6 Ways to Generate High Revenue
Many new Wealth Managers, Personal Bankers, Priority Bankers, Private Bankers and Financial Advisors struggle to generate high revenue.
Below are traditional ways Wealth Managers attempt to generate higher revenue:
- Work on products that generate high revenue
- Acquire more clients or wealthier clients
- Taking big positions or bets
- Gearing Up / Leveraging
- Frequent product switches or profit-taking
These are all great ways to generate higher revenue except the basis of doing so likely neglects the importance of wealth management which then render the strategies questionable whenever something goes wrong.
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- 7 Secrets how the old rich achieve success with Wealth Managers
So how do you get clients to pay for your advice? How do you generate high revenue?
No. 1 Charge the Highest Fee Possible
Charge the highest fee possible – a straight-forward strategy. But how can you charge a higher fee? We look at the fee revenue at different market segment – Mass Market, Affluent, HNW, UHNW:
Fee Revenue for different market segment:
| Client Profile | Monthly Sales | 1% | 2% | 5% |
| Mass Market | $2 Million | $20,000 | $40,000 | $100,000 |
| Affluent | $4 Million | $40,000 | $80,000 | $200,000 |
| High Net-worth | $10 Million | $100,000 | $200,000 | $500,000 |
| Ultra High Net-worth | $50 Million | $500,000 | $1 Million | $2.5 Million |
If you think you are better than others, and you charge the same fees as everyone else, wouldn’t you be telling your clients you are as ordinary as other wealth managers.
But if you charge more, and explain why you are more valuable than others, most clients wouldn’t mind you charging a little more.
Some reasons why you can charge more easily:
- The fees might be subsidised by future returns
- The fees free up their time
- Paying you a little more to earn your responsibility
- Premium & personalised service comes at a good price
- If you are not valuable yet, work towards it
To begin with, Wealth Management advice is expensive. Wealth Management advice is for people who have more money and can afford a professional wealth manager for financial advice and instead of learning the complex financial market themselves. Not many people are aware of that. Or maybe you are uncomfortable to charge more.
Related Article:
- Should you build a career in Mass Market, Affluent, HNW or UHNW?
- 7 Factors to Consider Before Wealth Management Advisory Becomes Beneficial to Clients
- 8 Reasons Why Wealth Management is Not for Everyone
- 7 Secrets how the old rich achieve success with Wealth Managers
- 8 Reasons why customers don’t understand the value of Wealth Managers
No. 2 Sell Low Margin & Simple Products
The ambitious wealth managers will start working on high margin products. But many successful wealth managers start with low margin and simple products. This will speed up the client acquisition process, gain trust while taking little risks for clients, making lots of connections and importantly, generate a high volume of sales & revenue.
Low margin and simple products are readily accessible. They are simple-to-explain and most clients may already have some basic understanding of the products. Such products are also easy to learn especially for new Wealth Managers. This will speed up the learning curve, and be able to confidently hold an effective and meaningful conversation with prospects and clients.
More reasons for selling simple products:
- People are aware of the simple products
- They have went into the products before
- They are easy-to-explain
- They often have the lowest fees
- You are not perceived as sales-driven
- Everyone is buying
- Peer pressure and safety in numbers
- Capture a large client pool
Isn’t this product pushing? It is almost never. Why is this so?
Is this 20% or 50% of clients’ assets? Almost never. During your conversation with client, you would have discovered that it might only be 5% or 10% of clients’ assets or much lesser. This paves the way for their bigger assets to be allocated into future products according to the optimal wealth management portfolio of your financial institution.
In other words, if client has $200,000 and you are only advising on $20,000, you wouldn’t be giving a bad advice for most wealth management products. Unless 9 other Wealth Managers are giving the same advice. Read More: 8 Reasons Why Building a Portfolio is Tough in Asia
No. 3 Understand Products & Revenue
You can only charge more if you know the product pricing and market pricing well. Many Wealth Managers do not study product pricing and fees, neither do financial institutions provide regular guides on pricing and fees.
This less transparent pricing, fortunately, gives everyone more room to get higher revenue margin, whenever possible. It also gives room to Wealth Managers to reward their preferred clients.
Every financial institution price their products differently. We look at the probable revenue for different products. Understanding the revenue range gives you a good idea on how to plan your client acquisition and revenue strategy.
Key factors to consider are volume, frequency of trades and if revenue is recurring. These factors differ from companies to companies because of internal strengths or weaknesses, market size, infrastructure set-up or business strategy.
Products & Revenue Planning Table:
| Products | Revenue | Volume | Frequency | Recurring |
| Deposits | Low | |||
| Loans | Low | |||
| Bonds | Medium | |||
| Stocks | Medium | |||
| ETFs | Medium | |||
| Foreign Exchange | Medium | |||
| Unit Trusts | High | |||
| Structured Products | High |
Example of Product Revenue Margin Classification:
| Medium | High | Very High |
| Currency-Linked Notes | Equity-Linked Notes | Endowment |
| Options | Whole-life Policies | |
| Forwards | Investment-Linked Policies | |
| Futures | Universal Life | |
| Leveraged Trading | ||
| Single Premium | ||
| General Insurance |
No. 4 Find the Right Customers
Finding the right customers is extremely important. Anyone with some experience would be able to tell you that.
Since not everyone can accept paying high fees to clients, finding clients that have the potential to pay fees and higher fees would give you a long-term edge.
Unfortunately, you can’t find the right customers instantly. You will have to build a larger pool of customers, gain insights and knowledge onto what works and what doesn’t. Some clients just click better with you, some would not.
Most Wealth Managers need only 20 to 500 clients to generate sustainable revenue. So the best way to have the right customers is to find a lot of customers quickly. Read More: How do Private Bankers acquire new clients?
No. 5 Building the Portfolio of Clients
Building a client base is like building an investment portfolio. Some pointers to consider about clients while building your portfolio of clients:
- Can generate immediate / mid-term / future revenue?
- Have fast growing / slow growing / depleting wealth?
- Have a few / a lot of wealth managers or only you?
- Are they easy-going or on the other hand, pick on everything?
- Do they have too little time or too much time?
- Do they like to do everything themselves or delegate the work?
- Can they refer clients or are unable to refer clients?
- Do you prefer many clients or a few clients?
- Do you prefer eg. wealthy, professionals, less literate or retirees?
How do you build your portfolio of clients so that you can achieve your goal of generating high revenue in the long run?
No. 6 Sell High Margin Products
And when everything clicks, you can now generate more revenue by selling high margin financial products. The same $100,000 can either go into a 0.25% product or 2% product.
Consider Investing $1 Million:
Option A: Spending days to analyse and recommend 30 stocks for a $1 Million portfolio that generates 0.5% in revenue.
Option B: Recommending a Unit Trust that is already professionally-managed that you can charge 3% fee and 1.5% annual management fee.
Most clients and advisors would think that option A is the perfect situation. But adjusting the allocation over the months and years, stock splits, underperforming stocks, profit-taking is a terrible chore. What if someone makes a major mistake? Who pays for that mistake? And when you have a client that have $100 Million (to amplify our point), you will spend less time for the $1 Million client. Didn’t you then advise poorly with Option A, thinking that cost savings is the ideal solution, when a sustainable portfolio plan with an advisor that have time to monitor the portfolio, is more important.
In sharing the wealth plan with clients, they would not be spending days with you on a wealth management plan. If you took 2 hours to discuss about the investments and portfolio, what about risk management for insurance, options, interest rates, foreign exchange, credit & cashflow? What about asset planning and structuring?
Related Articles:
- How do Wealth Managers Compete against Low Cost Providers?
- 5 Ways to charge the highest fee possible
Wealth Management advice is expensive. If you think Wealth Management advice and yourself as a Wealth Manager is valuable, you would be able to generate sustainable and high revenue.
These are 6 ways you can generate high revenue:
- Charge the highest fee possible
- Sell low margin & simple products
- Understand products & revenue
- Find the right customers
- Building the portfolio of customers
- Sell High margin products
Recommended Articles:
- 8 Reasons Why Wealth Management is Not for Everyone
- 7 Factors to Consider Before Wealth Management Advisory Becomes Beneficial to Clients
- How do you Develop your Career as a Wealth Manager?
- Would you want to be a Wealth Manager or Financial Advisor for the rest of your life?
Related Articles:
- How do you convince a hard-core deposit client to look at wealth management products?
- 8 Reasons why clients prefer to place money in deposits than investments
- 5 Ways to charge the highest fee possible
- 6 Ways to generate high revenue
- How do Wealth Managers compete against Low-Cost Providers?
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