Five minutes, 10 tops. That’s the amount of time wholesaler Susan Torrisi has to make a first impression on a financial advisor. How does she do it? By listening. “I try to isolate what’s important to the advisor. It’s not about what’s important to me,” she says. “You have one shot — you have no room for error.” It doesn’t hurt, of course, when she shows up for that initial appointment with her firm’s chief economist.
Torrisi, 41, is almost iconic in advisory circles. It’s not just that she’s honest and solutions-based. She knows her material inside out — as well as that of her competitors. In fact, she’s known for referring the competition when it’s the right thing to do. Advisors who work with her consider Torrisi a strategic partner — an advisor even.
How does Torrisi, one of 75 external wholesalers for DWS Investments, get it right when so many others get it wrong?
“Susan is an anomaly. I would say she’s authentic in wanting to add value to my business and to me personally. She cares about my success — and the logical progression of that is that if I’m successful, she’ll be successful,” notes Frank Astorino, who heads The Astorino Group, an LPL affiliate with just under $100 million under management in Fairfield, N.J.
“I see her more often than I see any other colleague in the industry. She promotes solutions for the client and she invariably has solutions that don’t always include her product,” adds Astorino, an advisor for 26 years. “She puts the client first. No other wholesaler who ever comes in here talks about anything other than their product — that’s the distinction.”
In fact, Astorino credits Torrisi with introducing him to two products — several years ago, the first variable annuity to come with a guaranteed minimum income benefit rider and, more recently, structured notes — that have helped protect his clients’ wealth during the market collapse. Notably, when DWS — known for its municipal bond funds, fixed-income funds and alternatives suite — stopped selling its own variable annuities, Torrisi hooked Astorino up with two other firms that did.
“We followed her lead in advance of the downturn and the combination of the two instruments protected a lot of wealth. With her inspiration I feel very good about how my clients are right now in the worst environment I’ve seen,” Astorino said. “Our clients benefited because of her integrity.”
Torrisi, who has an accounting degree, started off as a public accountant, then joined Oppenheimer Funds when still in her early 20s. She was traveling 100,000-plus miles a year as national accounts manager when she took a wholesaling job with Columbia Funds in 1999. Torrisi joined DWS, the U.S. retail brand of Deutsche Bank’s global asset management division, six years ago.
Today, almost everything about Torrisi’s footprint involves northern New Jersey. It’s her territory and she calls on advisors from firms such as LPL, SII, Ameriprise, Raymond James, Commonwealth and Wachovia in places like Fairfield, Princeton, Montclair and Red Bank. Weekly, she drives between 500 to 700 miles to 20 appointments in her 2005 Volvo SUV. Although Torrisi has over 2,500 advisors in her database, she only covers 300, spread among 20 firms, closely.
It’s also home. Born and raised in New Jersey, Torrisi and her husband Steve, group director of production for the advertising firm, Digitas, live in a Cape Cod in Essex Fells, N.J. They have a five-year-old son, Carson.
In today’s testy climate, Torrisi, as she puts it, is taking “double care” and “triple care” of her clients.
“In this environment, it’s all about keeping up to speed, keeping fresh — and having compassion. I do a lot of listening these days. This is a relationship that’s all about trust, it’s like a marriage,” she says. “Perhaps more than at any other time, you have to be able to bring a real value to the advisor. How can you help their practice grow? And mediocrity is just not an option. They expect me to know everything.”
‘It’s Signature Susan’
One of the things that is most striking about Torrisi is the depth of her relationships with her advisor-clients. Astorino, for example, sponsored her membership in his country club. Torrisi referred her interior designer to Astorino, who remade his offices in a bid to become “super fit” as a business. The designer later became Astorino’s client.
There’s more. Torrisi has hosted best practices seminars for her advisors’ assistants and etiquette training for advisors, helping them negotiate more comfortably the sometimes tricky terrain of extremely wealthy clients. She’s even conducted a Myers-Brigg personality assessment for one advisor and his staff, helping them to improve their communications skills. Torrisi has held parties for her clients at her home and, in an age of electronic communications, she’s well known for her warm notes written on a vast collection of personal stationery. “It’s signature Susan,” says one advisor.
She’s also introduced about a dozen LPL advisors in her territory to one another, which has led to unprecedented peer support and interaction among members of the group. As LPL advisor Ken Van Leeuwen, who manages $95 million in assets for Van Leeuwen & Co. in Princeton, N.J., observes: “She started the process and now we network with each other. I know more LPL advisors in the state due to her. As wealth managers, we’re independent and it’s just a great thing to get to know other people out there who are facing the same challenges.”
On top of that, Torrisi is so close to Van Leeuwen’s practice that she knows 20 percent of his clients. “She’s a great wholesaler. We measure all other wholesalers against Susan,” he adds. Torrisi uses a formula espoused by leadership trainer Stephen Covey as her driving strategy: Strategy x Execution = Results. But the real foundation of her work can be summed up in one word: trust.
“Without trust, I have nothing,” says Torrisi, a member of DWS’ elite eight-member CEO Advisory Council. “If I don’t have the trust of a client, that’s hurting me. If I have that trust, it’s a dividend to both me and the advisor. Now the advisor is willing to say: ‘I’ll listen to the solutions she offers. She’ll help me. She’ll help the consumer.’ In other words, with trust, the strategy I employ is going to be stronger and the execution will pay a dividend for everyone.”
Of course, success doesn’t operate in a vacuum. Eric Momcilovich is the internal wholesaler who supports Torrisi from DWS offices in Chicago. She also has two personal assistants — an independent contractor who schedules Torrisi’s appointments and a woman charged with her paperwork who operates for a few hours three days a week from Torrisi’s home office.
One of Torrisi’s chief challenges is to bring efficiencies to her advisors. It’s no different with her own practice.
“You want to practice what you preach. How I operate my practice is a reflection of me to other advisors. I delegate the things I shouldn’t be doing,” she says. “In these markets, the demand for my time has quadrupled. My biggest challenge is to stay focused. It’s like our parents always taught us: Keep your head down, go to work, don’t worry about what everyone is doing around you. My job is to take care of the advisors. It’s simple — they don’t need me for a product; they need me for a solution and ideas. My bottom line is how do I take care of them?”
Torrisi gets 100 e-mails a day from advisors and her DWS colleagues. Twice daily, she reads reports from the firm’s chief economist and other top executives. She reads The Wall Street Journal online on her Blackberry at the gym, and evenings she devotes another two hours to keeping current with the marketplace. She’s almost superhumanly organized.
Mark Cortazzo, senior partner at Macro Consulting Group, an SII affiliate in Parsippany, N.J., has worked with Torrisi for eight years. Early in their relationship, Torrisi recommended a competitor’s product that’s benefited Cortazzo’s clients ever since, which left a lasting impression on him.
“For most wholesalers, it’s all about: How much can I make this week? The thing that’s so frustrating is they won’t share with you willingly, unless you drag it out of them, the Achilles heel of their programs. I’ve had Susan say: ‘Here’s a thing we’re doing a promotion on, but I’m a little concerned about it because of this or that. Maybe take a wait and see on this one,’” says Cortazzo, who manages $360 million in assets.
“If ever there was a situation where hers was a tie with another program, she will always get the push. And when she does come to you with something she really thinks is going to be a value-add, you listen and you listen unfiltered,” he adds. “She never has to worry about another wholesaler coming in and saying: ‘Did she tell you this about their product?’ It’s always going to be yes. She’s in this for the long haul.”
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A Wholesaler Wish List
What do advisors want most from their external wholesalers today? Honesty.
In an update of its wholesaler effectiveness survey, Financial Research Corp. and partner Horsesmouth found that advisors ranked honesty first, displacing the former No. 1 characteristic: “takes a solutions-based approach.”
FRC’s Lisa Campbell, editor of the 185-page report, says the survey findings reflect the current economic reality and the challenges facing advisors today. The initial survey was issued in 2007. The update was conducted last June and July, in a difficult period just before the market meltdown.
After honesty, advisors ranked as most important, in order: product knowledge; responsiveness; provides access to impactful value-added programs; takes a solutions-based approach; understands my business; meets face to face; and offers assistance with clients.
The survey of 1,860 financial advisors elicited a number of open-ended responses that Campbell said represent two things advisors are looking for right now from their wholesalers. First, they want timely and relevant information that can be used in client conversations to help keep clients focused on their long-term financial goals. As an example: a chart showing how a fund has performed in previous difficult markets. Second, advisors want to be reassured about their wholesaler’s investment vehicles and they want straight talking about any possible performance issues short-term.
Overall, advisors reported a rise in their satisfaction levels for both external and internal wholesalers, a trend that Campbell called “surprisingly positive.” External wholesalers received an average composite score of 60.2 versus 39.7 in 2007. Internal wholesalers also saw a substantial improvement in satisfaction, 60.6 as opposed to 36.4.
On the upside, 28 percent of advisors said their external wholesalers were highly influential on their decisions to do business. That compares with 19 percent in 2007.
On the downside, a separate survey of nearly 200 branch managers said 49 percent of wholesalers who sought it gained access to their branch in 2008, a decline from two-thirds in 2007.
With the exception of those who are true business partners, Campbell suggested that increasing numbers of wholesalers may be shut out because advisors are more focused on client concerns and have less availability.
At the same time, 88 percent of advisors stated that wholesalers had been responsive to their changing needs in these challenging markets. Russell Investments led all firms with a 98 percent approval rating, closely followed by American Century and Putnam, each with 97 percent. For more on the report, visit Financial Research Corp.’s website at www.frcnet.com and check the “Just Released” tab on the firm’s home page.
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Who’s Number One? In its 2008 Advisor Insight wholesaler effectiveness survey, Financial Research Corp. and partner Horsesmouth ranked firms for attributes most valued by advisors. Here’s who came in tops:
Honesty — Lincoln Financial GroupProduct
Knowledge — First Trust Advisors
Responsiveness — Russell Investments
Impactful Value-Added Programs — First Trust Advisors
Solutions-Based Approach — First Trust Advisors
Understands My Business — Lincoln Financial Group
Value of Face-to-Face Meetings — Nuveen Investments
Assistance with Clients — Lincoln Financial Group
Contact Frequency — Lincoln Financial Group
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NOTE: Photo by Matthew Furman.
---Freelance writer Ellen Uzelac is based in Chestertown, Md.; the former West Coast bureau chief and national correspondent for The Baltimore Sun, can be reached at ellenuzelac@msn.com.
