What could an Institutional Salesperson expect to take home during the hay-day of Institutional Sales vs what they’re typically taking home now? From what I read on different forums it seems as though it’s a line of business that’s slowly dying out and a shell of its former self(not my words).
This was addressed here (still on the front page right below your other post about external wholesalers): https://www.analystforum.com/forums/careers/91372616
Not sure how much more you need me to elaborate. If you’re talking about “traditional” institutional sales (e.g. selling investment products to professional buyers), you need to understand the sales cycle. It’s not unlike commercial real estate where you may close one big deal then go a couple years without a meaningful win. If you smooth comp out over, say, five years, it would likely have been between $400k-$600k. Now it’s more like $250k-$500k. But, it’s still a sales job. If you can sell a lot of product, you’ll make way more than that.
The role itself is definitely not dying, slowly or otherwise. I recently read there are more key account/institutional salespeople working today than ever before. Think of it this way; fiduciary standards are only going to get stricter. So, pro buyers have to document all the due diligence they’ve done before buying a product or they could have a really bad time during their next SEC audit. The only way they can access portfolio managers is through me, an institutional salesperson. And that’s a law. I have to be involved because PMs aren’t licensed to sell product. Nor would portfolio managers want sales to become part of their job description (I know it already is to some extent, but hopefully you get my point).
The only real threat to the role is M&A. As we all know, M&A activity in asset management has been really high for several years now. When that happens, redundancies occur and fewer total sales positions exist. That doesn’t keep me up at night, though.
tl;dr: Pay has come down but it’s still a great way to make a living. Sales isn’t dying, it’s thriving and here to stay for the foreseeable future.