Acquiring new clients and expanding these relationships early on is key to the growth strategy of almost all wealth management firms, but few have succeeded in executing a comprehensive and consistent sales and onboarding strategy. Read More »

Forty percent of wealth management executives cite limited new client acquisition as their greatest hurdle to achieving revenue growth goals. With the length of the sales cycle and skepticism of prospects ever increasing, wealth managers face an urgent need to define the sales tactics that turn prospects into new clients. Read More »

Today, advisors must meet unprecedented client demands while simultaneously courting new business for their firm. To ensure advisors spend their time most effectively during the sales process firms must instill a more disciplined approach to pipeline management.

One leading firm, Blackwell Private Bank (pseudonym), develops a pipeline system comprised of three phases:

1. Search Phase – confirm lead quality and gather prospect information
2. Action Phase – schedule prospect meeting and develop proposal
3. Closing Phase – present proposal and introduce the service team

The three-phase process allows advisors to calibrate the likelihood of closing sales opportunities in their pipelines and thus, determine key next steps. Since implementing the strategy Blackwell has seen significant increases in sales productivity, measured by the number of proposals made, meetings completed and an increased flow of net new assets.

Forum members, learn how to ensure a greater degree of advisor accountability in the sales process.

Economists recently downgraded global growth forecasts. Unfortunately, financial institutions cannot “delink” from these doldrums. For most, the implications of this news will involve an intense management focus on costs. We recently polled FS executives as part of the Corporate Executive Board’s quarterly Business Barometer and 60% of them told us that cost pressures are rising at their organizations.

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What became clear through our research interviews on the client experience is that leading firms place great emphasis on the sales experience—prospects’ first impression of what their experience will be like at the firm. However, unlike the client experience, where firms can track advisors’ contact with clients or use financial metrics to measure advisors’ performance in each relationship, firms struggle to create accountability and accurately assess advisors’ delivery of the sales experience.

One leading firm, Ritz Financial (pseudonym), creates accountability for the sales experience by requiring advisors to complete “discovery memos” following initial sales meeting with prospects. In the discovery memos, advisors must outline key discussion points from the meeting, and resulting action items. The firm finds that the level of detail captured in the discovery memos and the clarity of next steps are very good indicators of advisors’ preparation for the sales meeting. Ritz is correct in assuming that the preparation for the meeting is perhaps more important than the actual meeting: Forum research shows that one of the main differences between top-performing and core-performing advisors isn’t how they spend their client-facing time, it’s how they spend their non client-facing time.

Access the full case study to learn more about Ritz’s sales experience accountability.

The VIP Forum held its annual executive meeting last week, hosting nearly 40 senior executives from across the North American membership.  Wealth management executives gathered for a one-day meeting to discuss challenges and solutions to boosting sales effectiveness.  With executives self-reporting revenue growth goals of 14% for 2010, the question on everyone’s mind was “how are we going to get there?” Read More »