Most trust businesses now distinctly separate the client-facing staff from others. Among the front-line are those that manage existing relationships and those that pitch to new prospects. This installment deals with the salesmen/ladies who are called anything from Business Development Managers to Trust Advisers to Wealth/Tax/Estate Planners to Fiduciary Specialists to Trust Sales or plainly Trust Officers. If there is any part of the trust industry that is "sexy", it is these rainmakers.
Obviously businesses want to put their best communicators and presentable people in front of the client. In an ideal world, your front line would also be among the best skilled, knowledgeable and technically proficient. What may not be so obvious is the impact that it has to the overall business model: you now have 2 distinct businesses. You now have people that have little or no idea what happens to trusts after they sell them, and you have people that have little or no idea how to plan or structure trusts as they only deal with after-sales processes. Training resources are usually skewed toward the front-line so your middle and back office gets dumber by the day. Can you promote your Head of Wealth Planning to run the trust business when they may have never had hands-on trust administration experience? Is your Head of Fiduciary capable of driving the business when they have had no sales or marketing responsibilities? The really big players don't have a problem running dual businesses as they have the resources/manpower to do so. Where this schism has a big impact on on the smaller trust players. They hire some Estate Planner from a big trustee and find out they can't manage a client end-to-end. Or they hire a Senior Trust Administrator and find out they have no idea how to bring in new business or capture market share.
When it comes to trust sales, it's pretty much a job whereby you need to identify or convince the client that they have a problem and establish that problem could be solved by a creating a trust. It could takes minutes or months. I would say that if you bought into a trust without weeks of deliberation and consideration then you're under-estimating the impact. If you allow a client to sign up in hours then you are a salesman, not an advisor. There are literally a hundred considerations that should be made. Whether or not most if not all were brought to your attention depends on the knowledge of the salesman and/or their agenda.
For those with a background in management or sales, you are probably familiar with some sales variation of the Blake & Mouton Grid. Google it if you don't know what I'm referring to. Your career as a front-line trust person can be encapsulated by a form the Grid. Where your employer wants you to be on the Grid and where your skills place you on the Grid tells you what your career will be like. The Grid is x-y chart that plots "caring about the Customer" on the y-axis and "caring about the sale" on the x-axis.
Those that place a high significance on the customer then to be either "people oriented" or "problem solvers". People Oriented salesmen tend to create special bonds with the customer and therefore conflicts when the product or service they are offering do not serve the customer well. A friend in deed, but in business, People Oriented salesmen have problems meeting revenue targets because they can't bring it upon themselves to close one-sided deals. People Oriented sales will work well in laid back, non-bureaucratic organisations. The Problem Solver is someone who cares greatly about solving the customers' woes as well as promoting product/services, as long as those services and products resolve the problems.
I make no judgments as to what is right or wrong or better or worse but it is very easy to identify the mismatches.
If you have a Problem Solver like a private client lawyer or tax specialist, these people will fair well in an organisation that allows them plan and devise often bespoke solutions. If you're running a holistic problem solving organisation, then you need people with problem solving skills. You can't plan a probate avoidance trust if you don't know the rules of probate. You can't advise on tax planning if you don't know taxes. On the flip side, these people get stifled in an über conservative trust company or one that has a limited or off-the-shelf offerings. When they don't have the tools or platform to solve problems, they fail or rapidly lose interest.
People Oriented salesmen are great for an organisation where there is time and resources to cultivate relationships. You will need to seek out those that those are not out for the kill. Perhaps your ideal salesmen may have even had a dismal scorecard at his previous employer as they measure themselves on the relationship, not the sale. There will be many lunch expenses and time-spent with no tangible results. If you're a People Oriented person then you will fail in the fast food-type, mass retail companies. You need to seek out more relationship-oriented employers like boutique private banks, family offices or small independent trustees or move up into the key client/UHNW space where. People Oriented salesmen are also most likely to breach controls and make self and company sacrifices in the name of the client.
Those with little concern for the customer tend to be "take-it-or-leave-it" salesmen or "product pushers". The TIOLI saleman is often low skilled simply because he can get away with it. These work well with big brand name institutions as the brand sells itself or with mass retail generic products as not much work is required from the salesman. Luxury goods sales are typical TIOLI people. Here's the Ferrari, TIOLI. As such, they are hit & miss when it comes to achieving targets. When your brand is strong and markets are booming, they look like superstars. When your brand sucks and the pipeline drying up, don't expect them to be proactive or consider it their problem. They are typically harmless and could probably be replaced with a software program or any warm body.
The Product Pushers are favorites of target-driven organisations. If you're under pressure to deliver 30 trusts or get AUM over $500M then you need these people who thrive on getting results. Of course, some of these results often come at the expense of something else like customer needs, due diligence and most things we like to think of as miss-selling. For every dollar a Product Pusher brings in, keep 10% in a war chest as you will be sued sooner or later. Product Pushers are often a little technically skilled as they need to be able to hit the right buttons, use the right sound bites, etc. Your typical PowerPoint professional. If you're not in a problem solving market, Product Pushers are fine, otherwise, they are usually in way over their heads. Product Pushers are usually fearless, energetic, boisterous and have the attention span of a fruit fly. They typically despise rules, formalities and post-sales activities. They off chasing another prospect before the ink on the last sales is even dry. Product Pushers have become the divas of the industry. They can command high salaries, get the perks and are often handled with kid gloves. If you upset them, they're off to your competitor along with their million dollar revenue stream.
Of course, there are more moderate middle grounds and where you or your organisation fit in the Grid is something you may want to look into. And in most team environments, junior staff tend to take on the characteristics of their team leader. If you have a Product Pusher as senior Trust Planning Manager then it's likely all his subordinates will become product pushers themselves. All the people he hires will likely be product pushers. If you're looking to hire, consider using the Grid to see where you're strong and where you're lacking.
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