting technology and to position yourself as a go-to source of practical advice. 1. What are the ground rules? Which of the firms you cover have published a social media policy? Have you read them? Could you confidently point advisors to what those policies say can and can’t be done? Doing that homework can pay handsomely. The current head of distribution for a large mutual fund once shared that early in his wholesaling career he’d gathered tens of millions of assets through one of the wire houses by showing that firm’s FA’s efficient ways of using their advisor workstation to acquire and retain new clients. He came to be recognized as more knowledgeable than some of the firm’s own help desk staff. Demystifying social media and a firm’s guidelines for using it presents the very same opportunity to you. 2. Which sites should I focus on? Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+—there’s a long list of places where you can spend your time online sharing and reviewing information. Where should an advisor best concentrate her time? Wherever her best clients spend theirs. If she’s not sure, a quick email survey will answer the question. 3. What are other advisors doing? My firm recently surveyed 10,000 advisors on what
they’d like from the social networking webinar training we’re developing for their company. The #1 answer: industry-specific best practices. Forget the “future of social media” mumbo-jumbo; advisors want relevance. Tell them how other FA’s are using the sites to move their sales needle today and you’ll capture their attention. 4. How can I generate more leads? Finding more and better clients is a perennial concern. Here are three powerful ways you can help your advisors deal with this challenge. One, work with them to prepare a list of 12 to 15 highly-desirable referrals drawn from the friends and connections of their top clients (a list they can reference at a subsequent meeting with each client). Two, show them ways they can build a list of targeted prospects using various criteria available through LinkedIn’s Advanced Search, and then show them their path of connection to each prospect. Three, walk them through how to follow a company on any of the “big three” (Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter) and identify
either corporate or individual windows of opportunity when they open. Do those things and you’ll quickly demonstrate the tangible value you offer their business. 5. I’ve opened an account, now what? Lots of advisors set up an account only to get stuck trying to figure out what they should do next. Once you’ve established a basic profile, start filling in the detail, then upload your address book and begin reaching out systematically to those “real-life” connections with personalized (not generic) invitations. Batch those invites in small groups so you can manage the dialog that will likely ensue and not be overwhelmed by an avalanche of acceptances. 6. How much time does all this stuff take? The biggest thing advisors fear about social media is the time they’ll spend at their computer instead of talking to folks faceto-face. Encourage them to work in small doses, setting aside five to ten minutes every morning for sending out and responding to invites to connect, and following up on opportunities that surfaced while scanning
continued on page 14…
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By Ivy Naistadt 9 Things Advisors Want to Know about Social Media and What You Should Tell Them continued from page 13… the previous day’s activity across their network. 7. How do I handle unwanted friend requests and/or invitations to connect? This one comes up regularly, especially with LinkedIn. The answer is surprisingly simple: ignore them. If an advisor gets an invite from someone they are unsure about—a person they don’t know, a competitor, whomever— there is no pressure to accept it. Just archive it and move on. It’s highly unlikely that person will come back with another request, and if the advisor changes his mind later on he can always go back in his message archive and accept the invite. 8. If I reveal my LinkedIn connections, even if just within my direct network, won’t my competitors steal my clients? By default, LinkedIn makes your first degree connections visible only to your other first degree connections (they remain hidden from everyone else). Some advisors worry about “friendly” competitors with whom they are connected using that information to poach clients. One solution is to modify your account settings and hide your connection information from prying eyes; LinkedIn lets you do that. To some, that seems antithetical to the idea of sharing information with your closest connections, but the option is available for you. 9. How do I build and maintain visibility? It depends. For those permitted to do so, the answer may be sharing links to articles of interest, announcing your latest blog post, or registering a quick comment or observation about a news headline. If your firm prohibits or restricts you from posting content that’s not preapproved, you may have to concentrate your effort on the “listening” side of the social media equation and use other methods of communication (the phone, email, face-to-face meetings, etc.) instead. Let me know how you’ve used social media to work more effectively with your advisors. Email me at kip@gregory-group.com.
Kip Gregory is the founder of The Gregory Group, a Washington, D.C.based consulting firm that helps wholesaling organizations and their distribution partners improve sales productivity and profitability by unleashing the power of resources they already own. You can reach him at kip@gregory-group.com or connect with him via LinkedIn at http://www.tinyurl.com/link-to-kip. © 2011 Kip Gregory, The Gregory Group. All Rights Reserved. Used with permission.
Four Strategies One of the most common mistakes people make when communicating in public, particularly if they are nervous, is speaking too fast. In a recent Advanced ‘Join The Ivy League’ Coaching Program, there was a reserved elegant gentleman who was having a tough time. To my surprise, every time he got up to speak he spoke too quickly. Although he was very skilled at tailoring a concise message for his audience, his speedy delivery undermined all his good preparation, thus the clarity of his message was lost. Unfortunately, what happens when you speak too quickly is that you diminish your credibility. You look and sound like you want to get through your speech and get out of there as quickly as possible, which is not the best way to win over your audience. Conversely, if you speak too slowly or pause too much, you risk coming across as stilted or even patronizing - like Al Gore during his last campaign. There are a couple of possibilities as to what’s driving your speed. Perhaps you are nervous because you have a fear of being judged negatively, and let’s face it, in many business presentations you are being judged! Or you may be an Adrenalizor (one of four profiles in chapter 2, “What’s Your Nervousness Profile?” of my book Speak Without Fear, HarperCollins). The Adrenalizor is like an athlete gearing up for a race who feels a rush of adrenaline close to the event, and the symptoms can be difficult to manage. Or, maybe you just speak quickly. In any case, here are a few strategies to help you slow it down and still come across naturally.
1. Get off to a great start. Know your opening remarks inside and out. I know people who say, “But, Ivy, I like to sound spontaneous. I like to wing it so I come across naturally.” Not a good idea! Remember, you
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to find your own speaking Pace are most nervous in the first few minutes of your talk. If you don’t know exactly what you are going to say in the first 3 to 5 minutes, you will be searching for your words, heaping more pressure upon yourself. I can’t stress this enough... Know your opening cold! If you get off to a good start, chances are everything else will go smoothly. 2. Understand what’s going on from your audience’s perspective. Your audience will have a tough time processing a lot of information. It’s important to remember that although you may have communicated this message before, they are hearing it for the first time. Your goal should be to make a meaningful communication with your audience. Once you know what you are going to say, practice saying the opening part of your talk out loud, making changes until it feels natural. Imagine you are talking to one person at a time and communicating for understanding; you will automatically slow down. 3. Practice your talk out loud. Here’s an exercise you can try in your practice session to help you slow down: every time you come to the end of a sentence, count 1, 2 and then speak. When you get to bigger breaks such as the end of a paragraph or a transition into a new thought or section, count 1, 2, 3 and then speak. This may sound mechanical and I agree it is, but the purpose of this exercise is to develop a habit and awareness before you get in front of an audience. Then when showtime arrives, as they say in Brooklyn, fuhgeddaboudit! Concentrate on your presentation and being in the present moment engaging with your listeners. You will be pleased to
see you have naturally retained much of what you practiced. 4. Record yourself. To achieve the right pace, you must first get used to hearing your voice. Initially this may seem like a ridiculous statement (“Of course I know the sound my voice! I’ve been living with it for years!”), but the fact is we have a very different perception than others do of how we sound and of how quickly or slowly we speak. Here’s what you can do to get over the hump and find your own pace. Get out your recorder and recite your talk into it. Or record an actual live presentation in real time. Then play back the audio and listen - really listen. Familiarize yourself with your natural pace and note when you tend to speed up. Then repeat the exercise, making adjustments accordingly until the voice you hear back is the voice you always thought you heard; the one whose pace and overall personality is most naturally you.
Ivy Naistadt is known worldwide as an expert in helping clients reach their professional communication potential. As the author of the highly acclaimed book, “Speak Without Fear” (Harper Collins), nationally recognized speech coach and speaker, Ivy has helped business professionals and others deliver successful public presentations for over 20 years. Her diverse client list includes such leading organizations as IBM, Pitney Bowes, The New York Times, Merrill Lynch and Princeton University. She is frequently interviewed on radio, television and has been featured in numerous publications including, The New York Times, USA Today and The Daily News. To learn visit www. JoinTheIvyLeague.com or email: Ivy@jointheivyleague.com. ©2011 by Ivy Naistadt. All rights reserved.
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FIVE POINT PLAN TO QUICKLY BUI “Reputation is an idle and most false imposition; oft got without merit, and lost without deserving. “ — William Shakespeare (Othello, Iago, II.iii.268-270) The most essential factor that will determine your success as a financial wholesaler is how trustworthy your clients feel you are. The most successful wholesalers realize that before they represent any firm or product, they are first responsible to their own brand and reputation. Companies, products, and industries come in and out of favor, but exceptional wholesalers are always successful because of their sterling personal and professional representation. When your clients trust you they will do whatever you ask them to do, including taking a second glance at a specific fund, or keeping the faith when performance is lagging, or even making an introduction to an advisor you may not be working with when it is possible. Without trust, wholesaling is a lonely profession where you find yourself constantly having to convince people to give you five minutes. Trust is what all successful relationships are built upon - business or otherwise. Products, service, or your experience - what is most important to your clients? How many mutual funds earned 9% last year? Across how many fund families? How many
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different categories? I bet there were hundreds of funds that earned 9%. Products do not make a wholesaler stand out, and neither does service - because service is expected. Most wholesalers have worthy products, and most wholesalers offer decent service. While almost any wholesaler can offer a U.S. Diversified Growth fund with comparable returns to their competitors, how many wholesalers can compete strictly on their incredible client experience? What wholesalers and advisors have in common is that neither of them sells a tangible product. Whether you are a wholesaler or advisor, your success is built on long-term relationships that are based on trust - the most successful are those who realize and accept that products are not unique, and service is expected. Similarities do not sell. Differences do. More than performance or service, your focus needs to be on experience. Wholesalers who work on improving and maintaining the overall experience they deliver to their clients are the
most consistently successful. How it feels to be your client is the element of your relationship that is the most difficult for your competitors to copy. Step outside of this industry and consider Starbucks or McDonald’s. I’m sure that I can make you a better cup of coffee, I’m even more certain that I can make you a better hamburger - but I can’t make it as quick, 24 hours a day, right when you need it. Generally speaking, while I might be able to produce a better product, I cannot compete with either of these two companies on delivering a better experience. Starbucks and McDonald’s have their experience dialed in via systems and procedures. Consequently, both Starbucks and McDonald’s have done something that I cannot claim to have done; they have never broken a promise to a client. Five Pillars of Trust 1. Consistency - The Need for Systems and Procedures Everything about you has to be consistent. From the basics such as how you book and confirm your appointments and sending an
By Dennis Moseley-Williams
N ILD CLIENT TRUST agenda ahead of time, to how you follow up on your promises. One of the earliest benefits of implementing a systematized approach to managing your client relationships is that you are able to deliver a customized client experience based on your client’s input. This personal approach connects your professional services with the client on an emotional level that is not offered by competitors. Your consistency will become your calling card. In a world of uncertainty, you are constant, predictable, reliable, and therefore safe. 2. Congruency - Become a Partner. Do your clients see you the same way that you see yourself? Do your clients value you the way you value them? Would your clients label you a “vendor” or a “partner” in terms of your importance to their success?
When you are consistent, when you and your client are congruent on your role and professionalism, you are on your way to being credible. Your understanding of the industry, business, and economy, and your ability to make a compelling argument, are essential. Provide your clients with specific solutions to their needs; offer to speak at their client events and leverage your third party resources - fund managers, speakers, and teleconferences. Offer to speak at client events and get involved on the front line. 4. Personal and Professional Integrity - Your Process Take the time required to learn about your clients and their specific challenges. People may not advertise it, but everyone appreciates having someone in their corner, and there isn’t an advisor working today who doesn’t need and appreciate help.
A trusted and valued wholesaler is considered a linchpin by her clients. She is a true partner who participates in the success of the business. When you and your client are partners, you have an advocate who is insulated from competitors, loyal during difficult markets, and a reliable relationship for you to leverage for years to come.
Explain how you see your role, how you can help, and what you have done for clients in the past. Offer the resources you have, and provide value through reports and other resources that will help the advisor make a compelling argument to his own clients.
3. Credibility - What is Your Brand?
When things go right, deflect praise,
and when things go wrong, accept responsibility. When your funds all outperform, thank your client for having faith in you, remind everyone about the need for perspective and patience, and preach caution and contained enthusiasm. When the market stumbles or your fund manager misses the mark, offer to take the heat. Get answers to questions, offer to speak at client events and remind everyone about the need for perspective and patience. Finally - when you are consistent, congruent and credible, and when your clients understand your personal and professional integrity, you will attain partnership. You will achieve trust when your clients feel you are accountable and invaluable to their success - regardless of performance or competitors.
To learn more about Dennis Moseley-Williams visit www.moseleywilliams.com or follow him at Twitter @moseleywilliams
5. Accountability
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with Jeffrey Cusack Jeffrey Cusack is the President, Distribution of Forward Management. Forward Funds offer advisors and investors a family of mutual funds with an emphasis on alternative strategies and specialty/niche asset classes. conference, it strikes us that there is a massive proliferation of product. How are you cutting through some of that clutter? What kind of programs and/or direction are you giving to your people to help them get through the noise? JC: It would be a challenge to have only style-box managers today because, you’re right, the space is extremely crowded. If you look at large-cap growth as an example, how many hundreds of managers might you be competing with to try to get attention and shelf space? I can’t imagine trying to get in to see a corner office, big producer when you’re leading with, “Hey, we’ve got this large-cap growth product.”
ICTB: For whom did you carry the bag and how long ago was that? JC: I first carried the bag starting in January of 1987 for a mutual fund company called National Securities. We had about 10 wholesalers and 15 or so mutual funds. ICTB: That was a dynamite year to get started. JC: It sure was a great character-building year. Fortunately my father and grandfather carried the bag too, so I had access to some good advice, support and perspective. It turned out to be a great time to get started. ICTB: How many wholesalers are in your shop at Forward Funds? JC: Currently six externals, 2 hybrids and six internals. ICTB: We just got back from the Morningstar conference, and combined with what we saw at the Schwab
What we’re doing is focusing on more alternative and niche strategies while leveraging data available to us in Coates Analytics and RIA Database to determine our best targets. We certainly have some style-box managers and their strategies will always be an important part of portfolio construction. However, in order to differentiate ourselves in the marketplace it’s helpful to have what advisors are looking for today, which are alternative strategies and niche products. ICTB: There has been a lot of retooling over the years with distributors figuring out how to handle the ever-growing armies of gatekeepers. How is Forward Management attacking the gatekeeper that’s making decisions for managed platforms, or the gatekeeper that’s making decisions for sleeves of business that you know will exponentially grow assets? JC: The analysts are often the gatekeepers, and they may or may not have a search going on within a particular category. The traditional approach is to get in that flow when they have the search, so you
are there for the opportunity. Outside of traditional searches, we spend time educating the analysts and advisors on Forward’s alternative strategies and helping them to understand how these strategies can and are being used. You must educate them because what we are offering is so different they are unlikely to be doing a search for a strategy or style that they don’t know about. A lot of our product isn’t on the radar of some analysts yet because many of our strategies are newer. They don’t have a sleeve for them or they might not necessarily fit into the traditional allocation boxes that they have today. Where we’re having success is providing research and discussing how our strategies address advisor and client concerns about portfolio construction and risk management. We hear major firms tell us that fully one-third of client assets are in cash and treasury bills today. What that indicates to us is that they’ve got some combination of client fear and advisor lack of comfort with current investment strategies and portfolio construction. The way portfolio construction has been taught and advised over the last 20 to 30 years has emphasized building portfolios of long-only managers that have low correlation, styled diversification and rebalancing. Unfortunately that traditional approach to portfolio construction hasn’t delivered the risk management that we would have hoped. We have these discussions with the business leaders and they tend to agree that these are exactly the problems they’re facing. They need to help clients get their money back to work. That’s where alternative strategies come in.
ICTB: Regarding your frontline wholesalers, what are some of the biggest challenges you know they’re facing today?
more. Every time they are in town, they play golf with Bob or have dinner with Jane.
JC: The good news is that we have few problems scheduling time with any advisors or gatekeepers that we want to get in front of today. That’s a wonderful thing. Given that we work with independent broker-dealers, RIA’s and wire houses, there are somewhere in the neighborhood of 30,000 advisors in each of our regions. The challenge is figuring out how to organize your day in a way that ensures you’re getting in front of the right people.
Is that relationship worthy of being in the top 100? If not, the wholesaler needs to find ways to continue servicing the advisor, while at the same time constantly seeking new relationships with the growing number of advisors with $1 billion or more under management.
ICTB: Let’s talk about that for a minute because that’s a keen concern to wholesalers, especially wholesalers that are working for similar-sized shops. How do you counsel your team considering no wholesaler can cover 30,000 desktops in a territory? JC: I think of it this way. There are probably two really significant meetings that you can have a day and then you build other meetings around those. If you have two a day (and after holidays, conferences, office days, time off, etc.) that means you have time for about 320 key meetings per year. That is not a lot, so you better use those time slots efficiently and focus on top producers or advisors that you think have the most potential. But is that 320 different people? No, it’s not; everyone knows you can’t build relationships with key advisors by seeing them once a year. If you see them a minimum of three times a year, your capacity is quickly down to about 100 key relationships. If we start with the premise that you’ve got 30,000 advisors in the geography that you can potentially do business with, and that quality relationships require visits at least three times a year, you really have to narrow your target list and be willing to ignore some opportunities. We constantly try to move up the average size of the relationships we have. One challenge that every wholesaler faces is the relationship with a small advisor they’ve done business with for 10 to 20 years or
ICTB: Let’s talk about the right message and about our distribution community’s slow grind into social media. Do you have visions of ways to exploit some of the new technologies to broaden the messaging? JC: I am really excited about social media. As we already discussed, there is a limit to how many key relationships a wholesaler can have and therefore a potential limit on productivity. Social media is a great tool to increase brand awareness and the number of perceived “touches” an advisor gets. While I don’t think there’ll ever be a replacement for someone showing up, shaking a hand, and getting to know an advisor’s practice and what issues they might have, social media can potentially reduce the number of face-to-face meetings needed to manage a relationship. This enables the wholesaler to expand the number of key relationships they can manage, which leverages the wholesaler’s time and leads to greater productivity. ICTB: Tell us about who your most impactful mentor is, either presently or in the past, and how they helped drive your career in distribution. JC: A person I think of often is Dennis Bertram; unfortunately he is no longer with us, but he was the gentleman that hired me at what was Shearson Lehman Hutton back in 1988.
And he said, “Because we say we are.” I think there’s a little tongue-in-cheek message in there. You set a goal, think where you want to be someday, act like you are already there, and you will become what you want to be. If you want to be the best, if you want to be really great, you have to act like it. ICTB: When you have a quiet moment and have time to think, where do you think we’re headed from a distribution standpoint 10 years out? JC: I think the big change in the industry will be the types of products that we’re distributing and how we’re distributing them. Advisors have changed the way they think about portfolio construction and modern portfolio theory. Traditional stylebox strategies are becoming increasingly commoditized. These managers will have a role, but alternatives will become a dominant theme. As advisors move towards more complicated products, they need wholesalers to help them understand these alternative strategies and the role they play in portfolio construction. We will need to emphasize wholesaler training to keep pace with the changes. The old way was easy; the new way is hard. The old way of portfolio construction was taking a look at 30 or 40 years of historical returns and doing a mean variance optimization to create the perfect portfolio. Portfolio construction is not just math anymore. You’re going to need a forwardlooking view. You’re going to need to play a role in educating and helping people understand alternative strategies, how they work and how they’re different from each other. I really think that’s the trend in the industry. It’s going to be a more skilled, more sophisticated sale.
At one point we were sitting around a table, a bunch of young wholesalers with just a few years in the business, and Dennis banged on the table and said, “Guys, we are the best sales team on Wall Street.” We all kind of looked around the table and were thinking, are you kidding me? Then he followed it up by saying, “And you know why?” We all looked at him and said, “Why?”
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By Edward Finocchiaro sales force. Recent government activities, such as FinReg and Dodd-Frank, seek to continue to convince the American public that the alpha that good financial advisors add to portfolios is not worth a plug nickel. That’s why large mutual fund shops continue to merge. Trends Toward Lower Distribution Costs Because of the lower cost structure, many firms are scaling down traditional wholesaling efforts in favor of platform, VA/Defined ContributionInvestment only, and RIA sales. Why? Because they are more institutional sales as they are usually done by someone with a “stripe” (CFP, CIMA, CFA or MBA) to someone with a “stripe,” and the money comes in in big bunches. It’s far more cost-effective for the traditional money manager.
Three Things a 1099
Wholesaler does Differently
Fourteen months ago I took the bait and began a 1099 position with a group representing four boutique asset managers, and now I can state with certainly that it’s the best thing I could have done for my wholesaling career. While it’s scary, and I get up every morning at 5 a.m. with my head exploding from the enormity of the challenge, it’s working. We’re making a wholesaler-sized living. But it’s definitely different. Why 1099 wholesalers? When I got “downsized” from my last traditional wholesaling position at a major money management firm, I knew that our industry was moving in an unfavorable direction for people like us – those who carry the bag. When I took a hard look at the industry, I saw three gamechanging trends: Consolidation With more and more margin getting squeezed out of the fund industry, the only way to make money now is with volume. Think about it. Twelve years ago, before the tech blowup, mutual fund timing scandals, enhanced C shares, etc., there was plenty of profit margin to pay a wholesaling
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Investment Management Changes Mandate Distribution Changes Over the last 15 years, our industry has done a 180-degree turn for the better; better for the clients, the FA’s and the firms. When I started wholesaling in 1997 for a white-shoe, midtown Manhattan, multi-boutique investment shop, all the wholesalers were young and fresh-faced. All of the Portfolio Managers were older. The new wave of PM’s are young, and the wholesalers are old! They don’t hug a style box, instead they run portfolios that cast a wide net, and they solve investment problems. They dovetail perfectly with the Core-Satellite-Alternatives investment strategies of the new millennium. They have fabulous 10-year institutional numbers combined with great track records on their short-lived mutual funds. What they do not have is the money to hire a sales force or the Rolodex to do it themselves. There are various reasons that these upand-comers hire independent contractors to distribute their funds. It’s a lower-cost platform for distribution, an eat-what-you-kill situation, and it’s where the future of money management meets the future of distribution. The allure of 1099 wholesaling is big, despite the challenges. If you are considering this distribution path, understand that it’s different in three primary ways. 1. I Don’t Sell What They Tell Me to Sell Unlike more traditional wholesaling roles, nobody tells me, “Sell this fund (likely last year’s hot-dot) or you’re fired,” because I don’t work for them. They work for me, and I work for
my clients. It’s the exact opposite of the traditional paradigm. The fund families I represent are very good at educating my colleagues and me about their portfolios, and we can truly be unbiased business consultants, problem-solvers, and solution providers. 2. I Have a Franchise, Not a Patch of Land As long as the business of raising assets gets executed, I cannot have my territory slashed and I can build a sales hierarchy within my geography. I run it like a business – because it is a business. The difference is it’s my business. My responsibility is to make good and prudent decisions with our capital, our time, and our resources. Don’t get me wrong – I still play my share of golf. The major difference is that we work to live, we don’t live to work.
3. I’ve Got a Lot to Do – It’s Only Me! Like any self-employed entrepreneur, I am Chief Cook and Bottle Washer. We have four strategic partners that deliver portfolio sales information, information that arrives in four different intervals and formats. There’s also none of the familiar trappings that traditional wholesalers grow accustomed to, such as CRM, internal wholesalers, schedulers, and top-down thought leadership, and there is no manager (which is both good and bad). I’ve had to work very hard to build the basic business infrastructure, with scale and efficiency so that I can achieve my activity goals. I have a very simple business plan – “WORK OR DON’T EAT,” so I have to be efficient.
may have about the life of a 1099 wholesaler. As I said to my wife, who fourteen months ago was scared out of her wits, “You never know, Honey, it’s such a crazy idea, it just might work.”
Edward S. Finocchiaro is a Managing Director at Multi-Funds, LLC, a third- party distributor of funds and SMA’s to the financial advisory community. Ed covers northern New England and upstate NY. Prior to MFLLC, Ed spent 13 years as a wholesaler for Wells Fargo Advantage Funds and Seligman Advisors, all in the northeast.
If we see each other in the field, I will still be smiling, but for different reasons than you. When we meet I’ll answer any questions you
5 Simple Steps to Motivate Your Prospects continued from page 9… actively focus, eliminate bias, and ensure that the message being delivered is fully understood. 3. Confirm: The key to ensuring that there is a shared understanding is to actually confirm what you have heard, then request the buyer to clarify and acknowledge that you have received his message correctly. This simple step of confirming your understanding will force you to become a better listener. 4. Connect: Tapping into your prospect’s motivation is your ability to connect your sale to the prospect getting what she is motivated to achieve. In the ValueSelling Framework we label that motivation “personal value.” When you can be deliberate in connecting your sale to the goals and desires of your prospect, you will achieve greater sales success in the long run.
5. Create a Plan: Once the questions are asked, understood, and confirmed, and your products and services are connected to the personal motivation of each buyer in the sales process, you can now create a plan with your prospect to make it happen. The plan, in this case, isn’t merely a plan to purchase, rather it is a plan for your prospect to realize what she desires through the means of making a purchase from you. Next time you encounter one of “those” prospects, the one that has gone dark and that you need to close, remember this: effective selling comes down to communicating effectively. Persuasion is certainly a part of effective sales communication. However, it is your ability to understand the personal motivations of your buyers, to uncover their personal values, coupled with your ability to connect your solution to that motivation, that is the
key to winning the business, not to mention developing deeper relationships.
JB Bush has more than 20 years of success in senior management and executive sales positions with established companies as well as start-ups. JB arms his clients with solid education, sales-ready messaging and the confidence that they can win. He is a sought-after keynote speaker and trainer who can deliver high-impact results by maximizing and leveraging his clients’ investment in the ValueSelling Framework and Essentials, a series of leading edge web-based training modules on essential sales skills. jb@jbbush.com
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3 Ways to Create
More Energy in Your Life Wish you could double the amount of energy and time you have in a day? Ever feel sluggish and bogged down, finding it difficult to keep sanity and success soaring? If you’re ready to feel more energized, creative, and productive, then this column is for you. You’re about to learn one of the best-kept secrets of my clients’ success. This simple idea, when applied, guarantees to radically free up your energy, clear your
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cluttered mind, and lower your stress quotient so that you can maximize your productivity and inner peace. The business of wholesaling is filled with industry jargon, as is my industry of coaching. Let me introduce you to the concept of “tolerations” and share why dedicating time each week spent eliminating tolerations is one of the most life-transforming commitments you can make to yourself!
What is a Toleration? A toleration is something you’ve been putting up with, putting off, or not dealing with -- that drains your energy. It could be as simple as a button missing off your favorite shirt, a cluttered desk, or thank you cards you’ve been meaning to send. When that “something” isn’t handled, just thinking about it zaps your already depleted energy. Some tolerations are small and could be handled quickly, but they get put off
By Mary Allen, CPCC, MCC because they’re not urgent. Procrastination is the breeding ground of tolerations. There is also a time component to tolerations. The longer a “pesky little task” is not handled, the more energy is drained. Tolerations come in all shapes and sizes. Writing down a list of them is the first step in addressing these energy vampires and freeing up precious energy. Let’s begin to take inventory of 9 types of tolerations you face so that you can start tackling them – one at a time – and create more energy in your life. I’ve included examples to get you thinking. Clutter, Cleanliness and Organization is a big one! Take a look at the piles of papers on your desk, overstuffed closets, messy drawers, refrigerator, dirty car (inside or outside), messy garage, etc. What needs fixing? Are your electronics working? Cell phone, stereo, computer? Lighting in your office? Button missing from your favorite shirt? Shoes need shining? Scan your office and home environments – is anything broken? Maintenance Items. Oil changed in car, teeth cleaned, light bulb replaced, clothes to dry cleaner, AC or Heat serviced, battery replaced in phone or clock, haircut scheduled, etc. Unfinished Projects or Lingering ToDo’s. Thank you notes to send, a proposal or presentation to prepare, shopping for X, updating your resume, signing up for Toastmasters, etc. Comfort Items. What are you tolerating in your environment that’s affecting your comfort? Example: not having enough heat in the office (solution: new heater or clothes to dress more warmly), no A/C (solution: buy one, get a fan, wear shorts), loud working environment (solution: noisecanceling headphones). Relationship Tolerations. Is someone needlessly swearing, gossiping or overdoing sarcasm to the point of annoyance? Does someone leave socks on the floor, toilet seat up or wet towels on the bed? Is your spouse constantly criticizing, whiny,
or withholding affection? How do you address relationship tolerations? Make a request. Set a boundary. Shift your mindset. Get support. Bad Habits. Yes, sometimes we tolerate our own bad habits, which interferes with our productivity and deeper fulfillment. Examples: watching too much TV, smoking, caffeine addiction, excessive alcohol, being late to appointments, oversleeping, staying up late, indulging in negative thoughts, etc. Health Issues. Not attending to your health is another type of toleration. Examples: healing an injury, losing weight, not exercising, not having the right food choices on hand, skipping meals, postponing a mammogram or other important medical exam, etc. BIGGER Tolerations. This last category is for those nagging issues that don’t quite fit into the others. Items that fit in this category generally aren’t simple fixes. Examples: a challenging boss, client, or co-worker; a chronic injury or illness, losing that last 10-20 pounds, cramped office space, not enough closet space, etc. For BIGGER Tolerations you’ll need to get more creative, enlist support, or think outside the box. However, recognizing any toleration allows your subconscious to start attracting a solution.
Which one or two tolerations would free up the most energy if you eliminated them? Start there. Remember, it’s not about handling all the tolerations TODAY. Focus on the top 1-5 each week. Progress happens over time. Your Tolerations List should free you up, not bog you down. NOTE: Often tolerations start getting handled almost automatically once they are identified. Clients who consistently commit to handling a few tolerations each week quickly discover how simple it is to free up energy. Commit to eliminating tolerations each week. Soon it will become a life habit you’ll be thanking me for. Mark my words.
Mary Allen, CPCC, MCC is one of the most well-known life coaches worldwide, helping clients enjoy greater success with inner peace in all areas of life. For over 12 years, her clientele have included busy professionals and even a couple of billionaires. She is author of the acclaimed book The Power of Inner Choice: 12 Weeks to Living a Life YOU Love and she leads The Inner Peace Immersion Retreat annually. Receive 26 Inner Peace Tips & 2 Free Chapters from her book at www.lifecoachmary.com
Before you pull out your sheet of paper and start writing, here’s another secret. It’s not about handling ALL of your tolerations at once. That would be overwhelming! Instead, simply focus on 1-5 tolerations to handle each week. Just handling one per week for a year is 52 energy-draining tolerations eliminated! Coaching Assignment: 1. Brainstorm 20-25 tolerations present in your life. What are the pesky little “undone” things that are draining your energy? Use the categories above to help you identify your energy drains. To make this super easy for you, download your Tolerations Worksheet here: www.lifecoachmary.com/tolerations.pdf 2. Select 2-5 Tolerations that you’ll tackle THIS week. Look over your list.
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By Joe Lukacs
4 Ways Wholesalers Can Coach Advisors To Wholesalers have the unique opportunity to make a dramatic and positive impact on a financial advisor’s success. Unfortunately, too many wholesalers focus solely on getting their product sold. Through my coaching work, what I’ve found really makes all the difference to financial advisors is when a wholesaler takes a genuine interest in their success. This means putting the client before the product. Here are four key tools a wholesaler can use to add value to their advisor relationships and set themselves apart
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from their competitors. Using these tools, a wholesaler begins to function as a type of coach. Strategy #1: Reviewing Business Plans As a wholesaler, it can be incredibly effective to have access to the financial advisor’s business plan. Your goal should be to create the opportunity to sit down with your key clients and go over their business plan in order to determine where you can add value. This might mean adding value in terms of product, marketing support, or sales ideas.
On the other hand, if your client does not have a business plan, encourage them to take the time to construct a one-page set of goals and a one-page marketing plan that you can then help them execute. If you’re in their office a minimum of once every four to six weeks, this can then help keep them accountable. Strategy #2: Monthly Game Plans The second area where you can really add value is by encouraging the financial advisor to create a simple one-page monthly game plan. When I work with my
advisor coaching clients, here’s what we look for when we put together a monthly game plan: • Their top five goals • What they want to accomplish for the month • Their planned marketing activities such as generating referrals, conducting client events, or sending newsletters. These are activities that are going to drive business development. • Their personal development goals, exercise goals, CE credits, etc. • A list of their top ten opportunities for the month. When all of this is combined as a simple one-page plan, you have a document that you can now discuss with them. This gives you, as their wholesaler, another opportunity to show how you can add tremendous value by helping them reach their goals. Strategy #3: Daily Game Plans It’s virtually impossible to be successful
in this business without having a daily roadmap to guide us. As a wholesaler, one of the most crucial things you can do is discuss the importance of having that written daily game plan, as it eliminates or reduces the possibility of the advisor getting sidetracked or going sideways. Strategy #4: Positive Mental Diet Since we are in a business of rejection, keeping a positive attitude is critical for an advisor. Between various traditional news outlets, CNBC, and fellow advisors, the advisors you deal with can turn negative quickly. Instead of giving them more product or technical information, give them resources to improve their mindset such as books, CD’s, MP3’s, and websites. Be a positive influence, not just a product person. While all marketing ideas and business development strategies are designed to work for somebody, the question is will it work for the financial advisor in front of you? Therefore, a big part of your role is really about uncovering what’s going to work well for that particular financial advisor. For instance, if you know that they are not very organized, how successful will they be doing seminars? The likely answer is not very successful, especially if they don’t have the infrastructure to support a
proper seminar event. Still, all the great ideas and personalized interest you take in the advisor’s practice are just the beginning. Ultimately it’s not just about giving them an idea – you have to take it one step further. Are you willing to step outside of your comfort zone and help hold them accountable? Ask for their permission to do so. For instance, you could say, “Would you like me to check in with you and discuss your progress with the ideas (event, marketing) we discussed?” Using the business plan review and monthly and daily game plans, along with holding your advisors accountable, will build a mutually profitable relationship that consistently demonstrates your willingness to place your client, the advisor, first.
Coach Joe Lukacs has specialized in coaching financial advisors for 20 years. He is the creator of the PracticePower.net coaching site and author of Practice Power: 12 Steps To Take Your Business to the Next Level. He can be reached at jjl@ipginc.net or 888-474-8133. His two websites are www.practicepower.net and www.ipginc.net.
Four Systems You Should Implement With Your Internal Partner…NOW continued from page 4… partner a single 800 number and local (for additional costs) that allow an advisor to keep only one number to call. Most services start with 2 extension lines, which will then seamlessly forward the inbound call to either your cell phone or your internal wholesaler’s direct office line. Additional features can be added, but I suggest a trial utilizing E-Voice.com services. Not only does this create a single image for your clients, but E-Voice will transcribe voicemails into text and either e-mail or text message them to your internal – no more guessing involved!
The Anonymous Internal Wholesaler, M2M, began his career as a Financial Advisor. Working out of an Independent Division Firm in its NYC office, M2M was recruited to his current employer just before the last Bull Market ended. Anonymity was decided upon so that he could write bluntly and honestly about the views of Internal Wholesalers, without fear of offending External Partners or reprisals from Managers referenced.
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The Who ign The number one reason wholesalers should ignore social media is because only about 35% of advisors are engaging in social media in any meaningful way. If your target market wants nothing to do with social media, then why bother?
Given that advisors aren’t engaging in social media, and they can articulate some pretty strong reasons for not doing so, why should wholesalers argue that advisors should become involved in social media? The answer is you can’t and shouldn’t.
In fact, here are five solid reasons advisors give for not engaging in social media:
However, it doesn’t mean you can ignore the phenomenon.
1. Social media is for Gen Y and they don’t have any money.
Top wholesalers are leveraging the social media discussion to their advantage. However, they are not allowing themselves to get trapped into discussing only Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter. While one can argue these may be the top three most popular social networking tools available to advisors today, remember that they are just three of a vast pool of digital marketing tools available to advisors.
2. Investable dollars are with the Boomers and that’s where they’re prospecting. 3. Gen X and Y don’t understand their value proposition and certainly social media isn’t going to improve that perception. 4. Social media is too complicated, too time consuming, and you can’t measure the ROI. 5. Everyone knows it’s a compliance risk, so why bother?
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Top wholesalers are defining for advisors how their clients would like to be communicated with. Regardless of the demographic, Silvers, Boomers, Gen X or Y, technology is
playing a greater part in these groups’ daily lives. Translated, this means they are online researching, analyzing, and selecting their investments. They expect online portfolio performance tracking tools, investment analytics, investor blogs and online educational videos. Additionally, members of these demographically diverse groups have stated that they are interested in using webinars, screen sharing (Go-To-Meeting), mobile texting, tablet PC’s, video and video messaging when communicating with their advisors. Their biggest frustration is their inability to use smartphones, tablets, webinars and online video, tools they are comfortable with, to communicate with their advisors. The beauty of these communications preferences is that most wholesalers already have the communication tools clients are demanding in place. Their firms have provided them with webinars, videos, and portfolio
By D. Bruce Johnston
e FIVE top Reasons olesalers should ore social media commentary, along with up-to-the-moment market insights via the firm’s website. Content to let their competition struggle with the difference between a tweet and a twit, top wholesalers are providing advisors with an inventory of what’s available, a plan of action, and a way to measure success. While their competitors struggle with the benefits of social media and argue about the compliance risks, top wholesalers are providing their advisors ways in which they can effectively meet the communication demands of their clients. What are the advantages of this approach for wholesalers? First, the approach is nonjudgmental. If you want to argue the merits of social media with your advisors, I promise your sales management will be quick to point out that you might be in the wrong business. Your job is to raise capital, and the quickest path to that goal is to demonstrate to an advisor that you have tools in place now that will help them achieve their client acquisition and client retention goals.
Secondly, by not letting yourself or your advisors get bogged down in the great social media debate, you are in effect separating yourself from the rank and file wholesaler. Top wholesalers aren’t looking to win debates; they are looking to generate sales. Perhaps wholesalers that win the debate feel good when they leave their advisors’ offices. However, wholesalers that effectively demonstrate how to use the digital tools their company has in place to assist advisors in achieving their goals, while achieving their own goals, feel great when they leave their advisors’ offices. Thirdly, advisors are looking for solutions and they want to work with wholesalers that can provide them with solutions. In the competitive arena of wholesaling, wholesalers need to find ways to differentiate themselves. Being armed with an existing and actionable solution designed to benefit your advisors now will certainly go a long way in differentiating you from the rest.
not wholesalers should ignore social media. Rather it’s about an old theme made popular by social media – it’s about engagement!
A visionary, high-energy and results-driven senior sales executive, D. Bruce Johnston was named Fund Marketer of the Year by Institutional Investor for his outstanding work in building value-added programs for advisors. Bruce has spent the past three years analyzing and reporting on the explosion in free bandwidth advisors gain from social media, networking and digital, automated marketing programs. Attuned to both short- and long-term opportunities in wealth management, Bruce is showing thousands of financial advisors, money managers and service providers how to recognize and apply current media trends to their own successful Internet-driven distribution strategies.
At the end of the day it’s not about whether or
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Just another great tip I picked up at Wholesaler Masterminds‌
Sweet new laptop, Johnson!
Wholesaler Masterminds specializes in peer group and individual coaching for wholesalers and managers. Our laser focus is on practice management ideas that allow our clients to realize their career, income and personal goals. Contact us today for a complimentary discussion: 949-891-1117
www.wholesalermasterminds.com