Sell Well - Grow Well, a joint initiative between SBI Fund Guru and Wealth Forum, is an effort aimed at encouraging and guiding distributors on a path towards right selling - which we firmly believe is the best way to grow well on a sustainable basis.

In the new series within this section, called "Main Bhi Fund Guru", successful advisors share their winning sales strategies for the benefit of the wider distribution fraternity. In this article, Pallav Bagaria of Brand New Day, Guwahati - the fastest growing advisory firm in the North-East - discusses how he converted a segment that many other IFAs consider as business rivals into his allies, to spur growth of his business.

Investors trust insurance products and their CAs

There are two aspects of the North-Eastern region that could normally be daunting for financial advisors and mutual fund distributors. One - it is acknowledged as a major insurance market, with a marked preference towards the perceived safety of long term investment oriented insurance products. Second, and perhaps linked is that most large investors almost invariably consult their chartered accountants before making any investment decision. And CAs have traditionally preferred recommending "safe" avenues for tax planning like guaranteed return long term insurance products.

First brush with a CA was a tough one for us

Our first brush with this phenomenon happened in 2009, when we were pitching for an HNI's portfolio and gave a set of recommendations for a 6 crore portfolio. The client told us to meet his CA and get his nod before we could action our proposals. When we met him, he was skeptical - perhaps due to a combination of the fact that we were recommending market return oriented products (risky) as well as the fear of whether we were trying to step on his toes, for the investment mandate. It took an effort, but we managed to convince him about the merit of our proposal, and we also found a way to create a channel partner arrangement for his firm.

Twin track engagement with CAs

That experience taught us that we actually needed to do two things - first, educate CAs about mutual funds and the role they can play in their clients' portfolios, and two, find win-win solutions through channel partner arrangements. Doing only the second will not get you very far, when skepticism remains about the product itself.

Back in 2009, we tied up with the Guwahati branch of Eastern India Regional Council of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India, to conduct annual knowledge workshops for all CAs across North-East. We have been doing this for 5 years now, and are committed to this annual knowledge event.

Each year, in addition to talks on mutual funds and investment products, we also try to look at topical themes that will be of interest to these CAs. This year, for our 5th annual event which was held in March 2014 amidst talk across the country about politics and the forthcoming elections, we invited Mr. Prabhu Chawla, eminent journalist, editor and political commentator, to deliver the keynote speech.

There are around 500 CAs in North-East. We invited all, and expected around 150 to turn up. We were pleasantly surprised to see over 260 CAs turn up for the event. One out of every two CAs in the North-East is now engaged with Brand New Day, through this initiative.

Apart from the annual events, we went about meeting CAs one-on-one and getting them first comfortable with mutual funds. We got them to invest in debt funds, get comfortable with them, then moved them into equity funds. I don't know about the metros, but I can say that in smaller cities and towns in the North-East, familiarity of CAs with mutual funds has been quite low, and perception of risk has been quite high. With our continuous efforts to first get the CAs themselves comfortable with mutual funds and markets, we are in a situation today where 44 CAs are clients of Brand New Day. And, along with this comfort that they have with Brand New Day, with mutual funds and with the channel partner arrangements, we now have access to their clients for investment advice.

A natural question is why should a CA choose to be a channel partner with us rather than dealing directly with AMCs. What we found is that while they have arrangements in place for insurance products, they are happier with becoming our channel partners for mutual funds because MFs are very service intensive and many of them do not have the bandwidth or interest in getting into service nitty-gritties, which we do as part of the arrangement. Because we have created a robust service delivery platform, they have the confidence that we will serve their clients well, without bothering the CAs for a lot of the after-sales service issues that are associated with mutual funds.

What works for us is that apart from the CAs who are our clients and channel partners, there are many more CAs across the North-East who are familiar with us, through our knowledge initiatives in association with the CA Institute's Guwahati branch. Today, when an investor refers back to his CA about our investment proposals, and the CA asks him who is the advisor, when they know that it is Brand New Day, there is a lot more positivity towards giving their assent. It takes a lot of effort and commitment, but after 5 years of engaging closely with the CA fraternity, we are now in a position where we consider them our friends and allies and not business rivals. A lot of our growth in the last five years has been contributed through our deep association with chartered accountants.

All articles in the Sell Well - Grow Well section are created by Wealth Forum. These are not to be construed as opinions given by SBI Mutual Fund.

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