I work at a large MF in the Northeast as an internal wholesaler. For those of you who don't know what that is, it's basically inside sales. I make outbound dials to financial advisors to sell them our mutual funds among other things. I have over 4 years of work experience and am going for Level II of the CFA Program. Because I tend to read Q&As the most on here, I'm paying it forward with one of my own. Ask away.
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Annuities have, by and large, become an almost extinct business for all but the select few (Jackson National). Credit that to low interest rates.
A typical external wholesaler's day looks like this:
7:00 am: Wake up, eat breakfast, check agenda for the day, put on a suit and tie (not Jos A Banks, for the money you're making you can afford a custom suit from Brooks Brothers) 8:00 am: Drive to your first meeting of the day, fighting through rush hour traffic 9:00 am: Get to the meeting at a local breakfast place, sit down with one of your best advisors, has $10 million with your firm, consistently drops tickets, shoot the breeze and talk about which new funds he should be looking, review performance of any existing positions 10:00 am: Leave meeting, have thirty minutes before next appointment, fiddle around with Gmail calendar 10:30 am: Meet with a prospect, finds out he does biz with XYZ fund company, has $80mm AUM, is looking for a good multisector bond fund, sell him ours, he hints that he can start doing business if you support his next client event, he's asking for $1000, you mull it over and agree to follow up next week 11:30 am: End meeting, drive over to a steak house for lunch meeting at noon 12:00 pm: Sit down for lunch with a group of advisors who come from the same office, they do some biz with your firm but can do considerably more, this is the meeting where you develop rapport and if they really like you or your funds, can start driving significant sales 1:30 pm: End lunch, rush out of the steakhouse to make a client appreciation event one of your advisors is hosting at a country club 2:00 pm: Get to the venue, schmooze with the advisor and hand out trinkets (firm-branded water bottles, pens, etc.), have a thirty minute talking spot, you go over market outlook and mingle with everyone over hors d'ouevres afterward 3:30 pm: Leave the country club and make the drive back home to your wife and two young kids 4:30 pm: Get home, enter in meeting details onto your laptop, game plan for tomorrow's agenda, look over emails, and have a chat with your internal about the day
You don't have much say, at least when starting out. If you are an IW you pretty much take the first open external spot and a good company will try to move you where you want to go in a couple of years if a territory opens up and you are hitting your numbers. Some territories will require you to jump on an airplane regularly, others you can drive across pretty quickly, it all dependent on the area of the country your in. Typically the more dense your territory the higher you can expect your quota. That's one thing a lot of people are overlooking here, THE QUOTA. if you don't hit the company numbers, you can plan on looking for another job...it's friggin stressful. Any sales rep that hasn't had a few sleepless nights in their career is either lucky or lying.
Normal time as an IW is at least 2 years I'd say. I did it in 1.5 but it took me quitting my company and coming back to do it (long story). And ideally I would have never started or stayed at my original company as long as I did if I had to do it again.