There was a time when email was evil. “Antisocial! Impersonal! Relationships will suffer!”
What really happened? We communicate more, often at a deeper level and have dodged the social isolationist bullet. In fact, business execs can’t survive today without email. It reduces what use to be required face-time and opens up opportunity for fewer but higher quality press-the-flesh meetings. We can be selective about the circumstances that are enriched with face-to-face meetings vs. phone or e-mail. We’ve come to understand that more of one communication mode doesn’t equal better.
Wholesaling hasn’t made the productivity and communication preference leap. The wholesaling model still clings to interaction silos. Internals are the phone experts, externals are the face-to-face experts and often hybrids are awkward ‘tweens without a silo to call home.
Internals were great when advisors used to answer their phones. Externals were great when there was no other way for advisors to get information.
In other industries, the most successful sales reps mix it up and decide when to call, when to visit and when to use technology. ‘Ya gotta be in front of them’ regardless of the situation has passed its expiration date.
Can we afford interaction silos in a world where advisor communication preferences continue to blur?
Or can we add a bit more bandwidth to today’s wholesalers — giving them the skills and flexibility they need make smarter choices in how they interact with advisors?
What if ALL wholesalers had a level of competency in all three of these areas:
1. The ability to qualify and close sales over the phone.
2. The ability to use available technology, in particular one-on-one web meetings, as an integral part of how they do business, while honing their face-to-face skills to have more impact with fewer meetings.
3. The ability make strategic decisions to productively balance their field, phone, and face-to-face time, choosing the right medium to match each advisor interaction.
I’m not sayin’ it’s easy, but adapting to what is coming at us like a boulder rolling downhill isn’t really a choice anymore. I’m still not a big fan of twitter. But some of my clients are, so the die is cast.
Excellent post Mary Anne and terrific advice to wholesalers. Truth of the matter is, their firms should be heeding your advice as well.
Their are two givens: Gen X and Y are upon us with what experts estimate to be a tripling of net worth by 2018 to $28T and an additional $18T generational wealth transfer occurring between 2017 and 2052. Second, fund firms lack a strategy for investors in those generations. You might argue that advisors don’t have a strategy either, but advisors are embracing social media applications as part of their solution set at a record pace.
Advisors are on Twitter. I follow hundreds, and if you want to get a sense of what’s on their mind follow @AdvisorTweets, a site dedicated to advisors and their conversations. 583 advisors will share their opinion with you tweet-by-tweet.
Advisors are beginning to understand Gen Y wants convenience in their interactions with them via high-quality video, texting and other social networking tools – for free. One Gen Y CFP, @rjweiss, created GenYWealth.com and receives 9,000 unique visitors per month. Even AARP has a blog dedicated to Gen Y – LifeTurner. I’ve even been asked to speak to a NICSA Regional conference on 5 Strategies Financial Advisors Need to Sell more to Gen Y.
There are countless advisor blogs available satisfying the need for unbiased information on finances, resources and personal commentary via the Internet to a very large market. The issue of compliance and archiving is being satisfied by firms such as Arkovi.
So, just as advisors who don’t learn to communicate with the new generation of investors via the new media they access daily. Wholesalers and fund firms that don’t make the productivity and communication preference leap you suggest stand to be left in the dust by their competitors.