If you have read our earlier articles about the importance of standing out and crafting an effective market message, one key question would have stood out; how can I bring these astonishing results to my financial institution as the Chief Marketing Officer? Every financial institution is unique in its own way. You have to deal with your own strengths and challenges.
While every financial institution is different, they have three common components: people, process and system. Regardless of which vertical you occupy, you will need marketing people to craft the message and sales people to deliver them. There has to be an agreed process of doing, whether it is done formally or informally. Finally, there has to be a system where customers' information are captured and utilized.
If you can tune these three components properly, sales would naturally hit a new high under your leadership. In the following section, we will go into just one area for each of the three components.
People Challenge
In any small or medium sized organization, it is a challenge to find and retain talents. You start by recruiting a young talent whose skills are unpolished. After two years of painstaking nurture and guidance, he is now the star performer. Attractive offers start to pour in from external companies and within three months, your talent is gone. This is especially true for sales and marketing professionals.
Their work requires them to be out and about with frequent interactions with suppliers and clients. If they are good, they don’t even need to search for a new job. Whenever a good sales person leaves the company, the company will have to spend significant time and resources to hire a new sales person.
According to UK’s leading recruitment consultancy, for the average sales person on a $70,000 annual wage, the cost of hiring is a massive $170,000 if you consider both one-off recruitment and training costs and the recurring cost such as salary and benefits.
Source: Imparta White Paper- Reducing the Breakeven Time for New Salespeople
Do your own math of each category and you will have an idea of the actual cost of hiring a new sales person. Here at Alchemise Consulting, instead of this traditional hiring process, we would provide you with experienced hires at the fraction of the price and you can see immediate results.
Process - Proper Training Materials
One of the reasons behind the stalled growth for financial companies is that the knowledge and expertise are confined within the brains of the founding team members. The founding team members might be highly skilled after spending years in major financial companies before they left to start their own companies.
However, the hours of each co-founder is limited. If they wish to expand beyond their current pool of clients, they will need to hire and train their own sales personnel. Short of a brain transfer operation, the next best solution would be to train them up for them to be familiar with the company’s values, sales process and working chemistry with other supporting staff.
Source: Imparta
One of the difference between the Sprinter and the Medium Runner is the training involved. The Sprinter can normally bring in sales within six months and you will breakeven after nine months instead of 12 months for the Medium Runner. Having good training materials and process are paramount to any financial services company to navigate sales transition which happens periodically.
This is the secret formula to break into the major leagues. Imagine the impact of creating sprinters in their organization for every new salesperson.
System - Supporting Your Sales
Sprinters are never going to be sprinters unless they are supported by quality leads both from inbound and outbound sources. The best clients to have are the inbound clients who reach out to you after reading quality content on your websites. This means that they have done their own research online and you are qualified.
The sales funnel has changed and marketing has a bigger role to play. Once your prospect were to approach you, it is with the intent to purchase your services. The conversion rate will be much higher than before using the outbound process.
For outbound leads, this means that you will need to have a quality database of prospects with the relevant contacts at the right level to get past the gatekeepers. Then you will require a CRM system to track and record the activities that are leading to a sales in a systematic manner.
Business Growth Assessment
When all is said and done, the most important aspect of any organization is growth in revenue. In the competitive financial landscape in Singapore, you will require an independent business growth assessment from a competent third party vendor.
As we mentioned earlier, every financial services company is unique in its own way. There is no one-size-fits-all approach for success. You will require both the big picture approach and attention to details to drive you towards the success for your organization.
Our principal consultant, Chak Ng, brings over 17 years of strategic sales and business consulting experience to the table to improve your business. We can offer a complementary 2-hour Business Growth Assessment with key officers of your company to see if you on track and what gaps you may have.