“The New World of Wholesaling” is Upon Us.

That’s according to national sales managers at advisors’ top 10 favorite asset management firms in the industry. Ignites recently dug into Fuse Research’s report highlighting the results of a vote amongst 727 advisors, and the message is clear: the good old days of walking into an advisor’s office and winning business with a pair of tickets and a decent Morningstar rating are over.

Wholesaling was always hard, but the growing popularity of goals-based investment strategies, the proliferation of rep-as-PM programs, and the seismic shift from active to passive means advisors need wholesalers to bring a new level of expertise to the table.  It’s no longer enough to show up and pitch product.  Wholesalers must now couple an understanding of an advisor’s business with knowledge about their portfolio construction methodology in order to recommend the right products to complement it.

And to further complicate matters, asset managers increasingly find themselves relying on big data to drive decisions about which advisors to pursue because of tightening constraints around the products a given advisor can or can’t offer.  And because they source data from the same places, fund manufacturers’ territory coverage plans converge.  So a wholesaler might find themselves 5th-in-line walking into an advisor’s office.  

How Can Wholesalers Differentiate?

It’s no coincidence that 7 of advisors’ top 10 favorite wholesalers use Allego’s sales learning platform.  Rethinking sales learning helps address the gap between advisors’ growing focus on client engagement and wholesalers’ traditional focus on products and markets.  Wholesalers need to be able to carry the conversation around a broad range of products to cut through the noise and pivot to the right recommendations.  You can’t fake knowledgeability when questions about asset allocation and tax management start rolling in. So doubling down on educating externals – and internal desks – is a winning strategy.

Understanding an advisor’s clients won’t suffice on its own.  91% of national sales managers consider it a top strategic priority for wholesalers to take more of a consultative approach with advisors.  Becoming an “advisor to the advisor” to stay relevant means expanding wholesalers’ soft skills and developing storytelling capability as well.  Wholesalers need to engage advisors and tell the story of their company’s products to make convincing recommendations about how they fit in with a given portfolio allocation model.  That’s why organizations on advisors’ top ten list, like MFS, put so much muscle behind sales effectiveness initiatives like conducting regular sales certifications to ensure wholesalers deliver the message the right way.

Advisors have graduated from selling products to building client solutions so asset managers’ approach must evolve as well.  With product information available at the touch of a button on an advisor’s computer or smartphone, wholesalers who walk in and convincingly demonstrate investment expertise and an overall sensibility about the wealth management business win the day.  Congrats to MFS, Oppenheimer and all the other Allego customers who made this year’s top 10 list.

For more on how Allego helps financial services organizations cut through the noise, read our success story Nuveen increases Sales Knowledge and Effectiveness by Adopting Allego.