You’ve got me. MLMers like World & Primerica or whatever their name is nowadays come to mind but I’d hate to add such insult to Waddell and Reed. Sucks enough for the guys there. The worst part is they have no clue. There’s a supposed big hitter with Waddell and Reed on the board of a local charity I’m associated with. He’s always talking about the award trips, etc. I asked him how his 08’ turned out at a Xmas party last year. He told me he broke $300k and was leading the Southwest despite the market turndown. He’s been at W&R for over 15 yrs.  

$300k led an entire region?

$300k (and that was probably stretched) was his claim and he said he led the region.   This would not surprise me. When I was a manager a couple years back, I had my HR recruiting folks target some lesser known firms like W&R to see what we could ‘dig up’.  I’m not kidding… 100% of the people at the firm that we could get in touch with and we probably reached 85% of them,  were below our line to hire, forget about any trans money, just to hire! Most had 10+ years and many were in the 30+ los range. The basic profile I deducted from this excercise was this;… old, underperformers, will never leave because they can never leave.  Never chase W&R FAs.

I’d love to know if there’s a recruiting troll on this board who can validate my opinion or prove me totally wrong. I’m sure someone calls those guys.