Mr. Misbah Baxamusa, Vice President - Sales, NJ Group
Mr. Misbah Baxamusa is the National Sales Head for NJ Wealth Distributor Network. One of the oldest in team NJ, he has over 15 years of rich experience in the financial services industry. An MBA by education, Misbah is known for his deep understanding of the distribution practices and its challenges.
What are the key characteristics you see common in all big and successful Partners?
Answer: The business model of the big and successful Partners vary but from what I have seen, I can say that the most common traits of a successful Partner are...
- He/she really loves the job. If you start loving the job you would not need any external motivation to perform.
- He/she has the hunger to grow big and be NOT satisfied by what they already have done. They never hesitate to put a bigger target for himself to achieve.
- He/she is a people's person and likes to meet and talk to new people.
- He/she enjoy a very strong relationship and also control over the client.
For any Partner aspiring to achieve greater success, these common traits have to be kept in mind.
What is the importance of relationship management in today's business practice and how can we do so effectively?
Answer:
- Managing relationships is akeen to retaining clients. There have been expectations show that acquiring a new client is much more expensive than retaining an existing client. The question really should not be about the importance but on how we can effectively manage our relationships. I believe that we should
- Have good understanding of the client and more importantly, clarity on expectations from us.
- Have good practices set for timely communication like on personal /family events /festivals, alerts /action events on investments /portfolio like SIP /Policy Renewal, FMP maturity, etc. We can also set some regular communications like monthly MF Valuation report or Newsletter, etc.
- Have a proper grievance /query management process in place. No concern of customer should go unanswered.
These are just a few basic things that should be in place. However, relationship management is a much broader subject and Partners should evolve policies & practices to suit their needs.
Why should we focus on customer acquisition going forward?
Answer: Customer acquisition is key to growing your business. The business landscape is evolving where revenue per client may be seen as decreasing. To counter balance this view point, we need to acquire new and quality customers. However, this also puts forward a question of scalability which in turn can be managed easily & smartly with technology.
On the question of quality, one has to be discreet on what type or size of customer to target & acquire. At the lower end, a retail customer must have the potential for an SIP of 10,000 and/or an AUM or 5,00,000 at the minimum to be profitable for the Partners going ahead. Effectively what I am saying is that we all must aim to increase the count of our customers, preferably only through the on-line /E-Account mode, and make business scalable with adoption of technology in our activities.
Fortunately for us, the awareness and knowledge of mutual funds has grown in the market. Today, perhaps for the first time, we have seen investors increasing their equity exposure in spite of a stagnant market. It is sign of maturity in market and we must cash on it.
How can we generate more business from our existing customers?
Answer: We have seen many cases were there are customers who have had started SIP years back but their SIP amount was small and was never increased. Such customers in spite of staying invested for long term did not create huge wealth in spite of very good returns. There is a big lesson here for us.
The old customers who had enjoyed good returns would now have grown bigger in net-worth and would also be very comfortable with mutual funds. They must be reached and communicated of their returns with the objective to generate new business. We must regularly review the client's potential and seek to slowly increase the SIP amounts - at least once every year. A better approach would be to plan for their financial goals and also map the same in the Client Desk were we have a provision. The result of financial planning would be in form of business.
Explore cross-selling opportunities for the client. Explore if the client is interested in products like PMS, MARS, Bonds, etc. They will provide additional opportunities to interact with the customer and know his needs.
Why and how should a Partner start using CRM?
Answer: The new CRM is a big advancement from our earlier version. It carries many new, exciting and practical usage for Partners. Here are a few things which I believe all Partners must do ...
- Open CRM everyday – there is a list of Birthday's /Anniversaries and alerts for other operational events. Make use of the same and greet /inform your clients.
- Start setting your meetings /tasks in the CRM. By doing, you will improve on your time management and also have a ready record of all your activities. Having Client meeting & task records will also help in not missing any important discussion or work with the Client.
- Start entering information of leads /prospects and track their conversion in CRM
Those who are already doing so can go ahead and make more use of CRM, especially the integrated E-mail feature which allows you to setup your personal email ID and then directly use all available alerts to send ready emails to clients. All this takes can be done in few seconds flat.
You talked about Email integration. Can you explain this CRM feature in detail?
Answer: Sure. Most Partners are already using a personal /business email Id and he/she would want to use this email id only for sending alerts & messages to clients. But drafting and sending emails everyday for every event is not easy for Partners. This is were CRM can greatly serve you.
To begin with, you need to set-up your personal email account (s). This can be easily done through the Email (tab in bottom bar) > Configure Email. You can watch the Help > Tutorial for more guidance. We have created automated email messages based on events for e.g. SIP Renewal and Birthday. A complete customised email for the client is ready in CRM.
To send email, all you have to do is to select the events in the report for which you want to email and then click Email tab on the report top. After choosing your personal email account and entering password, the individual emails to the recipient will be sent from your personal email account. You can go to the email box and see those emails in the Sent folder. What this features does is that is helps save enormous time & effort, increases accuracy, improves productivity and strengthens the relationship with the client. All in a matter of few seconds.
Why and how should a Partner start using Partner Business Planning ?
Answer: Every business has to be have a target, however big or small it can be. We have to judge our potential and keep pushing the boundaries steadily. This is the planned way to scale your business big. The Partner Business Planning module is a great way to plan and then to measure the achievement of your targets. The achievement of your targets is automatically done by the system.
Those who are yet to start planning, we can begin to do so by following a simple process...
- Step 1: Set a proper horizon for the targets – say one month or one quarter
- Step 2: Set logical targets in chosen parameters – say New SIPs, New Client acquisition, Net Sales, etc.
- Step 3: Breakup business targets into Clients /groups assuming an appropriate conversion ratio - say 25%. For eg. we need to identify and target new SIP of 40,000 in existing /new Clients if we have a target 10,000 with a 25% conversion ratio.
Note that step 3 can be and should be done before step 2 if you are not aware of your potential business capacity. Doing so will give you clarity to set the targets later.
This is a simplistic approach for business planning that every Partner can and should do. You can go ahead and repeat this process for different periods in future and also for more number of parameters as you may please.
How do you see the financial advisory /distribution practice evolving in the future?
Answer: The most important trend is the move towards technology and especially e-commerce and digital transactions. This trend has changed the face of many industries and it is also something which will impact our industry going forward in a big way. Partners will have to adopt and migrate to the on-line platform if they want to retain and grow their business going forward. Needless to say, the ideal way to be ready for such a future is to have your clients on the E-Wealth platform. The Partners who make the change will be insulated from this disruptive change that may happen sooner than later. An average Partner also needs to evolve and become more technology savvy and make apt use of the many IT supported solutions that we offer.
Secondly, on the advisory side, customers are expecting sincere professionalism and more quality advice. So we all need to work on building our own processes, practices and service standards to remain in the good books of the clients.
Third from the client approach perspective, Partners need to provide holistic solutions and not just talk about products. This would require a change in mindset and we must think in terms of what solutions to customers needs are we offering.
As a professional, how do you personally manage and balance your time and responsibilities?
Answer: As a person I have most of my travels, meetings & reviews pre-planned for at least the next month. I make it a point to be readily accessible to my entire team. At a personal level, I balance my personal life by having one good holiday in a year with family. I also try and stay fit by either going to gym or cycling or running everyday in morning. I am regular participant for half-marathons and love to run with our NJ team. Beyond that, I also keep a close eye on my diet. I believe having a fit body is very important for us, both professionally and personally. Every Partner should try and keep fit and healthy for self, for family and for the good of business.
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