Paving the way for Sales Success in the Financial Services Industry

Sellers and Marketers in the Financial Services industry have their work cut out for them. With strict rules and ever-changing regulations to adhere to, who wouldn’t struggle to create impactful, up-to-the-minute content and distribute it in a purposeful way? Haunted by the risk of penalties and in search of a competitive advantage in an over-saturated market, many Financial Services companies are turning to digital to help them streamline content efforts and improve engagement with prospective clients while securing compliance and mitigating risk.

Here, Mediafly outlines best practices Financial Services companies can implement to align sales, marketing, and compliance and achieve a holistic approach for improved client experiences.

Predictive Analytics: Use data mining, algorithms, and machine learning to analyze existing data, recognize patterns, and make predictions about future events or actions.

1. Identify your target audience. These are the people you’ll be investing your time and resources in. What are their qualifications? What makes them an ideal client?
2. Gather data. How do they behave? What content are they accessing? What purchases have they made? What other information can you use to refine your target audience? How about to optimize marketing campaigns or sales pitches?
3. Make predictions. Can you identify which prospects are truly qualified based on historical data? Do you see patterns in the data that signal when a prospect is ready to engage with an agent or advisor?
4. Drive revenue. Using data and predictions to focus your agents and advisors on the highest quality leads empowers them to create more productive and effective sales interactions, resulting in increased deal velocity and improved close rates.

Content Automation and Personalization: Ensure content can be updated and customized quickly and accurately and made easily accessible to your sales force on-demand.

1. Create a centralized content repository. Still sending new pitch decks out via email? Store slides and other collateral in a portal or application that enables you to quickly update and refresh it to ensure your sales force has access to the latest materials. Content repositories that link back to your data feed offer insights into usage and adoption and help marketers make informed decisions about how to optimize content moving forward.
2. Use dynamic content. Can agents and advisors intuitively mix-and-match content to better address prospective clients’ unique needs? Adopt a sales enablement solution that offers representatives the flexibility to personalize information for their audience, within the parameters of compliance.
3. Provide a consistent and engaging client experience. Content automation that incorporates compliant personalization ensures brand consistency, customer-centricity and greatly reduced risk throughout the sales process.

Sales Engagement: Give agents and advisors the ability to quickly and easily access all compliant content (e.g. presentations, videos, interactive tools, etc.) to enable organic and meaningful sales interactions.

1. Integrate your sales systems. Is your sales force wasting valuable time that could be spent selling? Combine the power of your sales enablement platform with your CRM to automatically log sales activity, meeting records and presentations used. Agents and advisors can use the intel to inform future meetings; marketers can identify if, how, and when content is being used to measure effectiveness and optimize accordingly; and management can track activity against goals to gauge effectiveness and help duplicate patterns of success.
2. Capture and act on real-time input from buyers. Does your sales enablement platform offer agents and advisors access to all compliant content in one place, whether online or offline? If it does, reps can use real-time feedback to quickly and easily pivot discussions to address relevant topics and enhance the quality of client interactions.
3. Measure and understand what content drives revenue. Based on input from other agents and advisors, representatives can see what content is most effective at each stage of the buying cycle.Platform data and analytics also help marketers to focus future efforts on the content that adds the most value from a sales perspective.

For more information or help getting started with the practices outlined above, request a demo.

About Mediafly
Mediafly is a mobile sales enablement solution that enhances how brands engage prospective buyers. By using Mediafly’s platform, marketing and sales teams at companies including PepsiCo, GE Healthcare, MillerCoors and Charles Schwab, are able to deliver custom, dynamic sales presentations quickly and efficiently, engaging customers with insights that are relevant to them. Mediafly’s Evolved Selling™ solution enables sellers to be more flexible and interactive in their sales interactions, resulting in increased sales and stronger customer relationships.

Evolved Selling™ takes sales enablement to the next level by incorporating methodologies and technology that enhances engagement with prospective buyers. Read more about our approach to Evolved Selling™.

Source:

1) Abramovich, Giselle. “15 Mind-Blowing Stats About Financial Services Marketing.” CMO.com.

2) Kshirsagar, Mousami. “Predictive Analytics, a game changer for transaction banking.” www.finextra.com

3) Rinaldo, Jordan. “20 Sales Enablement Statistics You Can’t Ignore.” www.saleshub.ca

4) How B2B Sellers Win in the Age of the Customer, a commissioned study by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Mediafly