What the hell happened to this place?  Corporate strategist?  I thought this forum was for registered reps, or, as someone put it a few months back, securities salespeople.

[quote=DJRoss]

My situation is a bit different. Since I am a corporate strategist focusing on small companies (often niche oriented manufacturing) I focus on getting them to sign on with me as their strategist. I demand a minimum one year contract. I wear several hats for them while working with them. My goal is to help their business grow. Sometimes I find myself actually working at their place of business one day a week marketing their own products. Setting up meetings with various buyers. This puts me in the lime light so to speak. I not only have the loyalty of my clients when it comes time to sit down and discuss setting up the 401K plans, health and life plans et al for themselves and their employees, but their customers have been added to my list of contacts and already are familiar with me. So I have to say that cold calling small companies to offer a premium service may be the long road approach, but it makes my days more eventful and doesn’t wear the gears down. It also increases my credibility given my roll as a “guru” for my clients. They have no problem soliciting my services to other business owners and individually to their friends and relatives.

Of course it helps if you have a graduate degree in Business and have 15 years of entrepreneurial experience.

When I cold call I actually create a list of about 50 small companies that I might find interesting. I will spend time doing DD on these businesses (I set aside a couple of hours three days a week). Once I understand what they do, how they do it, why and how long they have been doing it, I can call the owner and introduce myself and explain what I do. I will always be open about which companies are clients of mine (allowing me to refer to them publicly as my clients is a mandatory paragraph that all my clients must accept when they sign on with me or I will not execute the contract) and how they are doing.

I provide a two minute case study on what I have done for XYZ Corp. I then begin explaining certain macroeconomic aspects that hit a nerve with most any small business owner here in the US. I do it, because it is real and I am the answer to counter that pain so to speak. I offer them the opportunity for me to come down and check out their facility and see if we would be a good fit together free of charge. After the initial meeting, if it goes well I explain that I would like to set up two times where I can spend an hour discussing their business and how I can help them. Because I will be giving them great advice and pointing the direction they should be headed, I request a $500 retainer for my time. Worst case scenario is they have a refreshed vision of what it is they do, a clear direction of how to get where they want to be, and they are only out the $500 bucks. If after these meetings they are sold on the direction I would help them take their business, they sign a contract of 1 to 3 years and I become their strategist. After that having me take care of their financial services as just one part of everything else I do for them is cake.

Sure they are going to be getting calls from the competition to solicit their services as FA’s, but they won’t budge without asking me first, and when I tell them that while the caller might very well be all that as an FA, I am licensed as well and can take care of that for them when the time is right.

For those under 25 year old rookies in this business I say good luck, because honestly you are going to have days that really suck bad. I have to admit I admire rookies like this who preservere and end up making it. That is a tough road to hoe my friend.

[/quote]

For some reason I’m finding aspects of your story a little hard to believe…

I’m a little puzzeled myself…wouldn’t this be the kind of outside business activity that compliance would question?  Look at how much time is spent away from the office in such a scenario…

I think thats the way he’s ‘planning’ to do it…

This is why I signed on with a smaller regional company instead of one of the three wire house offers I had. Flexibility. What I am doing admittedly is rather unique, and outside the box.

However the issues of compliance are not in question. There are procedures already in place at any of the companies that each of you are working regarding income earned outside the firm. Most don’t like this, and it would be rather difficult to find an outfit that would welcome you as a registered rep while working for someone else (in this case for myself). However, given the nature of what I do and the strategy of implementation of financial services as a part of the total solution that I provide, they were more than happy to oblige.

You may not believe it, agree with it or even understand it, but if you do not believe me I would be glad to talk to any of you over the phone. Just go to this blog which is basically a business card I put up about 3 months ago, and give me a call. I will be glad to explain all the details. I will also give you at least 3 references including my manager at Beneficial Financial Group as the proof in the pudding.

Honestly once they heard how everything fit together the hiring manager had the sentience to see that this is the future. Sitting in a cubicle half the day cold calling may float other peoples boats, but my office goes with me. I can actually cold call while on site (which I have actually done). As long as I am bringing in business sufficient to meet the req’s per month, I am free to develop this long term revenue solution.

Lund is a great town.  I enjoyed some very good times there over about six months.  Somewhere I still have the membership card from my two favorite student nations that I saved as souvenirs.

Rode that purple Pagatagen into Malmo every day for work during the week, and partied on the weekends.

Oh…and on the last page of your blog, the reference is ‘brass TACKS’.

DJ - Are you an engineer by training? You seem extremely analytical. Not only from this thread but from the  others I’ve read here that you participate. Your posts are so long.

LOL, I knew that. Thanks for the edit. It has been corrected.

Yes Lund is a great place. My children still miss “home” . Pågatåg lines have been expanded over the past ten years. I don’t know when you were there, but since the bridge to Copenhagen was built, you could take the train from Lund all the way to Kastrup Airport. Nice 40 minute ride.

So since you had Nation cards, were you studying at Lund? I was a member of Göteborg although being married with children, I never really got involved in their activities.

You said you worked in Malmö. What did you do? I was a partner in a Media and Advertising firm off of Regementsgatan. Between the City Library and Gustav Adolfstorg across the canal. We were once building away from Göran Persson’s (Former Prime Minister) summer residence. My first job was actually at the Sparbanken in Gustav Adolfstorg way back in 89.

I must admit I do tend to get verbose. A disease I have battled my entire life 

Educated?–> Yes. Engineer?–>No.

Actually I am folding my business into my RR with the Financial Service Company’s blessing. While I will have some personal portfolios, my business will focus will be on corporate accounts. I know it sounds strange, but the comments above are based on a false dichotomy of either or between these two choices. Either RR or Corporate Strategist.

When there are actually quite a few options in between the two extremes. If as a strategist providing financial services is part of the total solution, than it is not an issue of having to decide what to prioritize.

I have two challenges which at least currently I am meeting:

1. Find a Financial Services company willing to allow me the freedom to do what I am doing.
2. Bring in enough business to meet the RR goals/quotas

So currently I am running a split schedule where regular business hours I am working with Business Clients, and I am currently running with about 5 evening appointments per week to cater to individual clients. I am in the office about 3 days a week while working out of my home two days a week which is nice since I can eat lunch with my wife who also has a home office and see the kids when they come home from school. Most days even when at the office I am actually on appointments with potential clients.

The business clients are classified in 3 categories:

1. CS Clients. These are my babies so to speak. This is where I work as I have explained previously.
2. Strictly RR Business Clients: No interest in strategic services, but have a need for Financial Services
3. Small Business that may not be ready for corporate FS, but who need to get their personal financial ducks in a row so to speak.

So far it is working, but who knows how things will be in a year.

Wow, that is cool. One of my best friends worked for Dresser Wayne. He was a programmer at that time for Gas Pump systems.

Well if you travel back there, give me a heads up and I can hook you up with some friends and family who can really show you around. My wife is taking our 3 youngest back this summer to visit her sister and father.

Nothing like a warm Skanian Summer evening sipping something refreshing while the smell of rapeseed flowers fill the air. My wife and I used to spend many a summer evening taking a dip at Lomma Strand. Ten P.M in the evening and the sun was still mostly above the horizon. Good Times

This thread is spiraling out of control… I think its needs a… Parachute!?

Please, ANYTHING but a “Parachute”!!!

[quote=DJRoss]

Wow, that is cool. One of my best friends worked for Dresser Wayne. He was a programmer at that time for Gas Pump systems.

Well if you travel back there, give me a heads up and I can hook you up with some friends and family who can really show you around. My wife is taking our 3 youngest back this summer to visit her sister and father.

Nothing like a warm Skanian Summer evening sipping something refreshing while the smell of rapeseed flowers fill the air. My wife and I used to spend many a summer evening taking a dip at Lomma Strand. Ten P.M in the evening and the sun was still mostly above the horizon. Good Times

[/quote]

Yah the fact that the beaches were(like most in Europe) topless didn’t suck either…

Alternatives to Cold Calling = Failure

LOL yeah ok. The office where I was hired has about 6 veterans that would disagree with you. Heck, my manager (sounds weird saying that since I still work pretty much on my own) has never once used cold calling.

Now do not get me wrong, I am not saying that cold calling is bad or is less than, I am saying that there are quite a few reps out there that have never needed or have been able to establish themselves successfully without cold calling.

CAVEATS:

1. How established is your existing network prior to jumping aboard?
2. What knowledge do you bring into the business from the get go?
3. What personality type are you? (some guys are amazing at closing cold calls)
4. How much experience do you have coming in dealing with people, their problems and resolving them?
5. Where are you working? Are we at a metropolitan wire house office that actually demands you cut your teeth cold calling, or are we situated in less urban climes at a regional financial services company that got its start in the insurance business?

Each situation combined with each individual rep determines whether cold calling is successful or not and whether it is even considered an option.

Anyone making blanket statements that alternatives to cold calling= failure or the opposite that cold calling = failure are enjoying a bit of hyperbole. Either that or that their ignorant. I choose to assume that others are not ignorant

Is it legal to cold call without a series 7? I know smaller firms will have “cold callers” prospect new clients for them. Once so many of their leads open up, they will give them the series 7 books to study. Is this illegal?

Lance Best – we DON’T DO LOANS—you guys are talking to Financial Advisors not Mortgage Brokers–get lost!

Is there a rule against advertising on this forum? This guy is cold calling us all on the topic of alternatives to cold calling. Is there a way to ban people like this?

Hello DJRoss,

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Two- IF you are blessed with a ready-made natural market the world is your Oyster. I don’t know one person that does. Age training requires, at the very least, 750 people in such a network to choose the networking tract. All of those in my class that selected that tract burned through it in short order and are now cold calling in one form or another.

Three – You wrote “The office where I was hired has about 6 veterans that would disagree with you.”

Four- You wrote “Anyone making blanket statements that alternatives to cold calling= failure or the opposite that cold calling = failure are enjoying a bit of hyperbole. Either that or that their ignorant”

As for the ignorant comment “Either that or that their ignorant”