A Global Investment Bank’s Corporate FX Sales team, with a very strong market share, was tasked with deepening and developing their client relationships.
Feedback from clients was that this firm was very “cash only”, so dealt with them on an arms-length execution-only basis, and on price. The challenge for the sales team was to reinvent these relationships from light-touch execution to deep advisory. The key metrics the client wanted to focus on centred around turning low value, opportunistic flows into higher value, stickier, mostly derivatives based work. This was only possible by hitting the following desired outcomes:
The training programme focused on the following skills toolkit necessary to reinvigorate client relationships from the base up:
There was absolute clarity from management. This is not about ‘growing participants as individuals’: the training was expected to deliver a step change in sustainable P&L. But to build those long term relationships the desk was also expected to increase performance in terms of:
Leaving the training room happy, enthusiastic and better informed is great, but does not necessarily translate into P&L. In parallel with the training programme, we also provided some RoI analysis around a range of soft metrics, but most importantly on the long term P&L effects.
All numbers below relate solely to the desk we trained. The training occurred in June. We have compared H2 vs H1, and FY with the prior year results.
If the training programme was only responsible for 20% of the increase in revenue, then the programme contributed ~£1m to the firm. Given the training cost £50k, this is a startling RoI.
Other top down metrics examined before and after the programme:
These strong results on the soft metrics are not successes in themselves – but they explain the sharp increase in P&L, and the two sets of metrics combined quantify the stronger, stickier client relationships. The training worked.
