The B2B marketplace is experiencing a proliferation of sales performance tools. And even companies in the financial services sector –historically the most reluctant adopters to new technology – are getting on board.
One type of technology that financial services organizations are especially drawn to is sales enablement. This technology provides a single-source-of-truth for advisors to access the right client-facing content – and Marketing – to keep these resources up-to-date.
Sales enablement allows financial services organizations to:
Provide a World-class Client Experience
As an advisor, you want clients to leave a meeting with the certainty that you’re uniquely qualified to take on their business. Although an array of firms likely have similar offerings, YOU are the one they should trust to manage their investments.
To provide this top-notch experience, reps should spend the majority of their time in front of clients. But in reality, they spend 30% of the week searching for or scraping together client presentations or pitchbooks… which isn’t conducive to developing meaningful relationships.
Advisors need to be able to complete non-selling tasks quickly, react in the moment, and respond to client needs on-the-go. Sales enablement helps with this endeavor by giving client-facing teams consistent, up-to-date materials at their fingertips so they can spend more time focusing on the stuff that matters – their interactions with clients.
Protect the Brand
With so much competition in the financial services sector, maintaining a strong brand reputation is an important part of driving the business forward.
This means advisors need to provide a positive, consistent experience to acquire new clients and expand existing business. The last thing you want is for an advisor to go rogue and drag your company image through the mud in the process!
Sales enablement helps firms maintain a strong company reputation by ensuring brand uniformity across all client-facing materials – and serving up these resources to reps when they need them in the selling cycle. Instead of relying solely on instinct, reps are positioned to be all-star brand advocates, knowing exactly what to say and show during every interaction.
Improve Content Governance
Reps generally follow the path of least resistance to get deals across the finish line. If they don’t have the right materials for client meetings, they’ll resort to creating or re-purposing old materials. Although Frankenstein presentations can work at some companies, these habits won’t cut it in the highly-regulated financial services sector.
Presenting outdated fund and industry information can be costly, so it’s important to have a central source for storing and managing client-facing content. Sales enablement technology allows Marketing, content owners, and subject matter experts to manipulate content once and reflect these changes across the organization. Administrators also control the output format and can permit or restrict additional customizations depending on the type of resource and sales situation.
Now, advisors have all the most up-to-date pitchbooks, brochures, marketing sheets, reports, etc. at their fingertips… and Marketing can sleep easy knowing reps are using corporate-approved content.
Maintain compliance
Advisors only need access to client-facing content that’s relevant to their role, location, and industry. If you’re selling in Germany, you shouldn’t have the option to pull information from France into your presentation deck – this is inefficient and poses a risk (two things most firms seek to avoid).
The user management functionality in sales enablement technology allows Marketing to control which resources each client-facing employee can access. Reps can only see the content that’s pertinent to their selling situation, and aren’t bogged down by unnecessary resources.
Adhere to regulatory rules and restrictions
Changing regulatory standards are causing financial service firms to re-think their risk management processes. Companies need the procedures and infrastructure to adapt to new industry rules and restrictions, especially when it comes to external, client-facing materials.
Sales enablement technology mitigates risk by automatically pulling in the necessary information (disclaimers, fund info, regulations, etc.) when and where they need to be added in client documents and presentations.
For example, if the law requires X information to be included when Fund A and Fund B are bundled together, the system auto-populates the necessary information so reps don’t have to. This ensures that advisors include everything that needs to be included during each particular selling situation.
Financial service success is contingent upon how well your advisors position your services, maintain your brand, and comply with industry regulations. It’s no surprise, then, that high-performing firms are turning to sales enablement to expand their client base and upsell existing portfolios.
