The growth of enablement in financial firms
The financial services industry is experiencing a tremendous evolution. Evolving client expectations, uncertain economic conditions, and the proliferation of digital tools have fundamentally changed the way firms engage with clients.
As the industry becomes more client-centric and competitive, it’s critical for client-facing professionals to create remarkable client experiences. Financial institutions are also facing a new set of challenges. Longer buying cycles, new products and services, and complex compliance requirements mean that firms and financial professionals need to evolve to remain competitive. Those that rely on what worked yesterday will fail to adapt and win the clients of tomorrow.
Firms and client-facing teams need tools that will enable them to operate more efficiently, elevate client experiences, and optimize operations. This is why modern enablement is mission critical for success. Effective enablement provides client-facing teams the right resources, processes, and technology to win business, retain clients, and adapt to change — all at scale. Increasingly, leaders across banking, asset management, wealth management, and insurance agree that enablement is mission critical to their firm’s operations.
Unifying the tech stack with enablement
Like many other industries, the financial service industry is experiencing a digital transformation. The right mix of technology can help firms deliver high-touch experiences across digital and virtual channels, as well as in-person interactions. At the same time, the struggling economy and tightened budgets mean that firms need to make strategic investments in order to build the most modern tech stack possible.
By investing in enablement technology, firms can unify the applications they already use for maximum ROI. Enablement tech connects with customer relationship management, marketing automation, and collaboration tools. As a result, firms can connect crucial sets of data that live across different systems. Instead of trying to connect disparate pieces of information and insights to make business decisions, firms can better identify which strategies work and where opportunities lie. The right enablement tool also helps firms streamline workflows, optimize operations, and achieve key internal and external outcomes. Let’s take a closer look at some of the key business outcomes firms can achieve by making an investment in enablement.
Improve efficiency and effectiveness
One of the largest impacts enablement has is its value on efficiency. We recently surveyed more than 1,200 leaders across the United States and Europe to determine how enablement tools impact their business. The study found that 84% of those who use an enablement tech say it’s integral to operating more efficiently. Let’s take a closer look at two key reasons why this is the case.
Automate and streamline tasks
A key component of efficiency is saving time. Firms that use enablement tools can automate and streamline tasks that take up crucial time so that advisors, bankers, agents, and relationship managers can spend more time on high-value activities. In fact, firms that use enablement tools save 13 hours, or nearly two business days, each week. By automating tasks around quarterly commentary, content personalization, and approvals, client-facing teams have more time to build relationships with their clients.
Decrease new hire ramp time
Knowledgeable advisors, bankers, agents, and relationship managers who deliver relevant and helpful advice to clients are more important than ever. With higher expectations and complex financial situations, advisors need to be experts who can instill trust with their clients. However, it takes most firms nearly a year to fully ramp a new hire to productivity. This negatively impacts their time to revenue attainment and productivity.
As a result, more firms are investing in platforms that allow them to deliver training and coaching to new client-facing teammates. These tools help firms create engaging and interactive training experiences that allow new hires to develop competency and expertise quickly. Firms can also accelerate readiness with quizzes and immediate scoring to confirm that employees have retained and understand training materials. It’s worth noting that the need for training doesn’t go away once new hires ramp in their roles. Firms can also leverage enablement technology to provide essential training and coaching on an ongoing basis. This ensures client-facing teams keep their knowledge and skills up to date amid industry changes and evolving client preferences.
Enhance the client experience
The ultimate goal of enablement is to help client-facing teams provide guidance and support in various ways — from in-person meetings and phone conversations to email updates and compelling social media posts. Today’s macro-economy means that clients have more questions and need more guidance that they can trust. As a result, firms need their client-facing teams to engage meaningfully with their clients and offer a deeper level of expertise. Gartner found that more organizations are investing in tools that enable their frontline teams to find answers when clients’ needs and questions are more specialized. Enablement tools provide just-in-time access to content and even AI-powered answers to questions so reps can find the most relevant information and correct information right when they need it.
Deliver personalized content
Enablement software also ensures that client-facing teams can create highly relevant and personalized content in just a few clicks. In today’s market, growing wallet share and retaining current clients is extremely important — and difficult.
Clients already do plenty of research on their own before they even reach out to an advisor, banker, agent, or relationship manager. When they finally do, they expect information they receive to be relevant and useful to them. 85% of firms agree that clients will dismiss a seller in the first interaction if they don’t receive tailored information. Modern enablement gives client-facing teams central access to digital collateral and dynamic assets that they can edit and personalize at scale. It also gives them the chance to integrate useful data and information from a CRM and other sources for even greater customization.
Optimize key operations
We’ve also heard from more financial services leaders that they need to “do more with less.” It’s now more important than ever to optimize current operations so client-facing teams can focus on achieving business goals. But, that’s easier said than done, especially in an industry that’s highly-competitive and quickly evolving. Let’s take a closer look at two areas where enablement can help firms better optimize key business processes and operations.
Reduce compliance risks
Content control is extremely important for highly-regulated industries like financial services. Advisors, bankers, wealth managers, and agents should only have access to the most relevant materials needed in their roles. Enablement software allows leaders to apply role-based permissions that ensure departments, teams, and individuals only have access to the content they need. It also gives them the opportunity to to control the extent that content can be modified. Gone are the days when marketing teams could create tailored assets for each and every client. Instead, firms can use enablement tools to give client-facing teams the ability to personalize content in a controlled environment. It also provides marketing and compliance teams peace of mind in knowing that these assets still meet brand and regulation standards.
Measure and track impact
Once marketing teams create content and hand assets over to be used during client interactions, they often don’t know if it’s actually used or effective. This is an inefficient use of time and money for every firm. Enablement software helps marketing teams better understand the impact of the content they create. Detailed tracking and content analytics provide visibility into what collateral is sent to clients the most, what clients find most engaging, and what is helping their firm close deals. By measuring the ROI of marketing materials, firms can leverage the content that’s working the most and focus on improving content effectiveness in the long-run.
Accelerate speed to market
Firms are faced with a number of time-consuming tasks and obstacles that prevent client-facing teams from working efficiently. Not only do they need to quickly produce time-sensitive content that’s crucial for advisors, they also need a way to improve alignment, refine their sales methodology, and close more deals. An enablement tool creates a process that standardizes, automates, and scales all of these initiatives. Let’s dive into one of them in more detail.
Refine sales methodologies — quickly
In order to bring and keep client-facing teams up-to-speed with new changes, firms need to create new time-sensitive materials and update existing assets as quickly as possible. But without an enablement tool, these pieces likely live in multiple places and across numerous departments within a firm. Enablement tools automate the content creation and updating process by pulling in data from disparate sources to produce pitchbooks, factsheets, client review documents, proposals, and much more.
Enablement tools also become a single source of truth for all sales-related content. This gives client-facing teams a one-stop-shop to prepare for client interactions and stay up to date on the newest sales frameworks within their firm. As a result, client-facing team members are on the same page and using the same information which is crucial for effective client engagement.
Ready to better serve clients?
Smarter enablement leads to better outcomes
Enablement will continue to evolve as a critical part of a firm’s business strategy. And firms that successfully adopt the use of enablement tools to address their challenges and support their most important goals will achieve better outcomes. And that’s why we created the Seismic Enablement Cloud™. Seismic’s unified platform provides client-facing teams with the right skills, content, and insights to win business and retain clients at scale. It’s purpose-built to meet your firm’s current demand and grow with you as your needs evolve. See why more than 400 financial services clients choose Seismic for their enablement needs. Get a demo today, or check our Financial Services Hub for more great resources.
