Financial Advice - Sales or Not?

There's an interesting perception in the financial services industry that its only the IFA working on a truly 'whole of market basis who works on an advisory rather than sales basis.  I personally don't subscribe to that belief and I'll tell you why.

Despite the IFA working on a 'whole of market' basis, how many of them are targeted?  Thats right, the T word. Whether employed or self employed most IFA or advisory jobs that require the effective 'sale' of a product to a consumer are targeted.  If you're working on an employed basis there are often salary validations to be achieved, no employer in the advisory environment gives money away! And if self employed, unless the IFA has a huge amount of funds under management and has enough trail commission built up to pay the mortgage and take at least two holidays to Dubai in a year, they will have to set themselves some personal targets, even if just to survive. How do financial advisers and IFA's make any money? They gain commission or a fee on the provision of a particular product from a particular provider to a consumer - a sale! They are selling products are they not?

If there are targets in a role then there are quite often sales that have to be made in order to achieve those targets.  When the IFA goes to see a client, yes of course they go with the idea that they will provide the best advice to a client but they are still effectively selling the features and benefits of a particular financial product and what is a fact find if not a sales process?  What are you doing in a fact find?  Yes, thats right, you're are building a rapport, probing for information you can later use to disturb the client and generate a need for a product and closing the deal by securing a commitment to do the business - a sale by any other name.

So, is it any better to see an IFA than it is to see a financial adviser from a bank or perhaps a multi tied organization?  In terms of the sales focus I doubt it. Yes, they may be able to offer a wider range of financial products and therefore be able to offer something more closely fitting your particular requirements but don't be blinded by the holier than thou attitude, financial advice is primarily a sales focused process, whether IFA or not!

New Year - Financial Focus for 2010

For many of us in the financial services recruitment arena, we look upon the beginning of 2010 with trepidation.  How many of us are still suffering the after effects of last years meltdown? Many of the financial organisations shed staff like it was going out of fashion and consequently, come the end of 2009, there was little need for recruitment of new IFA's or new financial advisory staff, meaning that substantial numbers of our poorly placed or less professional competetitors went to the wall. Not a bad thing,  somewhat like a case of nature ensuring that only the strong survive. There is reason to look upon 2010 with a little less forbodeing than we naturally are however, as the financial markets stabilise and financial recruitment picks up - if only by a small percentage!

This year should be for many of us within financial services recruitment, the herald of good things to come.  As above, professional service standards have been lifted to the nth degree and those companies without the best standards of both client and candidate care have not and will not survive as both clients and candidates alike begin to realise that there are financial services recruiters out there that are a cut above the rest and choose to work with organisations that can provide a highly professional and courteous service. Skills have been rediscovered and new skills honed and polished over the last year that have ensured the survival of the best financial services recruiters and because of that, financial advisory organisations and IFA employers are now  provided with a higher level of service and a better client experience than they ever were. Companies within financial services recruitment have realised that the two key components for their success, clients and candidates, need to be treated as the highly important aspects that they are.

2010 holds new promise and should for the financial services recruiter be a good year.  We are seeing growth in the economy, however small, and the resulting uplift in the recruitment of financial advisory and IFA staff will see a rewarding and profitable year, most definitely compared to 2009.  It can't get any worse, can it!  So, lets jump into 2010 with renewed hope and vigour and lets all ensure that this year, 2010 is the year we all hope it can be!

IFA's as football teams - is there a correlation?

I was wondering the other day just for a bit of fun, recruiters do have fun you know, if I could come up with any sort of correlation between financial advisers or more specifically IFA's, and Premier league football teams. In between the hours spent in the noble position of assisting people making excellent financial services career decisions I actually came up with, what we at XL-Recruitment thought, were some rather comical ones. Now, the definitions were that there had to be some sort of direct comparison and that it was the top four teams in the Premier league that they had to represent.Well, five including mine!

So we started with the A - The Arsenal of IFA's. The Arsenal IFA is cosmopolitan, probably a city gent and most definitely the most sharply dressed, suave and sophisticated in his firm. His swift and decisive advice although well executed, has often been known to flirt with monetary gain without really making the knockout blow and delivering the result required. Verdict - pretty but doesn't really get the job done!

The Liverpool IFA - The IFA representing Liverpool is a fanatically detailed financial adviser, technically proficient and stable but often labelled conservative and dour, defensive even. Primarily risk averse, he/she will build a usually solid investment portfolio that will immediately collapse if one or two funds go missing for a short period. Verdict - Conservative and perpetually jealous of the neighbouring firm.

The Manchester Utd of Financial Advisers or IFA's is a big swaggering giant of an IFA, arrogant and sure of his/her own ability. The Manchester Utd adviser has a cosmopolitan flavour with a gritty northern foundation, they will be suave with a steely determination to win and they are ultra competetive. They will quite often get down and dirty in order to get ahead, have a flagrant disregard for authority and you can guarantee, they will be the adviser in the firm doing the mega sized pensions transfer cases. Verdict - Champion in his/her own lifetime, arrogant to the nth degree but unfortunately, bloody good at what they do!

The Chelsea IFA - The Chelsea IFA or financial adviser is a returnee to the financial services fold. Probably a financial adviser that was once 'top of the class' although he/she might have that jaded, hangdog look of the 'almost but never quite got there'. An IFA that builds functional, yet fluid investment portfolios, they work with solid foundations and are usually always lucky enough to get the result, even if it is in the last minute. Verdict - sturdy performer, works well within a system but not so well on their own.

Now, as a Tottenham supporter myself I absolutely have to include my team. So, here we go: The Tottenham IFA is an IFA or financial adviser who harks back to the glory, glory era when they worked in 'tied' home service and their slick moves could bamboozle the punters and the opposition alike ensuring that they quite often topped the tables and won awards. Nowadays, they are bitter, often reminded by bigger and better neighbours of what used to be. An inability to plough funds into their practice at the right time and keep up with the industry has meant that the Tottenham IFA has had to watch as the rest of the world have caught up and even passed him/her by. Verdict: Bitter and constantly tells anyone who will listen how good they used to be.

If any of you professional financial advisers or IFA's out there want to include your teams or your comparisons, please feel free to add comments, it would be a welcome addition to just me writing and it would be funny I'm sure to see some of them like Bolton or West Ham, so come on, get those comments in.

Redundancy - Law of the Jungle?

Redundancy as a word seems to be rearing its ugly head more and more as we come to the end of the first quarter of the new financial year. But does it hold the same fear as it did twenty years ago, or when the last depression took hold.

As a recruitment consultantancy in the UK financial services industry, we are seeing people displaced at an almost scary rate but is it just the law of the jungle? Using that terminology, in lean times, the herd sacrifice the sick or weak animals for the greater good of the rest, streamlining and making more efficient the smaller group. I believe that this is what we are seeing now in the financial markets.

We have the larger blue chip financial companies shedding the financial professionals that are just reaching retirement age anyway, 'there you go, you gave us 20 years great service, there's a golden farewell' or the ones that are just not performing as they should - 'targets not reached in quarters 3 & 4 - there's a reference, close the door on your way out!' And its not just support staff or back office administrators. Historically, the last people to go when the economy slows have usually been financial advisers or sales people, however, over the last year these have been let go just as rapidly.

You might, after reading the first two or three paragraphs be thinking that its all doom and gloom. You would however, be wrong. Although the banks, financial organisations, IFA's, etc are getting rid of people - as fast as they are getting rid of the older and non performing individuals they are looking to take on new, younger, high volume, high achieving professionals. We at XL-Recruitment are seeing a trend developing of financial services organisations screening very heavily in order to filter out the best. Now this is a good thing although you might ask why?

From a recruiters perspective it means that a lot of the agencies that have, over the last year or two grown fat on the reactive work of job sites, etc will now have to revisit skills that they didn't have to use in a buoyant market - cold calling, headhunting, additional marketing, business development - proactive skills that have to now be brought back out, dusted off and polished once more in order to find the advisers that are successful - usually not the ones looking for jobs. A lot of consultants who have only worked in a buoyant financial services market won't even have these skills. This is why we are now seeing, as in the financial advisory arena, recruitment consultancies in the financial sector shedding staff just as quickly.

From a financial professionals perspective it means less competition and a clear run at a reduced amount of business, which should mean target achievement and therefore bonus. For the smart financial adviser who's performing consistently, now is the time to be pushing your case for a sales management role or senior advisory position, you're the ones still there, you're the ones performing, you're the ones worth £millions to the organisation you work for.

So, redundancy, is it a dirty word? Not if you're doing your job to the best of your ability it isn't!

Goal Setting - small targets for big results!

For a new financial adviser starting out in the financial services industry it’s probably a bit unrealistic to set yourself grand targets that are most likely doomed to failure, certainly without the relevant experience. It is still however, a very good idea to set realistic goals and targets in the form of a business plan as when results are achieved as written down it drives you on further to do even better. A great man once said to me ‘always write down your goals, visualize them every morning, put the hard graft in and eventually those dream and goals will be realized’ 

So how should a new financial adviser with little experience go about setting their goals? It doesn’t really matter to be honest. I think the important thing is that you write them down. Seeing them in black and white makes them real. Your goals and targets should also be realistic and answer your purpose whatever that might be – increased income, better holidays, better work life balance, etc. I’m sure that most of you started off this career for a reason. For some, it’s to pursue an interest, some to earn financial freedom, others to challenge themselves. 

I would advise keeping it simple in the beginning and writing achievable goals that are realistic and can be achieved in say 2 to 3 years. If you can’t see any result in the short term it will make you disillusioned and more likely to fail. A good example would be something like the one below:

‘When I started this job it was to earn financial freedom within 10 years but in the short term I would like to at least match what I was earning in my previous role and be earning 100,000 GBP in the next three to four years’

Short and to the point but matched with realism. This is a good example of goal setting.

Now another thing to think about as a finncial adviser is how you are going to achieve those income goals. How much you will earn I determined by how much activity you do and how you do it. You can only manage what you can control, forget what you can’t influence. You can control how many calls you make, how many appointments you make and how many clients you see. The better you get as a financial adviser the easier it will be to make these controllable aspects profitable.

It is vitally important that the small activity goals you set are being achieved. Planning your time effectively to include exclusive times for cold calling and appointment setting is important. At the moment you should jut focus on seeing the number of new appointments you set per week and making the right number of calls to new prospects. Achieve those targets and your income targets will surely be met.

In conclusion it’s important to keep things simple and focus on getting the things you can control right. Don’t waste time setting unrealistic goal that you won’t achieve making you disillusioned and less likely to have a successful career as a financial adviser.