ER Sales to ER

It usually goes the other way. If you are going to transition, you will need to work on improving your technical skillset, which most sales people lack. Learn modeling and valuation basics and you might have a shot. The CFA is not going to help you a lot in that regard, so you might have to pick up some books and do it yourself. Research to sales is much easier because you can sell your technical knowledge and industry expertise to clients.

ya, the technical skills are the key. but since you are already in er, it's a lot easier to ask your research peers for help.

Curious. Why would you want to switch to research?

Happens often. I had a good friend leverage his BB sales role to an ER role with the same bank, and then a few years later he went to the buy-side.

Oh thanks a lot guys for the insights!!! I also know someone who moved internally from ER Sales to ER, but position inside the firms are limited now, as the firm is not expanding (boutique shop) and so would have to wait for a while before a slot opens up. So thinking of external options, although maybe not immediately, but in a year or 2.

Bowser- Yeah dude...buy side investment research ( stock selection, idea generation is my personal self-actualiztion)...doesn't necessarily have to be in a HF or AM, can even be in the investments arm of a lets say insurance firm. thanks for your inputs.

some hedgefunds who specialize in micro cap / small caps have stock promoters for the companies that they have taken active positions in. like investor relations.

@traderdaily - Sales that go to buy-side usually join as portfolio managers, but only if they have 10+ year experience, thereby really knowing a market or multiple companies VERY well that its almost on-par with being a PM. The very senior salespeople I know can publish their own reports for fun on non-covered companies and can come out with very good commentaries that analysts cannot do because they only know one sector. As a sales its impossible to know a company as well as an analyst because they practically have their models memorized, but you get the flexibility to talk about different sectors and be a jack of all trades.

One of my old bosses told me "a good sales is a good analyst, and a good analyst is a good sales." Words of wisdom!

@dcfness - if you switch to ER you will have to start over as an associate, so there wont be much client contact and your profile will pretty much have to be rebuilt from scratch, fixing models, doing data requests, making charts, gathering info, etc. Every analysts I know wishes they had the lifestyle of a sales, and I only know analysts to that switch to sales, not the other way around, so good luck!

Thanks for the insight.

I agree -- the idea that a sales guy would come in as a PM, no matter how much experience, is down right scary. That would never, ever happen. I can't even see the sales to analyst path happening very often. The fact is that the sales experience is good for sales, but not much else. That's just the way it is.

If you already had a buy-side background its not out of the realm at all. There are quite a few PMs that changed to do sales (generalist), then bounced back to the buy-side at some point.

Some did it by choice as they wanted to try something new, others did it just because the crisis threw things out of whack and their funds either collapsed or they just needed a job. Perhaps this is just a APAC phenomenon too, as you have more growth/opportunities to bounce around in the industry, and experienced talent in multiple markets is harder to come by. (considering the first generation of APAC sales traders in the late-80s/90s were basically English teachers but its come a LONG way since then.)

Yeah for someone that does only pure sales for 20+years its probably impossible unless you start your own fund, or your good buddy CIO loves you and takes you on board.

Yeah salespeople cannot "officially" write notes, that's why all their email signatures in emails/dailies have "Sales Commentary, Not Research" and a bunch of disclaimers. Plenty of sales visit companies or attend conferences and write up a few bullet points of summary in the meetings they attended, add their two cents and blast it out to clients. It works well when certain sectors are hot, where analysts cannot comment due to companies not being in their coverage universe (or the market cap is too small to initiate), so the sales can visit them and just give a brief summary on the visits for clients. Its not an official note but its certainly something that is sent to clients.

The really smart ones can write their own strategy and can tie in different sectors and markets w/ their own views which really makes the best material to read compared to your cookie cutter research products. Most just write them in an email with a few bloomberg screenshots / charts and blast it out. The specific one I am referring to has been in the business for two decades, seen multiple boom/bust cycles so everything he puts out is super insightful. He also brings in a ton of revenue / votes so nobody tells him what to do, but this is a very extremely rare case.

In the end so long as you are not violating any laws, getting the client vote/trades is really all that matters for the sell-side. How you capture the client mindshare is up to your creativity.