Sales & Marketing in the Finance Industry has evolved. Don't get left behind
As a boutique strategy and growth marketing consulting company, Engelworks has done much work in the finance industry, including asset management, banking, fintech and, more recently, in Web3 and crypto. Finance as a sector has seen a lot of innovation and disruption to the traditional model (Bank 4.0. by Brett King is an excellent book if you are interested in this subject). However, the growth challenge - how to grow customer base and revenue - is there for everyone - both incumbents and fintech. During current hard economic times, there's an opportunity to take a leap forward and gain market share from struggling competitors.
One of our most in-demand offerings has been designing and implementing revenue growth strategies in financial services companies, both traditional finance and fintech. This often involves building a modern, fully integrated sales & marketing function. It has become clear that finance companies' Sales & Marketing functions are evolving fast.
So what has fundamentally changed in Sales & Marketing in the finance industry?
Shift to customer centricity
At the core of a modern growth strategy framework across most industries, including finance, lies the concept of customer centricity. This means a deep understanding of a customer's needs and designing an offering, including the product or service and customer experience, around that need and customer.
We firmly believe that only a fully integrated Sales & Marketing function can deliver the necessary experience to a modern customer. Therefore a combined Sales & Marketing engine is key to driving sustainable revenue growth.
From outbound 'scattered gun' approach to high-value inbound marketing
Many of you would remember how sales were made in finance not that long ago. Salespeople hit their phones, trying to reach potential clients via outbound sales calls. Websites of financial companies, especially in B2B, often were extraordinarily sparse and only discoverable by direct search (some still are!). Most of the information on products and services was communicated through a one-to-one conversation with a sales specialist who often has limited information about the client and their needs and used a generic pitchbook. Clients would often require education on the topic, as they would have little prior knowledge. Usually, an hour would pass without a salesperson making tangible progress in the sales process.
Fast forward to 2022. The most common first step in a sales process is now actually done by a customer. Having some idea of their problem or a need, be it a vague or a well-defined one, a customer would hit their search button to find out 'what's out there. This would help them better understand their needs and get a rough idea of what solutions exist. Having done some basic research, including searching and perhaps asking their peers for recommendations, they would seek further information from selected providers. If your company got on their radar, you would hear from them. This is what we would refer to as an 'inbound scenario'.
The covid pandemic has accelerated the adoption of digital behaviours and the speed of digital transformation. Although face-to-face selling will remain, being available for customers across all channels will be vital.
Historically there has been a clear delineation between sales & marketing
Let's take a definition from HubSpot, a leading sales & marketing software provider: 'Marketing informs and attracts leads and prospects to your company and product or service. On the other hand, sales work directly with prospects to reinforce the value of the company's solution to convert prospects into customers.'
Traditionally, there was a reasonably clear delineation between sales and marketing. Marketing would take care of the early stages of a conversion funnel, set the stage and pass on a lead to sales.
In B2B financial services, in particular, marketing has often been underutilised, and most sales & marketing strategy focus on outbound sales-driven activity. However, many salespeople are discovering that calling prospects, icy prospects, is not working that well anymore. For a start, who has recently succeeded in reaching a contact via a landline?
However, the lines have blurred, and five trends have evolved:
1. Need for higher quality marketing content at the top of the conversion funnel.
We often hear, ' Why should we give away useful information about our product or subject area for free to anyone? What if they take it and go somewhere else?'. Of course, such risk does exist. However, by opening up helpful content, making it accessible widely, and helping people who search for this information educate themselves on their needs and available solutions, you are creating an opportunity to become part of their 'consideration set'.
If you don't offer good quality content on your website and across other channels, the prospect will find this education information elsewhere, and they will not become a lead for you.
Informative and engaging content that describes your products and services and a broader context of how prospective clients could use these to solve their problems should be available online.
This content must be optimised for search engines. This means your digital assets should have authority and be valuable and relevant - these are the criteria for optimising search engine algorithms.
Building brand awareness is also crucial. Another scenario for this initial engagement is when a prospect, aware of their need and about to do initial research, recalls a name of a company that he has heard or seeks recommendations, both online and word-of-mouth, and then checks out suggested company names directly.
2. Marketing can go more profound within a conversion funnel and take a prospective client further within a sales process.
So, in essence, a lot of the material that you would traditionally put into a standard pitch deck's 'education' sections and spend half of your one-on-one sales meeting on can live online and get your client ready for your first conversation with a salesperson.
This starts with content that is available for free both on the site and across social media, which creates initial interest. The next step could be granting a customer access to higher value add content in return for their email/phone number. This could include pre-recorded and live webinars, white papers, podcasts, presence at industry events etc.
The idea is to create more robust and better-qualified leads and gather more information about their needs, which should help improve conversions. It also reduces salespeople's time spent on low-value leads.
3. Marketing works alongside sales throughout the process instead of transferring a lead to sales at a fixed point.
Within modern organisations, marketing now provides targeted sales enablement content and input throughout the sales process. This allows for personalising a sales process and an offering based on a particular customer's need.
With more traffic and activity across digital channels, marketing has an increasing role in identifying sales opportunities and creating suitable journeys and content to convert to revenue.
4. Customer experience becomes crucial at all stages of the customer journey.
We would argue that the lines between where sales end and customer onboarding and customer service begin have also blurred. Customer journeys now take many shapes in an omnichannel environment, both physical and digital. Optimising customer experience is key to achieving high conversion and retention rates and building advocacy.
5. Creation of an integrated sales & marketing engine powered by data and tech.
Running a fully integrated sales & marketing function, which can create personalised customer experiences across all channels, requires strong marketing & sales technology and a data backbone. This enables profiling customers, personalising their Funnell and offering, ultimately improving conversion rates.
The skillsets of salespeople in the finance industry have also evolved
To succeed in modern finance companies, salespeople need to focus on these skills:
More profound expert knowledge and ability to provide advice. As discussed above, customers are often more knowledgeable on the subject when they have their first conversation with a salesperson. Therefore, salespeople must swiftly move past the 'education' phase to succeed in conversions.
Ability to qualify leads efficiently based on the information available in the public domain and data gathered during the marketing & sales process. Research and business skills, e.g., working out a business case for a client, are essential to identify higher volume and margin business.
Digital skills. Marketing and sales tools such as CRM systems and data analytics have become vital. So is the ability to produce engaging and SEO-friendly content.
Digital presence and personal brand. As clients do a lot of their due diligence online before sales meetings, salespeople need to have a solid digital presence in the channels where they are likely to be discovered, e.g. on LinkedIn, Twitter etc. Salespeople are increasingly adopting ambassador roles for their companies.
Effective communication skills. Modern communication is omnichannel, and content takes various forms. Successful salespeople need to be fluent in all of these.
Organisational structures have adapted too
Companies increasingly employ Chief Revenue Officers who oversee both functions to ensure proper integration between sales and marketing, ultimately generating revenue.
We have also seen that where sales & marketing teams share (some) of their key goals, e.g. revenue, and their reward structures are designed accordingly, the overall performance is better.
It is also valuable for co-locating the teams and, where possible, introducing rotations and shared projects so that the teams can adequately bond.
Deploying inbound marketing strategies powered by high-value marketing content allows sales teams to focus on more exciting and productive work and scale and automate the early stages of the conversion process.
In conclusion…
Salespeople and marketers close the deal together. It has always been a team effort and will always stay that way.
If you want to explore how to create a cutting-edge (and cost-efficient!) sales & marketing engine for your business, do not hesitate to contact us, or learn more about our services here.