A meeting between an AIM Fund Management Inc. wholesaler and his or her advisor-client generally goes far beyond a mere sales call pushing the company’s mutual funds.
“We try to make every meeting about more than just product,” says Andrew Williams, senior vice president and national sales manager at AIM in Toronto. “We try to make every meeting about forging a deeper relationship with the advisor by helping with his book, and getting him where he wants to go.”
AIM has a team of 40 wholesalers (divided evenly between the broker channel and independent financial planners) who regularly meet with advisors to discuss anything from market conditions to business development ideas to client retention strategies, as well as provide the traditional info on current products.
The goal is to provide any information that will help out the mutual client of the fund company and the financial advisor — the individual investor.
“It’s not a pure sales call. It’s working with the advisor to develop his or her business into what they would like it to be,” says Williams. “AIM’s intention is to provide advisors with all the tools they need to be successful. Products are only one of the tools.”
The expanded role of the wholesaler has been a company policy since early January. In a sense, the program is an extension of the reputation for service that the recently acquired Trimark Investment Management Inc. brought to AIM. Trimark-sponsored professional development days were a chance for advisors to spend the day with Trimark staff to talk about things other than product. This year’s professional development days, which will take place this fall, will see AIM representatives travel to 23 cities across Canada in six weeks and meet with 6,000 advisors.
Meetings between the wholesalers and advisors often revolve around tools found on AIM’s financial advisor Web site, which includes a list of all available Canadian mutual funds, as well as information about estate planning, tax planning, wealth management and practice management. The wholesaler will work with an advisor to optimize the investment management mix, suggesting additions or deletions based on the advisor’s overall book of business.
Of course, advisors worried about a conflict of interest are left to themselves to decide whether they want to implement the suggestions of the AIM wholesaler.
The AIM Web site also offers sections on building a fee-based business, estate-planning strategies, the psychology of selling and tax strategies for investing.
Help with picking through the material is available to any AIM client who requests it.
“We would try to do this for anyone who asks for it,” Williams says. “Most people tell us, ‘I’m interested in doing the right thing for my client and having a business that allows me to lead a balanced life, a life in which I’m not working insane hours but that fairly compensates me for what I do.’
“So if we can deliver those three things for advisors, that’s a pretty good reason for going out and doing what we do.”
Perhaps the biggest bonus for advisors is that the process of working through the modules on AIM’s Web site allows them to earn continuing education credits toward such things as their certified financial planner designations.
How much time advisors spend with the wholesaler depends, to a degree, on their location and channel, but advisors can spend as long as they want asking questions.
“Not meaning to stereotype, but brokers in large urban areas tend to take a shorter time, 20 minutes or half an hour,” Williams says about the regional differences among practices across Canada. “Sometimes people who want a more in-depth explanation with the wholesaler can spend as long as an hour-and-a-half to two hours. It’s up to the advisor to decide.”
Most important, says Williams, is that the program has been effective at expanding the relationship between AIM wholesalers and the financial advisor community.
“What we find is that after people have one of these expanded sessions, as opposed to a more traditional product sales call, is that we field a lot more calls from people who want us to come back. Whereas we used to do the phoning, people are now phoning us,” says Williams. IE