blog

Bringing the High Touch Wholesaler Experience Online

By Helen Gurina

Wholesalers have a wealth of experience in turning 15 minute meetings into sales. The wholesaling model - grounded in forging strong, personal relationships in a short amount of time - exemplifies how to forge a strong connection, balance product with human interaction, build loyalty, and support a client's needs. Despite this expertise, asset managers rarely translate it to the online world. When it comes to their Web sites, they lag behind other industries in establishing trust, loyalty, support and, ultimately, sales. In order to make online distribution and service more efficient, asset management Web sites need to mimic the high touch experience of their wholesalers.

Online Coverage is Essential for Sales

Only a fraction of the 300,000 financial advisors in the United States are covered by a firm's external and internal wholesalers. The majority of advisors, including prospects and marginal clients, can only be touched by online representation. The Web site should thus be an effective sales tool and a polished representation of a firm's offline capabilities, not a static nameplate with a repository of printed materials. Research such as kasina's Top 10 Advisor Sites (2010), shows that advisors covered by the Web site produced an average 78% more sales in 2009 with asset managers than those that never used their Web sites. (For more information on measuring the Web's impact on sales, please ask us about kasina's Web Lift measure.) The Web site offers a wealth of opportunities for prospecting, servicing, marketing, sales and lead generation.

Reshape the Web site into a Virtual Wholesaler

As in a 15 minute meeting with a wholesaler, it is important to make the most of an advisor's brief time on your Web site. The Web site should treat an advisor in the same manner a wholesaler would when an advisor first enters the meeting. First and foremost, present the advisor with the information they need - the reason they set up this meeting. Most often this is product and performance information or talking points about a product. Make the products in the advisor's portfolio easily accessible via intuitive navigation, great search, and interactive presentation. Similar to a wholesaler that knows their clients' predilections and preferences, try to present this information right from the front page.

Pitch on Your Product Pages

Product pages should contain main selling points, performance and additional tools related to the conversation. This is the core of your meeting, and should be a dialogue where an advisor can unfurl additional data or visualize performance compared to other products, not a static pdf. Don't miss the chance to tell the advisor why this fund is the one they should be promoting with highlights, impactful graphics, and perhaps video commentary from the portfolio manager.

Don't Forget the Next Steps

Give the advisor some handouts to show colleagues and clients in the form of e-mail and sharing options. Now you have the opportunity to suggest some other products that might fit the advisor's portfolio or tell them about a prominent portfolio manager's market commentary. Maybe they'd like to get some tips on practice management or ideas for client events. Conclude with a reason to return for another meeting now that you have established great rapport.

At every step, apply the rationale of a human conversation with a pinch of a wholesaler's charm. Too often asset managers' Web sites present a stack of spreadsheets and leaflets at a meeting which would be far more effective as a virtual sales pitch. Applying the years of knowledge that wholesalers earned in the field to the online world would allow asset managers to provide a high touch experience to rival online retailers and social media sites.