blog

Internal Wholesaling Then and Now

by Deb Wetherbee

After reading our new report, Excellence in Distribution: Internal Wholesaling, I have to comment on just how much internal wholesaling has changed since my days at the desk. The changes are a result of both new technology and the recent economic environment. I believe many of these changes are here to stay.

Internals have always had strong relationships with advisors, and this continues to be the case. In our latest FA Vision survey with Horsesmouth, internals generally out-score externals from the advisor's perspective. This critical relationship continues to get more sophisticated each year. For example, I used to spend much of my time scheduling meetings for wholesalers. Today, some firms have part-time folks that do only that. Imagine! This frees up valuable, expensive time for those with licenses to build stronger relationships and truly sell. Our new report found that internals now spend just as much time as externals selling and servicing clients and prospects.

I also spent a great deal of time scouring my atlas of the West Coast from Boston in an effort to get my "lost" wholesalers back on track (in more ways than one). Can you say, "GPS"? Valuable time has been given back to the internal to support the advisors and externals in a more substantive way. When I think back to the amount of collateral that I shipped around the country via FedEx, I shudder. This is a task easily done via email or from a web site. There are different degrees of sophistication in doing this (see our 2009 Top 10 Web Sites for Financial Intermediaries for more), but the fact that we don't ship nearly as much as we once did is a tremendous improvement (time, cost and trees).

The above changes result in more time selling, but the evolution does not stop there. The collateral and tools that internals have available are comprehensive, allowing for a real partnership between the internal and the advisor. This applies to both investment tools as well as practice management materials.

While the job has evolved in the right direction, there are still issues to address: compensation, morale, and career paths, to name a few. Firms need to take steps to address these issues through improved territory management, creative compensation structures, staffing and further deployment of technologies. Ideally, we want this generation of internals to feel nostalgic about their roles years from now.