Closing more technology sales with financial services industry knowledge.

According to the Sales Benchmark Index, “86% of revenue in complex B2B sales environments is being generated by just 13% of the sales population.”* Ulysses Partners’ David Milligan and Exceed Global’s Sue Aspinall recently shared their insights into why:

In technology sales, particularly with larger multinationals, sales teams tend to create customer conversations that are product-centric and technology driven - often not touching on the value drivers, business outcomes, and trends that are creating demand for the technology. These are also key inputs needed by executives in their decision-making process. So why the gap?

Larger technology companies typically have a matrix-like structure within which pockets of industry expertise are scattered and not scaled. This leads to a gap in the sales team’s ability to understand the client’s industry and use that knowledge to create better client conversations - and in turn, more effectively showcase the value their technology can create. Furthermore, by building these insights into the sales process itself, it moves the salesperson’s role from “order-taker” to “business partner”. 

In an industry changing as rapidly as financial services, the need for sales conversations with a greater business context has become crucial. For example, an understanding of concepts like ‘embedded finance’ and ‘open banking’ helps executives and technology sales teams dramatically improve their outcomes. 

Moreover, a recently delivered training by Ulysses Partners and Exceed Global showed that this understanding not only helped to improve the size of the sale - but also the delivery expectations of the customer with regards to the solution being sold. 

This opens an interesting question: How many deals are left on the table or client expectations misread because the discussion was product-focused and not business outcome driven?

Exceed and Ulysses Partners work together to develop and deliver training customized programs for firms selling to financial services industry (FSI) clients. Reach out to learn more today.