Summary: Insider Tips on Selling Technology to Banks
Insider Tips Summary
We’ve recently published a six-part series offering Insider Tips for Selling Technology to Banks. In case you missed some of them, we’d like to summarize and provide links to all the episodes.
Banks and Technology Companies Are Different!
In the introductory post, we discuss how radically different banks are from technology companies in their approach to business, risk management, and organizational culture to name just a few. This introduction leads us into five critical Actions – our Insider Tips.
Action 1: Make Sure You’re Solving the Bank’s Problem
It sounds obvious, but you have no idea how often we’ve been approached by technology companies that have a solution to a problem that we don’t have! So our first critical action is to align your solution and value proposition to the real priorities of your prospect.
Action 2: Establish Credibility
You may be very good at your technology, but that isn’t everything a bank is looking for. Action 2 encourages you to work with your potential client banks to establish yourselves as credible partners. Does your prior experience with other banks establish your ability to play in this arena? Have you actually solved problems similar to the one this bank is facing. Do you really understand what we’re trying to deal with.
Action 3: Show That You Are Serious
Of course you’re serious about wanting to win a bank’s business. After all, you need the revenue stream. But in Action 3, you also help the bank see that you are serious players, are bringing your very best to the table, and will be valuable partners, with long-term commitment and capacity to advance their business.
Action 4: Differentiate Yourselves and Your Value Proposition
Unless you have a very specialized niche that only you are qualified to address, you are working in a highly competitive and crowded field. That means that a bank needs to be able to see you in the crowd, to identify why you stand out as the best provider for them. Action 4 suggests some ways to do this.
Action 5: Partner with Banking Industry Experts
The majority of technology providers are not fortunate enough to have deep industry expertise. Yet, in order to be successful selling into a bank, this will often be necessary. Action 5 encourages you to find partners who can offset this gap, so that together you can offer a compelling solution, a long-lasting partnership, and a growing reputation as a company banks can work with.
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We hope you have enjoyed this series and found it helpful. When Graham wrote the original Insider Tips article, some seven years ago, it resonated with many FinTech companies that were struggling with how to sell their great technology to banks. Since then, the market has become more crowded and complex, and the distance between technology companies and financial services firms has, if anything, widened even further. If you add the actions recommended in this series to the high quality technology solutions you have developed, we believe you will have a much greater chance of success, and we wish you well!
Feel free to reach out to Graham Seel or David Milligan if you’d like to discuss any of these points more fully.