For this episode, we will answer the following question,
Why should financial advisors change their sales process to inbound sales?
The typical sales process goes as follows:
The advisor contacts a prospect to schedule a time to do a demo or sales presentation. During the demo, the advisor will use a generic presentation about the company, details about the investment solution and the impressive or potential returns. After the presentation and probing to invest, the prospect says that they need to go home and think about it. The advisor will then follow up after a few days to see if they would want to move forward with the investment.
This typical sales process or as I like to call it "legacy sales process" leads to 4 challenges:
1. Most financial services follow the legacy sales process. There is no differentiation and it is becoming predictable.
2. It is focused on selling for the sake of selling and is not customer centric. Potential investors these days can see right through that and will likely believe that the advisor is working solely for their own benefit.3. The relationship is not nurtured. It’s straight selling so potential investors do not feel that the advisor understands their particular challenge or goal.
4. The typical follow-ups can often come across as an annoyance. Advisors are following up without providing any additional value, with their eyes set only on hoping to close a deal.
These 4 challenges could be addressed by Implementing Inbound Sales.
So What is inbound sales for Financial Advisors?
Inbound Sales is a modern sales process that takes into consideration modern sales behaviour, which focuses on building trust through education and guidance throughout the buyer’s journey in order to shorten the sales cycle, increase lead retention and close more deals. Advisors would use inbound marketing resources such as content and social media to enable inbound sales.
The Buyer’s Journey has 3 stages:
The Awareness Stage: Where a potential investor becomes aware of a challenge or goal that they need to face and are looking for content to help them better understand their situation.
Consideration stage: Where the potential investor has clearly defined the challenge or goal and is now looking for different types of investment solutions.
Decision Stage: When the potential investor is looking to invest in a specific investment solution and is looking for the best investment firm to help them process the transaction.
The Legacy sales process focuses on the Decision stage because it assumes that by doing a demo or sales presentation, the investor will already be placed in a position to make a decision immediately. However, Inbound sales teaches us that to win over modern sales buyers, advisors need to address all 3 stages to foster a relationship to gain their trust and to guide them to the right solution that is suitable for tackling their challenge or to fulfill their goal.
Inbound Sales shifts the sales process from selling to helping. Helping investors figure out their challenge or goal, providing useful content for them, and guiding them in the right direction to the right type of solution will help you win far more business deals than the legacy sales process.
That is all for this episode. If you have any marketing questions that you would like us to answer related to the financial service world, please send them to podcast@bethinkmarketing.com
