You have to be cunning and know you wont get a thing from anybody. I’ve not been given one account and made over 25,000 cold calls well over 50k calls in total. It takes that, luck and when you have a chance TAKE IT THEN!  Age training was supposed to be great. You learn to be a cold caller and a managed money drone.

Jones is great at training, but only if you count studying for the Series 7. They have the best study material, and half the questions on the test were verbatim what was in the training material from Jones.



However this is where they stop, 3 wasted trips to St Louis to learn absolutely nothing from terrible trainers(all theory, no substance, because they have never been in the field)…No product training (Sorry jones people but giving out the Investment Company of America Chart doesn’t count).

I do agree with the fact that edj has no "real" training. If you are given assests you have never done a first appointment, let alone a second appointment with clients that may have several accounts, and varied investments. You come out of eval/grad and have never even opened an account, seen a portfolio or understand what may be a "good" stock buy other then bac or jnj.  They do not help you at all....ask any BOA that has had several brocker changes how trained they are after the "three" trips to stl.  You walk in knowing nothing, people are upset they have another "new" know nothing broker. You know you are in way over your head (if you have any sense to admit this!!!) and no one will help you....they are way too busy building there own business...( this is the other BIG lie from Jones there is no real carring culture, most of them are way too self centered to help) last but not least they market conditions are crazy!!!   You  are making very little money calling exhisting clients that you are the one who will be staying in the office..(same promise again) and they will be fine, the bull is right around the corner hiding in the bushes...Keep what you own...(even if I do not understand why you should)...lots of fun!! being  a new new first, now getting an office the 5th FA in about 7 years!!! The region acts like you are so blessed to get an office and a boa. The BOA is burned out with another broker.....the clients are very upset with EDJ and the market...TGIF

And it’s all roses and tulips everywhere else…

Yes and no, monopoly and squash.
Considering they hire people like me – no sales experience or financial services experience – and give you eight weeks of training before you’re live, I think they do OK.
KYC was a good class – intense and fast-paced. Eval Grad teaches you how to make a phone call, which is the hardest skill, imo. Unfortunately, we were taught to call on product, which most people don’t seem to do, and I think they’ve moved away from that to more ‘lead with the need, rather than the investment’ calling.
I thought the individual instructors were quite good, but the big hall presentations so-so and by your third trip to St. Louis you were tired of hearing from the veteran FA who once sold a bond to Calvin Coolidge.
The in-field training is mixed. If you have a good trainer or mentor or get started in a legacy branch, you are fortunate. If not, you are all alone.
I’ve seen a lot of good people wash out or go broke in years 2 and 3 and get replaced by newbies. That seems counterproductive to me.
Sorry for the ramble – time to make some calls, set a couple of appointments and leave with a good feeling.

Getting started is hard at every firm.  I definitely agree with that.

"The job changes when you don’t have to worry about losing your seat every day.

The job also changes when your own financial situation is secure."



This is very, very true. I have found it difficult to focus on service to clients, while I am still focusing on building the business. But anyone that has started from scratch runs into this.

“The job changes when you don’t have to worry about losing your seat every day.
The job also changes when your own financial situation is secure.”

This is very, very true. I have found it difficult to focus on service to clients, while I am still focusing on building the business. But anyone that has started from scratch runs into this.

The training model is broken, it doesn't matter if you door knock, cold call or hammer friends and family for referrals.  When less than 10% of new producers succeed, and the average age of FA's across the board is 56....something is not working.

Because they don’t know any other way to do it. I mean, think about it - how exactly do hire someone you don’t know, and then expect all of them to be able to bring in investable assets. This is not selling widgits. This is trying to extract people’s life savings. There is so much mroe trust involved. And I do not think any firm has cracked the “code.” Most of the wires are now just trying to do it by buying established brokers - that just becomes a game of musical chairs and 7-year deals (think MLB free-agency). Jones is trying to do it by “Goodknighting” newbie brokers - that has been somewhat successful, but not widespread or deep enough to make a substantial difference in retention. They still hire thousands every year.



So I am not sure any firm really has the “edge” in growth/retention/development. Each firm is just doing their thing. I will say, there is going to be much more success in the established “ensemble” independant advisory firms going forward. Say a team of established advisors from a wire (maybe 4 or 5 guys) break out on their own. They build a nice 500mm firm. They don;'t need to hire TONS of new FA’s every year. They can hire one or two per year that they KNOW are going to make it, and put them through an extended training and development program. The reality is this…this business should really have a much more extended development or “apprentice” period than it does - where there are no production goals, no commissions, etc. I would say three years of solid training on everything - including working directly with clients. But as long as there is that financial burden for the firm and the FA every month, the FA will continue to struggle, the retention will be low, and burn out and turnover will be high. It’s a broken model, that was never really right to begin with.



Think about it, how many CPA’s pass their test then go off and start running audits and doing tax returns the next week? How many lawyers go to trial the month after the Bar? THAT is why we are not a profession, but rather just a career field.

We agree the model is broken.  I think even the wires should adopt a program like you suggested.  They would need to be very selective in their hiring process, but give the new FA 100 households or $10mm in AUM to start, with a small salary....enough to make a decent living, get client experience, get investment experience.

The cost to do so is too high. You say they need to be “very selective” how do you define that in terms of hiring a new FA? Experience(doesn’t count because we are talking about new hires) So what do you base the selectivity on.



The current model is not broken. The reason for the age of the average advisor going up is because instead of choosing the financial industry, people were choosing, the internet or some other medium.



This model works, hire as many people as your budget handles and see who wants it bad enough to stay. Everyone else can find something else to do, this job should be more selective than others because your are shaping people’s lives.

[quote=bjacobus]

We agree the model is broken.  I think even the wires should adopt a program like you suggested.  They would need to be very selective in their hiring process, but give the new FA 100 households or $10mm in AUM to start, with a small salary…enough to make a decent living, get client experience, get investment experience.

Morphius,
One of the best posts I’ve seen on this site!  You hit the nail on the head with a sledgehammer.  To add to your final quote “…everyone would do it.”  and we would all be paid less.  Personally I hope this job never gets ANY easier.  I hope I just keep working harder than the next guy.

A couple thoughts.  You can't deny that there are some flaws when the success rates in our industry are so low...Every client a rookie brings in is a guinea pig, so if the office ponies up 100 households, what is the difference? 

[quote=bjacobus]Every client a rookie brings in is a guinea pig, so if the office ponies up 100 households, what is the difference?  [/quote]
The difference is in one case the client chooses to work with a given FA; in your alternative universe the client is assigned to a new FA for the FA’s benefit.  Ask the client if they notice any difference.

BJ- A system similar to what you decribe already exists…It is called Edward Jones.  Of course they tell all the new folks that everybody starts out working from home etc etc, the new FA goes out gets clients and eventually opens an office.  Establishing a Jones beach-head if you will.  The FA thinks things will get easier at this point (which doesn’t happen) and then subsequently washes out.   That is okay with Jones because recruiting someone to take over an existing office is not too hard.  FA #2, blessed of course by a few experienced vets, then comes along, inherits those learner “guinea pig” accounts and runs the office for a couple of years.  FA #2 moves the chains so to speak a couple of times until, he runs out of money or his wife threatens to leave him.  At this point FA #3 steps in, again blessed by vets and possibly a relative or close friend of a RL, slides into the established office, assumes a decent book, and punches it in from the one yard line.  FA#3 then spends his free time on div trips and lecturing the new news at regional meetings on the finer points of his sales presentation and time management practices. 

DB- I'd be happy to shed my worst 10-15 households....If the clients aren't paying me 1% or doing an equal amount of commission business...again, what is the point of having them as clients?  Does it make sense to have a client who ACATed in his/her $45k in American Funds and wont consider any ideas?

Morph- We can agree to disagree, I think the answer lies somewhere in the middle of our two opinions.  Considering the failure rate, the veterans have surely picked up assets from the branch when rookies fail.  So to ask them to pony up some households shouldn't be too much of a problem.....especially if they are small accounts.  Just my opinion.

Lastly, Morph, I don't think thousands of people struggle with the hiring process.  I think like you, they think they should just hire anyone who shows interest and there will be a diamond in the rough.  Someone on this thread said "hire as many as your budget will allow".....that doesnt sound like a system where the hiring managers are struggling with selectivity.

[quote=bjacobus]Lastly, Morph, I don’t think thousands of people struggle with the hiring process.  I think like you, they think they should just hire anyone who shows interest and there will be a diamond in the rough. Someone on this thread said “hire as many as your budget will
allow”…that doesnt sound like a system where the hiring managers
are struggling with selectivity.[/quote]

You impute to me an opinion I never expressed.  At no time did I ever say that people “should just hire anyone who shows interest.”   I simply pointed out that your proposed cure would be worse than the illness, as it is based on two faulty assumptions:

1. That “experts” from the training department could dramatically improve the success rates of new hires by establishing new “metrics”; and,

2. That it is possible to systematically “give” a pre-existing client base to all inexperienced new hires. 

Neither of these assumptions are valid, so it should be of little surprise that suggestions based on these assumptions will not be helpful.  And the fact that “someone” may have posted something about “hiring as many as your budget will allow” can hardly be considered worthwhile evidence of anything about the current system.

Because I think your solution is unwise and unworkable does not mean
that I do not see inherent problems with the existing system.  But what you propose would be unworkable and would be worse than the current system, flawed though it is.  It’s not enough to know what we are running away from.  We must know exactly what we are running to.

OK Morph…enough said.