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Ong Kai Kiat

How to Stand Out In a Competitive Financial Landscape In Singapore

POST:

July 05, 2017

BY: Ong Kai Kiat

Singapore is the leading financial hub in Asia. There is no lack of financial institutions serving different segments from retail to corporate to investment and wealth management. How can your institution stand out from the crowd and communicate your value proposition clearly in this competitive market?

As a start, we can reference the recent Adobe’s CMO.com survey of 840 financial services in December 2016. One key finding of this survey is that an overwhelming 87% of participants agree that their top priority is to provide a smooth and consistent customer journey across multiple touch points digitally.

Source: SurveyGizmo

The chart above shows the typical buyers journey from awareness to advocacy. In today’s digital age, financial marketers agree that they have to focus on online ads, email marketing, pay per click, social media, blogs and their website. In the pre-purchase phrase, there are a number of digital touch points which needs to be standardized and optimized.

If a high net worth individual was in the process of selecting his wealth manager to handle his $2 million asset for instance, he would have searched the web for the available solutions first. This is where online ads, social media, media coverage and the company’s website would collectively influence the client.

Source: HubSpot

When these digital assets create a favourable impression in the eyes of the prospect, then your colleagues would be able to connect with the prospect through telephones and email across all levels according to Hubspot’s survey of 6,399 professionals in 141 countries.

Another area which marketers should look out for are potentially disruptive trends. Customers' preferences have shifted to video today and there is a rising expectation that artificial intelligence could be deployed to engage prospects and clients alike in the future. Data analytics are deemed to be important by 99% of CMO’s respondents and a slew of fintech companies have emerged to provide various solutions to financial institutions.

Such disruption might be exciting for marketers to grasp intellectually but it presents a challenge in change management across your organization. 58% of CMO respondents have the opinion that training is vital in their firm’s digital transformation efforts. After all, there is no point in purchasing promising technology if it is under-utilized in the organization.

Source: HubSpot

Training is the top 4 sales priority across all industries and most companies expect to spend $10,000 or less this year on training. This is on par with the budget for sales technology. Companies are also have to work to align the work between the marketing and sales department. For instance, if a prospect were to fill in the form in a landing page from a marketing campaign, there should be a service level agreement where the sales department would call the prospect within 48 hours.

Response and Closing Deals

Source: HubSpot

After all that is said and done, sales is the most important bloodline of an organization. The reality on the ground is that salespeople find it harder to get a response from prospects and to close deals compared to two to three years ago.This shows that the ground is shifting. Creating a smooth and consistent digital customer journey, preparing for disruption, arranging for training and alignment strategies do not happen overnight. You require a comprehensive marketing strategy from an outsider who understands your business intimately. Here at Alchemise Consulting, we specialize in creating an effective and aligned sales and marketing strategies.

To find out more about how we can help take your business to the next level, please register below.

How To Craft An Effective Message With Limited Marketing Budget

POST:

July 03, 2017

BY: Ong Kai Kiat

As the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) of a medium sized financial company, you have limited resources and marketing budget. After you have stood out from the competition, you will have to accept that unlike the larger companies; your marketing efforts have to be targeted and effective with lesser room for errors. One approach of creating such effective marketing strategy is to stand in the shoes of your client’s Chief Financial Officer (CFO).

Crafting The Right Message
A recent Oracle survey provided a powerful insight into the shifting role of the CFO. In today’s digital world, CFOs place priority in the capturing, measuring and reporting of company’s data in real time. For instance, for 76% of CFOs, customer satisfaction is their top business value priority but only 25% of them are able to capture measures of customer satisfaction effectively.

64% of CFOs put emphasis on the quality of their business process but only 33% have captured sufficient data on it. In such an environment, for your marketing materials to land with your client’s CFO who will be deciding on the facilities provider, it must emphasize the integration with their system (e.g. API), real time data analytics and your relationship with cutting edge technology.

In other words, the key message of your marketing materials would be to help them to identify future priorities and opportunities instead of looking at the rear view mirror. The shift in focus from strict expenditure control (‘bean counters’) to being forward looking reflects the changing customer preferences which financial institutions must grasp.

Client Preference For Direct Communication
This coincides with the HubSpot survey of salespeople which agreed that changing preferences is a sales disruptor. In particular, one of them wrote this:

“There’s a generational change away from personal service and direct communication fed by a growing preference for technology—not people.”

In today’s generation, marketing efforts would take the front side while salespeople would take a back seat in defining the sales revenue of a company. For customers, this is reflected in the related ranking of trusted information as presented in the chart below.

Source: HubSpot

Both business software and financial products are long term and weighty decisions to be undertaken by companies. In today’s environment, they are least likely to trust sales people compared to word-of-mouth, customer references and media articles. This means that the marketing strategy has to evolve into a multi channel approach to reach out to customers to build the sales momentum needed to break into the bigger playing leagues.

Team Work and Alignment
A targeted and effective marketing plan requires a process of discovery and detailed planning. Alchemise Consulting is the marketing expert in this field and we can help you to define a customized strategy to appeal to your target audience. For the financial sector, we recommend that the CMO and the CFO come to the table. The CMO can explain the organization’s target audience and the results of previous marketing campaigns.

Internally, Alchemise will also aid you to align your marketing and sales efforts. This has been the missing link in most companies which means that even the strongest marketing efforts go to waste. For instance, if your marketing effort results in a query in your webform, how long does it take for your sales people to contact them?

Source: HubSpot

Alchemise will provide the strategy and the CFO would contribute the viewpoints of his counterparts from the client’s side. Based on the CFO’s input, we will refine the plan further for your consideration. We will not rest until we have an effective marketing strategy for your organization that fits your goal and budget. This can be achieved starting with a monthly budget of S$25,000.

See The Results In 6 Months
Our consulting director, Chak Ng, will form the working team with your CMO and CFO to reach out to your target audience effectively and skip the pitfalls. You will see actual results after 6 months and pull ahead of your competition. This will be an investment that will be worth your time and money.

Capturing Strategic Opportunities in Singapore With Financial Talent

POST:

July 03, 2017

BY: Ong Kai Kiat

The Singapore economy is now roaring again in 2017 after enduring multiple headwinds in the previous year. We can remember how low oil prices wracked havoc on oil servicing companies and major banks which financed them, such as DBS and OCBC. This blow was in addition to the unexpected Brexit and the election of the Trump Presidency last year.

As Singapore is an open economy, these uncertainties weighed on the economic growth. In 2015, the Singapore economy grew by 1.9% which is the slowest since the global financial crisis of 2009. In 2016, the growth improved to 2.0%. In the first quarter of 2017 alone, the Singapore economy grew by 2.7% with the manufacturing and finance sector leading the way with 5% and 1.9% growth respectively.

Outside of this high level economic view, the surest sign that the Singapore economy is improving would be to take a look at the hiring patterns of the local banking industry. Financial institutions in Singapore added an additional 23,400 employees in 2016 which reflected their growing bullishness of the economy.

Talent War From Top Tier Banks
As the economy improves, banks would want to hire more talents to service their clients better. Top tier banks such as Standard Chartered and Citi hired 1,000 and 800 new employees respectively last year and we can expect further hiring this year.

As the senior management of a smaller financial institution, it is worrying when such top tier banks start to hire aggressively. Their headhunters are likely to target your best performing staff in both the relationship management and support functions. When key talents head for the door, especially if they are sales talent, people in the organization sit up and take notice.

PwC noted that the war for talent is more intense in Asia. 60% of Asian CEOs find it difficult to attract the required talent compared to 43% globally. 30% of CEOs had to delay or cancel a strategic initiative due to talent constraints. It would be next to impossible to capture emerging strategic opportunities as the economy recovers with these constraints.

Retention Strategies
The best strategy is to take active action to retain your best employees before they head for the exits. Here are three retention strategies for your consideration. As noted in the previous article (How a Business Growth Assessment can Unlock Your Hidden Potential ), it takes a good nine months before you break even with the best ‘sprinter’ sales person.

1. Combine market salary rates with flexible work arrangement

The first step to retain your best employee is to recognize that compensation matters. The skillset of a good sales employee can easily be transferred to another financial organization. Therefore, it is vital that you review market rates periodically and inform your internal stakeholders the importance of at least matching the market rates.

Then again, if it is difficult to find the budget to match the market rates, you can work around this hard constraint by providing flexible work arrangements. Keep in mind that some of your best workers might work best at night to come up with creative solutions for your clients. A flexible work schedule that de-emphasizes a standard reporting time might work wonders in keeping your staff even if they are paid slightly below the market.

2. Engage your employees through training and career progression discussion

Skillful employees love challenges which stretch them beyond their current capacity. It is this commitment to personal and professional growth that sets them apart. This drive allows them to hit their sales target consistently. Beyond the monetary consideration, they are likely to be tempted by other offers when they feel that they are stagnant in their position.

Therefore, it is worthwhile to invest in your employees through consistent training and development so that they can excel beyond their current capacity. It should also be standard practice for managers of different levels to discuss career progression options. These career options should be mapped ahead of time and then tracked for its actual progression.

Source: Data-Ink

Take the time to point out the strength and weakness of his performance. Your staff will feel engaged and appreciated which would encourage them to stay for the long run.

Hiring Strategies
The best defence is offence. Instead of waiting of someone to poach your employees, you can start to poach someone else’s employees first. You can also hire if you deem that your firm is ripe for an expansion or if your firm is newly established in Singapore.

In these scenarios, instead of handing your job description to your headhunting firm, you might want to consider these two strategies to find the right talent for your firm.

1. Find Like Minded Individuals By Promoting Your Company’s Values

Birds of a feather flock together. If your company values high performance and high compensation, then make sure that it is clearly communicated in your company description. There are some high calibre employers who take a step further by commissioning flattering corporate videos.

Source: DBS

For instance, DBS commissioned ‘DBS Sparks’, a Youtube Mini Series to enhance its corporate image. It portrays their young DBS relationship bankers as driven, professional, ambitious and yet have a heart of gold to help their clients through difficult periods.

DBS has also clearly defined their business as people driven with PRIDE (Purpose, Relationship Led, Innovative, Decisive and Everything Fun). As a result, DBS is able to attract high caliber talents consistently to power its pole position as the safest bank in Asia.

2. Develop a compelling Employee Value Proposition

In a competitive industry, employers can set themselves apart by defining their unique characteristics to their employees. For instance, DBS brand themselves as a fun place to work where employees get to experiment and discover solutions for their clients.

Source: eFinancialCareers

As a result of its consistent efforts at portraying and promoting such desirable workplaces, DBS has been named as the Best Employer in Singapore and Asia Pacific by Aon Hewitt. eFinancialCareers surveyed more than 2000 financial professionals in Asia and even then DBS emerged at number four despite competition from world class competition from the likes of J.P. Morgan, Google and Facebook.

Grabbing A Piece of The Pie By Moving Fast
As the Singapore economy expands, it is the fast movers which will gain larger slice of the pie. This is also a good time for new entrants to enter the market if they have unique products, connections or processes to make a difference in the market.

Besides the traditional hiring processes, you might want to hire professional sales and marketing on a contract basis who are remunerated on results. This would allow you to start your operations on the ground running instead of spending the months to get your team together. That’s all for now and until the next article, stay sharp!

For some more detailed insight on how you can best position yourself for a successful new market entry or expansion, contact us today for a strategy consultation.

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Ong Kai Kiat

Recent Posts

How to Stand Out In a Competitive Financial Landscape In Singapore

How To Craft An Effective Message With Limited Marketing Budget

Capturing Strategic Opportunities in Singapore With Financial Talent

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