Owlnotes.com

I'm a Senior Vice President and a Senior Manager for Heartland Financial USA, Inc., a Wealth Management Group in northeast Iowa. I'm also in charge of our sales and marketing—four sales employees, as well as the Marketing Coordinator, report directly to me. I work directly with clients, as well as help them manage their wealth and assets, create wealth, maintain wealth, and pass it on to other generations. We also talk about any philanthropic giving they might want to do. I also work on the mission of our department, our budgets, and how we can be more profitable.

I supervise marketing, which includes advertising, public events, outreach activities, sales initiatives, advertising, and marketing materials like brochures and fliers for prospective clients. I go to a lot of meetings with our management team, clients, and other groups, and I write a lot of correspondence. I also make a lot of phone calls and fill out a lot of paperwork—creating documentation is a must in my job. I do all of the writing for the marketing materials that come out of our department. The Marketing Coordinator is responsible for the look and design of the materials, but I write the text for them.

I think I interact most with other employees. I talk to the members of the investment team about what is occurring in their work, and to other advisors about our documentation and efficiency. I interact with the Marketing Coordinator when we work on marketing materials. I talk to at least one of the sales employees, who sell our services to prospective clients, every day. When I talk to the sales staff, I determine the status of their conversations with possible clients who are looking for advice about managing their retirement plans, their wealth, and their assets. I find out who they're communicating with, how many appointments they've had, whether they're having any problems, or anything else they may need to discuss. I also train the new sales people.

At our bank, we have an Education Consultant who meets with current and potential clients to educate them about the specific services our bank offers. Recently, I have been in the process of revising the booklet that the Education Consultant uses to clarify concepts when meeting potential clients. In order to accomplish this, I met with several other employees who have experience in this area, or are directly involved with the booklet, to discuss changes or additions to the text. It's been challenging because the Education Consultant felt very strongly about the content, and she ended up yelling at us about the changes we'd proposed. I handled the situation by trying to calm her down, to get her to recognize that we were trying to have a dialogue, and to offer new and creative ways for her to use the booklet we proposed at the meetings she scheduled in the future.

Every winter, my bank hosts several events where we summarize the recent year in financial terms and predict what the New Year will hold in terms of financial prospects. This year, we hosted eight events total, mostly in the Midwest. I oversaw the entire process - the make-up of the presentation, the venues, the menus and the invitations to the event - and generally coordinated all the various aspects involved. I was very satisfied with the presentations; the material we developed was very good. In fact, we had a record attendance in some of the communities where we hosted the presentations.

I wasn't planning on going to college, but I ended up completing a Bachelor's degree in Liberal Arts and Sciences. I was thinking of teaching drama or English, but I ended up getting a secretarial job at a bank for year. I didn't fit in well, so I looked for other jobs. After that, I was the Office Manager at an insurance company in a small town in Wisconsin for about four years. It was there that I learned to become very accurate with my work and developed good proofreading skills. Because of changes in the financial market, I decided to look for another job.

Next, I worked as a Loan Processor/Administrator for two years at a small bank. There, I processed paperwork for loans and balanced the numbers to ensure that payment plans were being followed. At that time, the President of the bank where I was working asked me to take on a more difficult job, so I became a Personal Banking Officer. I worked with people making deposit accounts, especially those considering IRAs [Individual Retirement Accounts]. I also did some work in the Trust Department, which was very small at that time.

In 1982, I began talking to my supervisors about entering a new program in financial planning, but the program was so new and unknown that I could not get approval. Two years later, in 1984, the then President of the bank heard about the program at a conference and became intrigued. He allowed me to enter the Financial Planning program offered by College for Financial Planning in Colorado. It was a self-study program where you were responsible for learning all of the materials yourself, and then you went to designated locations to take a test that would prove you knew the course materials. There were five units in the program, and I went to a study group in Madison, WI for the first unit, but I took all of the others after studying alone. The program was so new that I had to travel to Madison to meet with other people who were also studying for it, and even then, there were only five or six of us in the group. I worked full time while I was studying, and there were very few people at work who thought I would finish the entire program. As it turns out, not only did I finish, but I also passed every unit test on the first attempt. In 1984, I became a CFP, or Certified Financial Planner.

Soon afterwards, I began working for a major credit card company as an Independent Planner, but financial planning was such a new skill that I didn't get to utilize much of what I'd learned. While working for them, I sold securities and insurance products. In order to do that I had to get my Securities and Insurances licenses, which I did in the same manner with self-study and testing. After that, I was able to put my financial planning skills into practice in writing financial plans. After a few more jobs in various locations, I ended up at the bank where I work today. I worked as the Business Development Officer of the Trust Department (a salesperson), the Assistant Vice President, and a Wealth Advisor before I arrived at my current position.

An average day starts with logging on to the computer and answering emails. Throughout the day, I respond to further emails and phone calls. There are usually a few meetings to attend. I have to complete paperwork, and there's usually some kind of writing to do. I always have a task list, a "To Do" list. I start with what's on the to do list or what I didn't get done yesterday. I have a lot of people come to me with questions to discuss. An average day really involves a lot of reacting to whatever comes my way.

I experience a lot of variety in my daily experience, because I spend a lot of time responding to people who contact me by phone and/or email, as well as dealing with people who come to speak to me in person. This schedule always varies as does the meeting schedule.

Once a week there is a sales meeting that involves our sales team and people from other parts of the bank. We have a weekly management meeting of the department heads, and I meet with other marketing people who work for my bank. Biweekly, we have Administrative Review Committee meetings. Once a month, there is a meeting with the Retail Banking Group, which involves our sales team and people from other parts of the bank. I help produce a quarterly newsletter that is sent out to clients and possible clients every three months. I complete other pamphlets and marketing materials as necessary. We have the economic forecasts mentioned earlier once a year. We normally host a client appreciation event every year. Twice a year, we host two educational teleconferences, where we invite a finance expert to talk to a large group of people while we provide lunch.

I'm good at communicating with people, and I do that every day. I also use my interpersonal skills every day, because I do a lot of interacting with other people, including other employees or clients. Other employees—those who have training as lawyers and accountants—are good at the tangible things like laws, regulations, and budgets. These people do well with Excel spreadsheets, for example, while I'm better at envisioning projects and creating materials. Contrary to what you might think, I don't do a lot of work with numbers. The numbers I work with are very "big picture." I don't use a lot of numerical formulas or anything like that.

I think my job takes me away from my family too much. I work a lot of hours and attend a lot of social and community functions because I have to get to know people in the community. It's important for me to network at these events. It's also important for people in the community to get to know me.

I work somewhere between 45-65 hours a week, including deskwork plus things like taking people out to lunch or attending some sort of a function after normal work hours. I also entertain clients to help them get to know me, etc.

I think there is a lot of stability in my job, because not very many people know or have education in what we do. It requires special training. I've gone to a lot of conferences and schools, even after I got my Certification in Financial Planning, for additional schooling. In order to be good at this job, you have to go the extra mile. You can't just go to college and learn all of this. You also have to attend other schools afterwards, so it's hard to find people that know anything about financial planning and are good at it. So, if you are one of those people, I think that the job stability is very good.

I won't retire before the age of 65, though it would be nice. It has taken me a long time to work up the ladder, and now that I'm in a position that I've worked towards, I'd like to enjoy it for a while. I'm just now reaping the monetary rewards of all of the years before. I'd like to earn money for a while longer. That's another part of it—I don't think that, financially, I'll be ready to retire before 65. And 65 is still a young retirement age, because of longer life expectancies these days. I think that companies are finding it difficult to replace the baby boomer generation. I think that employers are going to do things to get baby boomers to continue to work, because they're not really going to have a lot of people to take their place. When I do retire, I will only get Social Security, everything else I need to do on my own. I won't really get any benefits.

The range for entry-level jobs for someone with a college degree is probably between $25,000-$30,000. People that have had several years of experience and have gone on to get additional certifications and things like that are probably going to make $35,000-$55,000. Once you become a senior advisor or become part of a management team or are a department head or something like that, the salary is probably going to be $55,000 to $85,000. I'm in senior management, which would earn a salary ranging from $75,000 and up. It would probably peak at about $120,000 or $125,000 in my geographic area.

I like meeting with people. I enjoy meeting new people and learning about new people—I just like people. So, I think things that involve interaction with the public are fun. On the wealth advisor side of things, I act as a problem-solver. I like talking about investments, and l like the problem-solving aspect of sitting down with someone and helping them find things that they might do differently that might improve their situation. The management part is nice, because I feel as though I have the opportunity to implement some of my new ideas. The negative part of that, for me, is that it's scary feeling as though you have other people's livelihoods in your hands. If the decisions you make aren't good decisions, it could affect someone's livelihood in a negative fashion. That's a concern to me.

The sales management side is probably the hardest part of my job, because it's difficult to manage sales people. I like the marketing side of my job. I didn't necessarily know that I had talents in marketing, and I never went to school for that, but I've been told that I have a good eye. When someone compliments me, I'm always blown away by that. I think the downside to that is that although I enjoy the writing, it's hard now because I have so many responsibilities and it's difficult to have enough time to get everything done. Few people in our department can write well, so I have difficulty delegating tasks for the newsletter, and I have a hard time meeting the deadlines.

They make me feel like a dinosaur. Everything is done on the computer now. I just always have to have assistants and other employees who stay abreast of the new technologies because that is not my strong suit. When I'm faced with doing something for myself, they always have to give me instructions. I'm really dependent on other people to do technological tasks for me, because I do not know how to do them myself. Part of the reason is that I don't learn how to do those new things quickly—I'm slow at learning them, and I don't pick it up quickly. I just don't have the time to learn them, either. I have to delegate some things, and those are the things I delegate. For example, I have an assistant who can scan things and email them to people. We have this new system for sending secure emails. I just can't seem to figure that out, because you have to give people passwords and such. I don't know how to do that.

The economy does not affect us too much. If we went into a severe, prolonged recession or depression, it would affect my job, because we are a wealth management group, and we work with wealthy people. If we really were in a bad recession where people didn't have jobs, didn't have savings, and their assets were being depleted, that would affect our jobs. But short of that, the economy doesn't have much of an effect on my job.

The baby boomer generation will affect people entering the career, because boomers tend to be very wealthy. We've grown up in good times, and we should have some assets. There are many of us, and we should live longer, but we're approaching old age, so we're going to need people to help us. That's what my department focuses on providing. This will add a lot of potential clients. Young people coming into this field should have a lot of opportunities because of this trend.

You should come into it with an open mind and very good communication skills. You'll also need an ability to learn, and a desire to work with people and help people. There are positions that don't require customer contact, but there aren't that many of them. So, most of the jobs in my industry involve some sort of contacting, communicating, or dealing with the public. And if you don't enjoy that or you're not good at that, then maybe you should be looking at something else. We're in a service industry, so if you don't like helping people, this job probably isn't for you.

I'm not sure if this is a personality trait, but the ability to learn and recognize that things are always changing is an important quality. You need to learn where to find reliable information sources, because you can't know it all. I think a trait that has served me very well is being a good listener. When I'm meeting with clients or prospective clients, I am more of a listener than a talker. I ask them a lot of questions, and when they're talking, they know I'm listening. I'm not thinking about what I'm going to say next; I'm listening to what they're saying.

The ability to write well is important. Basic skills like decent punctuation and grammar, and being able to put your thoughts down on paper in a comprehensible manner is very desirable. Adaptability and flexibility are also important. This is probably true in most jobs, but ours is very much a team environment because most people there are specialized in some way. You need the assistance of the members of the team in order to help you do your job. So, you have to be a good team player.

You can now go to college and get a degree and become a certified financial planner at the same time, and I would recommend that. A lot of people earn a business degree and a CFP at the same time. Even if you major in something besides business as an undergraduate, you can get your masters in financial planning at a lot of different places now. Also, a law degree, an accounting degree or a finance degree is useful for people interested in the investment part of my job. Sometimes a background in economics works, too. Many times, trust officers are attorneys, so going to law school can help with that. However, a communications major or something similar can be just as valuable as a finance major. You can pick up the specialized education after college if you don't get it while you're there.

I think you have to be intelligent and you have to work hard. It helps to be organized and have new ideas. Being able to present your ideas and thoughts in the appropriate fashion is helpful. There are some organizations where it's a "dog eat dog" world, where everyone is just trying to get ahead. If you want that kind of environment, the key to success would be to be ruthless. But in our organization, just the opposite is true. People that are political and/or selfish and are not working for the betterment of the organization are not going to be successful here. I think it's more important to be supportive of others and try to find ways to work with other people, rather than celebrating someone else's failure as your success.