Today’s connected and mobile customers have disrupted the sales dynamic in financial services. By researching firms and product offerings on their own, and waiting to contact companies until late in their decision process, they now control most of the sales process. When customers do engage with firms, they expect more than a sales pitch. They want personalized interactions and information relevant to their situation and specific requirements.
To meet these expectations, financial services firms need to take a consultative approach to sales. That means facilitating conversations with customers and prospects by giving them the right information at the right time, and delivering it in the right ways.
In order to make a smooth transition to consultative selling, leading financial services firms are turning to new sales enablement and marketing automation systems. Mutual fund firms, asset managers and wealth advisory companies are adopting these systems with more specific goals in mind, including helping their teams scale.
“Scale” doesn’t necessarily mean firms are turning to more marketing hiring and spending. Their focus is more on helping marketing teams accomplish more by working more efficiently.
Using these systems, marketers can significantly reduce or eliminate the manual and repetitive processes that bog them down today. For example, some systems can transform collateral production from a manual, time-consuming and distributed process to one that is centralized and mostly automated.
Automation systems help marketing teams increase their operational efficiency across a range of functions. By saving them time, these systems free up marketing teams to work on other projects. As a result, the same teams can get a lot more done without changing headcount. They give asset management and wealth advisory firms an effective way to make a greater marketing impact without big spending increases.
Simply put, automation systems help firms achieve greater scale in their marketing operations without heavy investments. It’s one of the big reasons why these systems are gaining traction so quickly in this market.
