The Power of Financial Services Knowledge in Selling:
If we don’t know the industry we’re selling to, what point of difference can we bring to the customer?
According to Forrester’s research:
Only 20% of executives say that meetings with salespeople meet expectations.
76% say that salespeople don’t understand their customer’s role and responsibilities.
77% say sales professionals can’t demonstrate how their company’s products or services will help the client to make money, save money, reduce risk or all three.
Supporting this data, research by The Training Industry highlights persistent gaps in the business acumen of the sales function:
Only 37% of buyers say salespeople provide unique industry insights.
Just 34% of buyers see vendors as “always effective” in sales conversations with executives.
Many report ongoing gaps in business understanding of the sales function.
The customer’s crucial question is, “How will what you’re selling help my business in tangible terms?”
That question isn’t being answered well much of the time. Your salespeople’s product and solution knowledge needs to go beyond technical specifications and encompass its business impact and how it can meet your customer’s needs.
If one area of knowledge is possibly as important as sales skills, it’s industry knowledge. When you know what’s going on in your customer’s industry – the big players, the latest developments, the drivers of revenue, and the industry trends on the executives’ minds you will have better conversations with your customers.
A real scenario from the Financial Services industry:
Your sales team gets a request from an existing large banking customer to quote for more servers, storage, and networking capacity. While your team will ask questions about the technical requirements, do they know enough about more significant trends in Financial Services that could be driving the request from a business perspective? Or better yet, could they initiate a conversation based on knowing about fast-moving trends like Embedded finance and/or Open Banking, which are driving change in many sectors?
How did we help?
In the case of a large IT company client: they recognized the challenge. They engaged our alliance partner, Exceed-Global, and Ulysses Partners to develop and deliver a long-running series of training sessions for sales teams worldwide. Ulysses Partners provided the financial services industry context needed to accelerate sales activities, while Exceed-Global shared how to apply these insights to the sales process. The sessions were delivered live and recorded and have been used by sales teams in Asia, Europe, and North America.
The result: deeper client conversations that have led to an even more significant commitment by the IT client to an industry-focused approach to their markets.