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Rating:Calling Advisors to Sell 401k Not Rated 3.0 Email Routing List Email & Route  Print Print
Friday, February 2, 2001

Calling Advisors to Sell 401k

Reported by Tamiko Toland

On Monday, Franklin Templeton hits the road with a campaign focused on helping registered reps sell retirement plans. The firm has already received over 11,500 RSVPs from reps who are interested in attenting one of the 262 workshops taking place across the country.

The campaign is actually the second of the firm's efforts to reach intermediaries using an approach which focuses the firm on delivering one message to its clients.

"It's a concept called customer relation management, where you concentrate all your assets in one area at one time and deliver that focus," explained Dan Reinhold, the director of defined contribtion services. "It's pretty potent. We adopted it just last year."

Furthermore, Franklin Templeton, based in San Mateo, California, plans on rolling out more similar programs in the future, not always in the road show format.

"We're actually hoping that we can do this probably two to three times a year because we have a very broad product base," said Reinhold. "Most of the work that went into this particular campaign that we're working on right now we could just plug in different subject matter, a different product. The infrastructure's in place, so we're looking forward to doing many more of these."

What does Reinhold see in Franklin Templeton's crystal ball?

"We actually have two or three ideas we're working on," he said. "529 plans are very popular, so that's something that we're taking a closer look at. We may even take this concept and focus on a particuar firm, rather than the entire industry."

For the current campaign, Franklin Templeton's six regional retirement plan specialists are traveling the country to lead workshops, each assisted by three wholesalers. The program starts on February 5th and runs through March 16th.

"We are talking to the entire registered rep community, and the majority of them don't know about retirement plans," said Reinhold. "There's a real minority of registered reps that would tell you that this is the backbone of their business."

Even so, many intermediaries already focus on the 401(k) business, but the firm plans on providing them with enough information to make the workshop worthwhile.

"We have two audiences, those that are in the 401(k) business and those that want to be as one group; the other group is those that have a completely different business model," explained Reinhold. "We want to appeal to both of those audiences. There's a little disconnect on both parts."

To an outsider, this might appear to be a tough job, but it isn't the first go-around for Reinhold. He and retirement plan specialist Bud Scully first developed the program five years ago when the two worked in the Mid-West region. At the time, Reinhold was a wholesaler with a keen eye on the lucrative 401(k) business. The two brought different permutations of the retirement plan workshop to reps every year.

"I think that, if we hadn't done that at the lower scale, the numbers are so daunting at a national level, you wouldn't venture out to do it," he said. "There are a lot more logistics involved on a national level."

Franklin Templeton is doing everything it can to encourage reps to show up and also give them reason to attend future workshops. Reps receive CE credit for attending as well as coupons for software and other information related to their businesses.

"We're giving two guarantees: that the presentation will not take more than an hour, and we will not take more than five minutes to talk about Franklin or Franklin products," Reinhold stated.  

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