"Any business arrangement that is not profitable to the other person, will, in the end, prove unprofitable for you."
- B.C. Forbes, founder of Forbes magazine
Without question, China is one of the most successful countries at negotiating business deals. Jeff Moon's July 17 Wall Street Journal article, "The President Turns the Tables on China," lays out what has made China so successful when negotiating with foreign companies wanting to make inroads into their country.
According to Moon, "Chinese officials often blame their foreign counterpart for any number of problems. The foreigners then have a duty, according to the Chinese, to make things right. Instead of specifying the terms for a resolution, the Chinese officials wait for foreign concessions. When the proposal arrives, the Chinese reject it as inadequate, forcing the foreigners to negotiate against themselves, offering more in each successive round. In the end, the foreigners are relieved when the struggle concludes, but they regret settling on terms much less favorable than they had planned."
(Related: Why Advisors Fail to Land Hot Prospects)
Retail giant Walmart has historically employed similar heavy-handed tactics to get what it wants. Whatever price Walmart sets from each of its suppliers this year, it almost always requires the price to be lower next year. If a supplier doesn't agree to the lower price, Walmart threatens to pull all of the supplier's products from their shelves. Companies such as Lovable Garments and Vlasic Pickles went bankrupt from Walmart's walkaway policy. Walmart was absolute on this policy in the past, only relenting more recently because it was losing key, brand-name products to competitors like Target.
Compared to these aggressive forms of negotiation, financial advisors joining a broker-dealer tend to be on the other end of the spectrum, with little to no negotiation happening between the advisor and the BD at the time of getting an offer to join. Often, when we raise the issue of negotiation with advisors, they are not only unsure of what can be negotiated but also tend to despise the process of negotiating in general, likening the experience to dealing with a car salesman who is unrelenting over the purchase of an extended warranty.
It's crucial to realize that you have the most leverage to get what you want before committing to a firm. Once you join, you've largely lost your negotiating power because they have you.
What's On the Negotiating Table?
When negotiating with a broker-dealer, advisors have numerous avenues to pursue, including payout, ticket charges, forgivable note money, transition assistance, advisory administration fees/markups on third-party money managers, fixed indexed annuity commissions rates, and the broker-dealer contract.
Your production level will greatly influence your ability to negotiate. A $100,000 producer will largely have to take what is offered, while a $1 million producer will have a great deal of latitude on what can be modified. If you happen to be a large producer who also has a clean compliance history, the world is your oyster; your ability to negotiate is exceptional.
Payout
If you are largely self-sufficient, rarely using the back office of the broker-dealer, you can use this as a rationale to get an extra 1-2% in payout because you are low cost for the BD. If your business mix is highly concentrated in certain lower risk investment categories such as Advisory, here again you may have room to ask for more payout. Many firms have fixed payouts based on a grid from which they don't deviate. But don't assume this; go ahead and ask. The worst that can happen is they say no.
Ticket Charges
If you do a high volume of trades in a particular investment vehicle such as stocks, you have the ability to negotiate down on the ticket charge. If you do institutional stock investing, you will want to negotiate flat ticket charges with no cents per share or buck per bond. For a high concentration of options trades, not only request a lower ticket charge but also a lower per-contract fee. These are all profit centers for broker-dealers (not including some advisory ticket charges that are priced at the BD's net cost), so they have leeway to modify depending on how much they want you.
Forgivable Note Money
