Peer-to-Peer Success at Bank of America

By Margery Weinstein

Bank of America’s Financial Advisors (FA) Peer-to-Peer program is designed around the strategy that best practice transfer training is an effective means for improving performance. The program is built on cascading proven sales approaches from the best of the best, making it replicable to other lines of businesses within the company or any industry.

The program was designed to cover a high percentage of the FA population (30 percent coverage) and is conducted at national, regional, and office levels. The program can be successfully conducted on various levels, allowing it to be applied to national, regional, and single-location business entities.

• Participation is determined on a nomination basis with “top FA performers” defined as having six or more years’ experience and client acquisition achievement.
• Managers nominate FAs based on success in the role, not on seniority. Nominated FAs participate in their own peer-to-peer experience, learning from each other. Over time, nominated FAs serve as faculty to other FAs as their management requests at regional or office levels.
• In addition, nominated FAs teach each other and other FAs, providing the tools and coaching necessary for FAs to be even more successful in their roles. Each experience involves both the peer-to-peer learning program and a best practices session.  
• To ensure best practices and momentum are sustained for business results, FAs are required to implement action plans. The program’s measurement strategy focuses on both associate satisfaction and business results such as net new households, assets under management growth, and client acquisition.  

Overall satisfaction across the sessions to date has yielded between 94 to 100 percent responses of “satisfied to very satisfied” by the participants. For those participating, Bank of America sees an upward trend in client acquisition and, of equal importance, a reconnection to the firm and culture. Thus, early results are in line with the initiative’s goals of business growth and associate retention.

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