Has anyone ever heard of/know anything about Consultant Relations?
Scheduled to speak with someone about at a bulge bracket bank about an analyst position in their Investment Management Consultant Relations department. From what I understand so far, it seems like a support function for an extended period of time, with an opportunity to pick up sales responsibility as time progresses and you gain experience. Not really sure though. Any opinions on this? Good for career growth/exit opportunities? Is this good pre-MBA work experience for top programs? Currently, an alternative of mine is Big 4 auditing, how does this compare to that in regard to growth and opportunities? Thanks for all of your help.
It's investor relations/sales/biz dev. But instead of dealing with pensions, endowments and all that jazz, you deal with the consultants that advise said previously mentioned investors. If it is bulge bracket you can probably look to make internal transfers within the bank/department if you work hard and make the right networks. Can't comment on much more though.
Good Luck
Thanks Jamoldo, so is this considered a back office position? It sounds like it, but the way the job description talks about sales responsibilities makes it seem comparable to front office roles. Thanks for the extra clarification.
It is a sales role. It's very similar to that of other IR/sales roles and you sit alongside said IR/sales people and bitch the same product. You are talking to consultants who can be quite powerful (take it from a consultant)
Also commenting based on being a consultant - if you're entry level analyst, chances are you'll be creating pitch decks, fielding consultant requests, maintaining databases, and potentially participating on some RFP writing. You'll probably get a broad understanding of your firm's products. I would call it middle office/investment support since you don't make any investment decisions/will always bring a PM if you're doing a due diligence and you're probably doing a lot of at home support for the senior front facing relationship manager at this point though you may have some interaction with the consultants.
As you get higher up, the whole goal of Consultant relations is to keep the consultant happy and make sure your products are visible and evaluated by consultants. It's not as sales-y as you would think as it is more maintaining good relationships and getting your foot in the door for new products since new consultants often don't pop up and your manager probably already has a relationship with them. That being said, it is a bit more 'front office' at the senior level and you will add value by keeping consultants happy which are often the gatekeepers to a lot of money, but by no means will you be the big shot in the office - you'll always be selling someone else's product. Most consultants are in big cities, so travel is definitely to interesting cities, and I think you will travel to visit consultants and join meetings that your consultant is a part of. You may go to a few presentations, but mostly you are keeping the consultant happy. IMO it's better to come in as a senior consultant relations person than to start as an analyst but to others point, you may be able to lateral elsewhere if you don't find it interesting. I would think your work life balance is pretty good, but I don't know how easy it is to climb the ladder since the senior roles tend to be pretty sticky.
Skills won't be as transferable to much outside of the Asset Management industry, so I'd be careful if you're not sure about what you want to do and go for the network of the bank if anything. Big 4 Audit is probably more broad in terms of the financial statement exposure you'll get and your experience will be more in line for doing corp fin/research/etc., but if you want to stay in AM, it's probably one of the better entry level roles (between doing operations, research and relationship mgmt).
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