To be successful salespeople in Asian private banking and wealth management, relationship managers (RMs) must take some clear steps and implement specific techniques to be effective and productive – both for their organisations as well as their clients.
Date: April 23, 2010
Tags: Time management, Sales, Prospecting, Communication, Team
To be successful salespeople in Asian private banking and wealth management, relationship managers (RMs) must take some clear steps and implement specific techniques to be effective and productive – both for their organisations as well as their clients.
According to many senior practitioners interviewed for this article, it is generally unrealistic to expect any RM to be genuinely productive for more than six hours of any working day – regardless of whether they are a US$1 million producer or a US$10 million producer.
Yet despite these limited hours, many practitioners don’t organise their time effectively.
For example, a lot of salespeople organise internal and client meetings at the wrong time – often during trading hours rather than before or after the markets are open.
But they need to make sure that during this time they are completely dedicated and focused to doing whatever they can to be successful.
Critical to the success of any RM, therefore, is to have a disciplined working style.
Those practitioners interviewed generally agree on five key things which individuals can do to be efficient and productive:
1. Be specific
Given the importance of time control during the working day, RMs shouldn’t be spending time talking to clients about any general topics.
Instead, an RM should be disciplined by being specific in conversations with clients about investment ideas, products and strategy, and then focused on getting a client’s orders.
RMs should use the evenings or weekends for talking about their clients’ families or other things not directly relevant to the performance of their investment portfolios.
2. Work as a team
Experienced practitioners agree that RMs cannot be as effective on their own as they can be in a team.
This means that each RM needs to work closely with other people internally, including their assistants and other advisers, to help them mitigate any weaknesses they have and complement their skills.
This will ensure that the RM can enhance his or her strengths and more successfully service clients.
At the same time, it will also better help RMs to align their interests with the other stakeholders internally, which is important for organisations looking to ensure a consistent offering and branding for clients.
3. Leverage internal resources
Practitioners say that RMs need to leverage the rest of the bank’s internal resources to give themselves the best chance of success.
This might include everyone from senior management to investment advisers to research analysts.
The advantage of doing this is that it makes it more likely that the RM will get things done quickly and correctly the first time.
Without leveraging internal resources, RMs will be unable to learn from more experienced colleagues or avoid making as many mistakes.
4. Constantly prospect
RMs who want to be successful salespeople in wealth management need to continue to prospect and look to add new clients all the time.
Practitioners interviewed for this article say that a lot of RMs are not keen on prospecting or adding new clients.
As a result, they churn existing clients or rely on the few accounts which give them the majority of their business.
Yet clients’ needs and objectives are constantly changing, so in addition to looking to ways of developing a bigger book of business, RMs also need to regularly talk to their clients.
While at the same time RMs should be wary of having too many relationships, or holding on to clients for too long, they need to focus on establishing profitable accounts with clients who don’t waste their time.
5. Communicate clearly
Communicating clearly and succinctly with clients is a key part of the skill-set for RMs who want to be effective.
Perhaps the easiest benchmark for RMs to follow to understand if they can communicate well is whether they can explain to a client in simple and clear terms any product within five minutes.
Without this ability, it is not possible to be an effective salesperson, according to many senior industry practitioners.
