Each month for the last eighteen I have produced a newsletter that goes out to a list of roughly 1300 readers. The list is highly targeted and reaches across the spectrum of professionals in the financial services community.
Since the Great Meltdown began I have noticed an unfortunate occurrence – one that has gained steam month over month: the number of email addresses bouncing due to ‘non-existent address’ appearing in my email statistics.
This statistic has proven accurate every time.
It tells the story of another job that has been claimed by the downturn.
Many of the names on the list are managers. Specifically, managers that manage wholesalers.
As firms scramble to right-size they are forced to cut the ranks of the very folks that train, mentor, coach and motivate their sales forces.
My sales teams always had a leader for every group of 12-14 people. Now it is not unheard of for a manger to have 18-20 direct reports. And let’s remember that those folks are likely to be spread out across multiple states and time zones.
Realistically there is no way that a manager, however great, can meaningfully enrich the careers of 18-20 professional sales folks. At ratios of 20+ to 1 the best most managers can hope for is to simply stay afloat.
The good news is that wholesalers are open to supplemental coaching opportunities.
Firms today need to explore those opportunities – or risk significant setbacks in employee/sales force development.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Faced with such a tectonic shift in operating assumptions, managements have responded with conventional, even forecastable methods. Namely, slash sales teams, then marketing, then production (here we mean analysts and PMs) and finally administration. Ironically, of course, the talent necessary to exploit stabilization–never mind recovery–is ordered in the exact opposite direction. Yet, those left to rebuild are the administrators who see their workload as a burden to be relieved first as opposed to the truth that client facing and sales teams should be strentghened first, not weakened at this very point in the cycle. The history of competition among organizations from armies to corporatons demonstrates this phenomenon again and again. Don’t plan on anything different this time. Managers rarely get this.
David,
Thanks for these valuable insights and the contribution to the discussion. I agree that behavioral change shouldn’t be expected. Hoped for, perhaps. Expected, no.
It is truly unfortunate for those wholesalers who recently got promoted from their internal desks or recently hired from another company. They had the product knowledge necessary to communicate the product benefits to financial advisors. Their soft skills may not have been quite up to snuff at the time of the lay off but they where making progress in the profession.
I believe the shake out will force some good and seasoned wholesalers to re-evaluate the loyalty they may give to any firm they work with in the future. Advisors will see yet another revolving door of young faces vieing for face time as these firms try to ramp up their sales force. These firms will find that the talent pool that they let go was deeper and more committed to the firm than the next crop of wholesalers they will be forced to hire when the market stabilizes.
Alan,
Thanks for the insights. We know that territory turnover has always been a big issue for selling reps. This round caused by the meltdown will take firms that had market share, and let folks go, quite a while to recover.