Target Audience

In this chapter, we will define the target audience for the firm and document how sales teams have been organised.

Target organisations

B2B investment managers typically work with four types of organisation: (1) institutions, (2) institutional investment consultants & OCIOs, (3) advisors, and (4) platforms. These relationships are displayed in figure 1.

Commonly, investment managers place each of the target organisations into one of two client groups — institutional and intermediary — as shown in figure 1.

Of the two groups, institutional clients are considered to be the most sophisticated. They tend to already know what they want when searching for investment managers, take more time to make decisions, and stick with their investments for much longer.

As intermediaries ultimately serve their own retail clients — who tend to sell quickly when markets drop — the money they invest is considered less "sticky" (i.e., much more likely to be sold on a whim) than that of institutional clients.

Institutions

An institution is an entity that invests on behalf of itself or others, such as a pension fund (which invests the contributions of plan participants), insurance firm (the premiums paid by customers), or a sovereign wealth fund (oil revenues). They usually need to invest very large sums of money.

A more comprehensive list of institutions includes government and corporate pension funds, family offices, endowments, foundations, central banks, sovereign wealth funds, and insurance firms. It also includes investment managers — of hedge funds, mutual funds, funds of funds (FoF), and REITs — that may invest in the products of other investment managers.

Often, an internal investment committee or board of trustees decides the institution's overall investment strategy, allocates the pool of money across asset classes, and hires investment managers to manage specific portions of the institution's portfolio, according to an investment mandate, and held within separately managed accounts (SMAs).

Institutional investment consultants & OCIOs

Institutions without the necessary investment expertise can outsource the work to an institutional investment consultant or a provider of outsourced chief investment officer (OCIO) services.

Consultants and OCIOs can help institutions with asset allocation and manager selection, and both maintain databases and shortlists of investment managers for their recommendations.

Unlike consultants, OCIOs are typically able to make additional discretionary decisions on the institution's behalf and take charge of daily administrative tasks — which allows an institution to essentially outsource its entire investment team.

Advisors

Advisors provide various forms of financial advice to retail investors, as either an independent firm or part of a larger organisation, such as the wealth management department (or subsidiary) of a bank.

The specific services they provide and the level of wealth of their clients can vary, but any organisation that provides financial advice to retail investors — including wealth managers, private banks, financial advisors, investment advisors, and financial planners — are included here.

Advisors usually manage their client's investment portfolios, either with the client's approval required for any changes (non-discretionary) or left entirely up to the advisor (discretionary).

Internal research teams maintain shortlists of pooled investment funds, used by the wider firm to build investment portfolios for their discretionary clients, or for recommendations to non-discretionary clients.

Platforms

Some advisors use an internal or third party platform to manage their client's portfolios — selecting investments, asset allocation, rebalancing, placing investments in tax-advantaged accounts, collecting fees, and reporting — in a single system.

However, the investment management part of an advisor's job (choosing investments for each individual client and managing the portfolio over time) can be very time consuming and require specialised expertise. Therefore, while advisors can do it themselves — building every portfolio from scratch or creating pre-set portfolios to use for clients with similar risk profiles — many advisors outsource the work so they can spend more time meeting clients, growing their business, and focusing on more holistic financial planning.

Outsourcing generally involves the advisor choosing from a set of pre-set portfolios created by an internal team or external investment manager (known as model portfolios). Some platform providers allow third-party investment managers to add their pre-set portfolios as options that advisors can choose from and invest in directly through the platform. These are known as turnkey asset management programs (TAMPs).

Direct-to-consumer (D2C) investment platforms (sometimes called fund supermarkets) allow retail investors to buy and sell a range of pooled funds — offered by various investment managers — in one place online.

Key individuals

Employees of B2B investment managers work with a variety of individuals at target organisations. However, the firm's salepeople are only interested in talking to a specific subset of these individuals: those who can allocate money, either directly or indirectly, into the firm's products.

We can define key individuals as those that perform any of these job functions:

• Provide investment advice ("advice givers"). Client-facing individuals who advise retail investors (financial advisors, wealth managers, or private bankers) or institutions (field consultants at institutional investment consultants).
• Perform manager research or fund selection ("gatekeepers"). Individuals who compile shortlists of investments used by advice givers for recommendations, or add investments as options on platforms. They can make a manager, fund or strategy visible to large groups of advisors, consultants, and retail investors.
• Construct and manage investment portfolios ("money managers"). Individuals who devise investment strategies, make asset allocation decisions, and construct portfolios of investments for investors.

As this list avoids using the seemingly endless array of industry classifications or job titles, it can be used across all client groups and geographic locations.

Sales team structure

Although it depends on their size, B2B investment managers usually structure their sales teams around client groups, target organisations, and geographic areas (or in various combinations). A team, or individual salesperson, is assigned to cover relationships with key individuals in their area of focus. Sometimes, a dedicated strategic accounts team covers the firm's most important clients, which are identified at an account (or firm) level.

Geographic areas may include individual countries (France, Spain, or Germany), groups of countries (like the Nordics, DACH, or Benelux), or regions within a country. Coverage is assigned based on location of each specific individual and not the location of the organisation they work for (which could be a global firm).

To help fill any gaps in sales coverage, client service or sales support teams can sometimes cover relationships with clients or prospects who are located in a geographic area that isn't covered by existing sales teams or salespeople.

Lewisham's sales team structure

The sales team structure of Lewisham Asset Management (our fictional investment management firm) is detailed in figure 2.

Country/region	Sales teams
United States	US intermediary sales
	David Ritchie Sales Director US - West Non-office Tessie Georgina Sales Director US - Midwest Non-office Celestina Nikolaus Sales Director US - Northeast Non-office Ogochukwu Modou Sales Director US - South Non-office Borislav Shalev Internal Sales Associate US - All New York City Hugo Caleb Internal Sales Analyst US - All New York City
	US institutional sales
	Irvin Naomi Sales Director US - All New York City Angela Michaela Sales Director US - All New York City Rory Harve Sales Director US - All New York City
	US consultant relations
	Polly Malvina Sales Director US - All New York City
International	International sales
	Vanessa Kerri Sales Director United Kingdom London Judit Hartmann Sales Director DACH Non-office Victoriano Ana Sofía Sales Director Iberia Non-office Cosette Faustin Sales Director Benelux Non-office Baptiste Mélanie Sales Director France London Fabia Carlotta Sales Director Italy Non-office Johannes Tor Sales Director Nordics Non-office Ana Sofía Johannes Sales Director New regions Non-office Danny Ruthie Sales Associate International - All London Georgia Athina Sales Associate International - All London Michaela Zacharias Sales Analyst International - All London
	International consultant relations
	Bruce Jarrett Sales Director International - All London

Primarily, Lewisham divides its sales teams by region:

• United States. Three sub-teams each cover relationships with key individuals based in the country who work for intermediaries, institutions, and investment consultants & OCIOs respectively. Each sales director in the intermediary team is assigned a region of the country to cover and works "on the road" (known as external sales) with the office-based internal salespeople providing them with general support (such as speaking with less important contacts and contacting new leads by phone and email).
• International. Two sub-teams cover relationships with key individuals based anywhere ouside the United States: one covers both intermediary and institutional relationships, with individual salespeople assigned to a more specific country or region, and another covers all investment consultants & OCIOs.