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What are your ideas?

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Big part of the problem is the compensation plan in financial industry. In general, people are paid so outrageous sums that small monetary incentives from producing new customers just won’t translate into significant extra compensation. In this situation, why anyone with personal preference to money would serve customers or prospects well?

Alternatively some companies have turned this approach upside down, salespeople are paid almost half of the customer’s lifetime value as a one-off payment. However, base salary is very low, this gravitates sales into flamboyant promises just to get the sale. This is also poor way to promote good customer service.

My best experience about private banking and wealth management comes from Taipei Citibank. There my family has a personal adviser to take care of investments. This person had the nerve to suggest shifting money from stocks to interest papers and promised to call when she has something solid to offer.

She saved a chunk of money and it didn’t turn into any direct income for her in a form of e.g. commission. That was impressive. Most people would have given that tired (memorized) advice about stock markets outperforming other investments in the long term and the need of just riding the turbulent out. During the turbulent and after it, salespeople are just selling like there would be no tomorrow.

Now dear Melody, what should we do about it or anything else for that matter? Any ideas?

I used to work for and with a hedge fund–and seeing the account executives from a marketing trainee’s (in the beginning) standpoint was incredibly frustrating. It was partly due to the fact of the kind of people that were hired (wanted the money of course but didn’t want to work for it). This annoyance had actually led me into my “former” company–because I felt like no one truly gave a damn about the prospects. They just wanted to imitate the characters of related movies and “(ABC) Always Be Closing.” Yeah, make money–of course, but establish trust and reliability in a time when people need it the most.

These same selfish people are the ones that sold Bernie Madoff’s so called “product”–(whatever it was supposed to be, who truly knows), to dozens of families and hardworking individuals..

Being in the financial industry just made me want to be as honest as possible, and as helpful as possible. It’s a dog eat dog world, and now those dogs are biting their tails after they’ve chewed up all our homes..lol

Looking forward to more interesting conversations
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Maybe we have to forgive some of the investment firm’s account executives haste as this industry is relatively straight-forward. Sure I don’t know what kind of investment firm it was, but nowadays many commission based investment product agents call themselves investment firms. Those are equals of telemarketing companies, wading through leads and trying to qualify them as fast as possible, when the promising prospect comes along the battle starts.

But yes, you are right that most of the sales is simply going after the money and taking shortcuts whenever possible. That keeps wheels turning, but there won’t be any shifting to higher gears.

Come to think of it, big part of sales is just about building trust. In a case of private banking company where I worked, we just pushed the reliability of our company and actual investment policies were on the back seat. It was only if prospect was especially interested about our investment strategies or tactics for her money that we put some time to figuring out how to invest money. Now look at the state of the world…

I checked your blog, good job. You seem to be quite an artist, I recommend that you show it even more visibly than you are currently doing. You should also put your photo to the homepage because you have nothing to hide, quite opposite. Your post about Investment therapy climb in Google was fascinating.

sheesh..lol

-Mel

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