Institutional Equity Sales had been going through an existential crisis since 2003, starting around the time of the Eliot Spitzer rulings. The once noble profession became tainted with suspicions of fraud and conspiracy. Since then the role has been systematically attacked from several fronts:
– a precipitous drop in commission rates paid by clients leading to drop in margins (and ultimately compensation)
– significant cynicism around the research product they are tasked to sell
– financial crisis at the banks that employ them, which has also led to…
– …instability and irrationality in the markets, making it difficult to provide rational, money-making advice to clients
– drop in the aggregate number of new deals coming to market, which is where a strong distribution platform proves its value [more…]
Within some banks, there have been discussions on whether to exit this area all together, if not strategically pull-back from non-core markets. Salespeople sitting in those seats are nervous, which is not unreasonable given the long-term prospects of the role. Language coming from the executive floors speak of drastic cuts across all Sales & Trading floors, with an emphasis on producers who can’t be easily aligned to a certain threshold of revenue. This is especially concerning to Equity Sales since the commission their clients pay is a bundled payment covering a whole host of services that make it difficult to isolate their contribution.
So is there long-term value in the Equity sales model? I would argue yes, but for the model to have long-term viability, organizations need to think differently about that role and how it can add additional value to clients. They also need to change some key business processes to enhance the impact that salespeople provide across the platform.
Better capture of client interactions
If salespeople had better information about all the interactions that their clients have had across their business and across time, they would be able to create a much more productive relationship. In speaking with many buy-side professionals, it’s clear that one of their top criticisms is lack of continuity and consistency from their counterparties. Through a robust CRM platform that features easy capture of client interactions, capture of research consumption data, and to easily log in notes, the coverage team will easily see client behavior over time and spot opportunities to better the relationship.
There are many CRM vendors in the market and for most people finding the right solution can be overwhelming. When first investigating the options, one is faced with endless possibilities, but also boundless risk. From a quick survey, there are at least 25 enterprise-ready vendors, with about as many upstarts to choose from. Also, CRM implementation projects have a horrid reputation of easily failing. In capital markets businesses, the risk is even higher because of the specialized workflow, compliance, and end-user data needs. Picking the right solution is critical, which I’ll be covered on a future posting.
Institutional Equity salespeople are probably the best positioned to take advantage of these systems and the data that they capture. They have been an integral part of their jobs and most salespeople have faced the challenges of sub-optimal systems.
Integrate with other client activity and client relevant information
IT spending at most broker-dealers has been historically concentrated on the development and optimization of trading technology in order to increase trading profits, to the detriment of the sales side of the business. With the 2008 financial crisis and subsequent reorientation to the client, there has been some shift of investment to Sales IT. There is now a desire to integrate other information into a client profile in order to have a more holistic view of the account to salespeople, including security holdings, fund performance, transaction trends from other asset classes (FX for instance), and client interest-driven information such as stock trends and twitter feeds. The more information that can be integrated into a client’s profile, the better the salesperson can provide guidance to the client. This can be a big differentiator.
The mechanics of integrating this information and rendering it in a useful fashion to salespeople is a complicated proposition, one which falls under the umbrella of the newest management buzz-term “Big Data”. There is a tendency by sales managers to avoid this complexity, but the advantage that we have today is that the cost of gaining a competitively advantageous insight though data has fallen dramatically. Although more discussion on specific strategies and considerations will be addressed in another post, it’s worth taking some time to look at applications like Qlikview, Tableau, and Spotfire to get a flavor of what they can easily do with data. Institutional Salespeople serving as the pivot point of all this information could make them immensely valuable. Of all the people in this role that I’ve spoken to, the one key complaint they all have is that they feel they are constantly chasing information from multiple sources and that they miss a lot of information that can make them more successful. This can be efficiently delivered to them so that they can spend more time with their clients.
Position this role as relationship manager for key accounts, even beyond Equities
The Institutional Equity Sales role is unique relative to other roles in Sales & Trading in that their responsibility goes way beyond executing transactions. Salaried salespeople at many large firms have little involvement with client trades at all. Their core competency is in providing access and insights from across their platforms. Their role and responsibilities should be expanded to provide insight and access across all asset classes. They should be at the center of many of the relationships, especially with clients who are not product specialized, such as macro and event-driven hedge funds.
Buy-side clients constantly say that they want to have salespeople who “think like portfolio managers”. Institutional Equity Salespeople are the best positioned of anyone in Sales & Trading organizations to evolve into broader experts that can provide clients with innovative solutions. The key is to make sure to provide them with the best tools and information so they can execute the broader mandate.
