Beverly Flaxington is a practice management consultant. She answers questions from advisors facing human resource issues. To submit yours, email us here.
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Dear Bev,
We are having an internal debate over whether to hire a full-time sales professional. I come from the financial technology industry, and we always used business development reps (BDRs, sometimes called sales development reps or SDRs) to work with our senior salespeople. Here the advisors don’t believe it is either necessary or relevant to their work. They say high-net-worth investors don’t enjoy being pushed or sold, and that it is a softer sell.
My last BDR was a very talented woman who had a great personality and was not pushy. But she was determined and dogged. She kept following up with potential prospects until we determined if they were a fit for us. I would like to hire her here and test out my hypothesis that a talented person could be a good lead for us into many opportunities.
It has become a very contentious discussion. I respect the concern that she would call and bug clients or valued third parties of the firm. My thought was to give her a list we have created here over the last few years of people who formerly expressed interest but never followed through. They are sitting in the CRM in essentially a dead folder. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t – I’m not attached to the outcome and this former colleague of mine is currently home with small children. She doesn’t need the work, but she’d be willing to give it a try with me and see how it goes.
How do I get my partners to see the risk here is low?
T.H.
Dear T.H.,
In the many decades I have spent in the advisory profession, I’m not sure I’ve seen any debate rage more fiercely than the one about what advisors should do for new sales.
I’ve had hundreds of conversations about how to go about it. The options are:
- Hire a full-time business development person (never my favorite idea – I’ve not seen it work well in more than a couple of situations);
- Have sales professionals who are also advisors and credentialed make initial calls and then hand off prospects to an advisor (this can work well if the team is aligned and working well together);
- Have a call-center make outbound calls (you need to have a lot of quality leads to make this work);
- Have the advisors do the selling (many do not consider themselves salespeople so this can be challenging); or
- Have someone do the qualification for advisors, like you are recommending.
I’ve not seen many firms use this last approach unless they are one of the larger ones who spend a lot of money on marketing to create leads that need to be culled and qualified.
I agree with you that there’s no major downside to what you are suggesting to your colleagues. The key thing is to set guardrails so this BDR of yours knows who to call. I had one client who hired a business development rep, and the agreement was this person would not contact clients unless the advisors asked him to do so. Unfortunately, about two weeks into the role, this person starting arbitrarily contacting clients to ask for referrals. There was quite an uproar, and the person was summarily fired. The firm never again wanted to try to grow except through incoming referrals and leads.
It can be frustrating if you are brought in to sell and you don’t have access to clients or COIs who are working with the firm. In one case, I put a seasoned BD person in a firm. They partnered with the advisors. The advisors would call upon the person when they needed help with a client and believed there was an extended opportunity. This scenario worked very well because the advisors were driving the process and determining what was needed and when.
Put the plan into writing so your colleagues can see exactly what your intentions are for this person. You need to map out the steps, compensation, and interaction between this person and your advisors. Give them all assurances you have thought the entire process through from end-to-end.
New ideas are risky for people, especially if they are behaviorally wired to avoid risk. Your colleagues may resist simply because this is unknown and unproven. If you can present something well thought out and specific, they might be willing to give you a chance to try it out and see how it goes.
Dear Bev,
Have you seen a situation where the person running the advisor team is former college football star and every single story – I mean every one – is about football? His analogies, his stories, his jokes are all football related. I hate football. Am proud to have never watched a game in my life. I don’t want to bring him into client meetings anymore because I had the spouse of one of my larger clients comment, “That guy needs to be back at the stadium”.
I know you might tell me he needs to be more self-aware. But he wears this affinity like a badge of honor, and I don’t think he cares who he offends or alienates. It’s like if you are one of them (the football crowd), you are okay and if you are not, well so be it.
L.S.
Dear L.S.,
Is it your perception this is distasteful behavior, or have you had pushback from clients about it? I understand a client commented the guy needs to get back in a uniform. But that could have been meant as a joke or even a simple observation. My guideline when determining how to deal with difficult behavior is impact. How has this impacted clients and employees? Is there a tangible problem or outcome you can point to that you could share with him to show him the error of his ways?
If not, consider whether it is your own unease with his approach. I realize you do not enjoy football and are proud to have nothing to do with it, but could this attitude color your impression of what he is doing and how he comes across? When we talk about self-awareness and wanting others to see how they are coming across, we have to also view our own filters and behavior and consider whether we are being fair and objective.
If he is off-putting to your clients, set expectations when he will be joining a meeting. “Mr. and Mrs. Smith, you will meet one of my colleagues today. I want to prepare you – he is an excellent advisor/planner/portfolio manager (insert role here) but he is obsessed with football. He was on his way to the big leagues and circumstances change. You might have to indulge a few of his stories, but rest assured his investment/planning, etc., knowledge will make it worth your time!” This way you are preparing someone and making the issue less important. If they love football, they will likely tell you and if they don’t, they will indulge him and then move on with the rest of the meeting.
The beauty of dysfunctional or difficult people is they are predictable. We can often minimize the impact of their behavior simply by preparing someone for what to expect!
Beverly Flaxington co-founded The Collaborative, a consulting firm devoted to business building for the financial services industry, in 1995. The firm also founded and manages the Advisors Sales Academy. She is currently an adjunct professor at Suffolk University teaching undergraduate and graduate students Entrepreneurship and Leading Teams. Beverly is a Certified Professional Behavioral Analyst (CPBA) and Certified Professional Values Analyst (CPVA).
She has spent over 25 years in the investment industry and has been featured in Selling Power Magazine and quoted in hundreds of media outlets, including The Wall Street Journal, MSNBC.com, Investment News and Solutions Magazine for the FPA. She speaks frequently at investment industry conferences and is a speaker for the CFA Institute.