Sales Comp for Boutique Asset Manager

I am in late stage conversations with a boutique Asset Management firm looking to hire their first dedicated in-house sales person.

The firm is a few years old with ~$400 and a remarkable long-term GIPS compliant track record that came from a prior firm.

So far they have raised money through a combination of the PMs existing network and a third party marketing firm. That contract is up at the end of this year.

In addition to a handful of institutional and family office clients they are about to go live on a mid-sized wealth management platform.

I’m trying to think about comp so that I’m prepared for the conversation. The role would be the only sales/marketing person at the firm for now and would be responsible for defining the forward strategy, maintaining all existing relationships as well as all new sales efforts through the institutional and private client channels.

This is a great opportunity to build something with a great investment team and I don’t want to be greedy because I know that there will be plenty to go around as the AUM grows but I want to make sure I don’t undersell myself either.

Any thoughts on how I should frame the comp conversation?

What would a reasonable base be for a role like this in NYC?

Should I focus more on BPs based on assets raised or some other metric? What would be a reasonable BPs to ask for?

 
Most Helpful

couple questions

  1. will they pay on new money only? existing money? some combination? this is important
  2. how sticky are the assets and how much service do they require? if 50% of your time is already occupied with servicing existing relationships, this takes away from the time you have to hunt
  3. is there a possibility of equity ownership as well?
  4. will you be responsible for getting the firm on RIA/PWM platforms? if not, who is?

I would love it if AM firms decided to pay more on existing assets (like the PWM model) so the focus is on retaining assets instead of just new-new all the time. unless your boutique has some super scalable algo or is in broad based fixed income, there will be some cap to what you can raise (like in small cap, mid cap, EM, etc.) so while you're not close to that yet, it can get there quickly if you win some big institutional mandates

good wholesalers in the southeast I'd guess make 3-600k a year with the vast majority of that being variable comp (maybe a 100k base, which is OK for a city like Charlotte or Atlanta). if you translate this to NYC I'd see if they can do $250k first year with less emphasis on variable comp subject to negotiation 6mos in, then $180k year 2 with more emphasis on variable comp, some profit sharing, BPS on existing assets plus new assets (BPS on new assets should always be higher, but not so much higher you ignore existing clients)

if you will be in charge of corporate relationships/getting on PWM platforms, ask for a higher base, because that is a very very very long process with lots of fits and starts and pays you nothing until they say yes and people start allocating towards you.

 

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