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How to avoid sales pitfalls in financial services with end-to-end sales acceleration

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Contents

Financial sector sales: Sailing on stormy seas 1

Solution: Simplify the sales process 3

How much core selling is really going on, day-to-day 4

The key to sales productivity 5

Getting down to brass tacks: The major sales pitfalls 6

Pitfall #1: Dirty data 6

Pitfall #2: Manual document creation 9

Pitfall #3: Manual contract management 12

End-to-end acceleration of your sales cycle 15

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Financial sales: Sailing on stormy seasFinancial sales take place in an increasingly competitive environment, with multiple forces vying for a sales person’s time and attention.

A competitive landscape

Sales in financial services are diverse, with some organizations fielding their own internal sales teams, and many others relying on disparate agents and channel partners to sell their products and services. The fact that these agents and partners are not the exclusive representatives of any single company is part of the reason that the financial services landscape is highly competitive. Add to that the rise of direct-to-consumer products (such as insurance) that put pressure on margins and threaten market share.

88%of incumbent Financial Services

companies are increasingly concerned they are losing

revenue to Financial Technology innovators.

(PWC)


83%of business buyers say it’s

essential to deal with a sales person who is focused on helping them meet their

company’s needs (not just make a quick sale.)

(Salesforce Research)

79%are seeking a rep who understands

their company’s preferences or needs and is a trusted advisor who adds

value to their business. (Salesforce Research)

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Tailored customer service required

The financial services industry is built on customer service. Trust is an essential element of the industry, and agents, brokers and officers are only as good as the relationships that they foster with clients. At the same time, the digital revolution in customer interaction that is taking place across industries is affecting the financial services sector, compounding the need for an individualized interaction with each customer. Today’s prospect comes better informed and with higher expectations of the sales interaction than ever before. The connected customer is looking for a personalized experience, a sales person who is a trusted advisor, and very quick (if not instant) response times.

Increasing complexity, regulation, and risk

The technology infrastructure of the financial services industry is becoming continually more complex. This dynamic is mirrored by the more intricate workload processes needed to meet ever more stringent regulations. Activities that lower risk and ensure compliance have put additional administrative burdens on the sales person, advisor, agent, banker and officer across the financial services industry.


64%Buyers control 64% of the power in their relationship

with vendors. (Aberdeen)

82%say it’s a requirement for the rep

to be available when needed. (Salesforce Research)

The odds of contacting a lead if called in 30minutes versus 5 minutes drop 100 times.100X

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Solution: Simplify the sales processTo meet the demands of these competing requirements, sales people, agents and advisors need to trim all unnecessary fat from the sales process. Slow spots have to be addressed and black holes have to be filled so that sales reps can focus on core selling activities.There are 4 principal ways to simplify the sales process:

1 Streamline: This includes providing support materials and easy access to the assets that can be used for effective customer communication. Steps to take and the sequence in which to take them should be well defined in advance and set up to be as easy as possible. Sales people–whether part of an internal team or external agents–need support from sales operations and enablement, as well as product and marketing to move through their processes as seamlessly as possible.

2 Minimize: The less time that is spent doing things that aren’t necessary to selling, the more time there will be for mission-critical tasks. That means spending as little time as possible on activities like travel, in meetings that aren’t absolutely necessary, or on trivial, manual tasks.

3 Delegate: Assign any tasks possible that aren’t sales-related to other employees. An example of this would be working renewals through a renewals manager.

4 Maximize: The first three areas contribute to the end goal: maximizing time spent on core selling activities. It’s in direct interactions with prospects and customers that financial services sales people engage in-depth and build the relationships so critical to winning over the empowered customer.


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How much core selling is really going on, day-to-dayWhile maximizing sales time is key in the financial services sector, it’s important to realize how little time in a day the typical sales rep actually spends selling.

Sales reps spend only 36% of their time engaged in core selling activities. This means they spend a whopping 64% of their time—more than 5 hours in an 8-hour day—on other things.

Salesforce Research’s State of Sales 2017 found that the average sales rep’s time breaks down as shown to the right:

Percentage of time in an average week sales reps spend on the following tasks**

36%Selling

64%Non-selling

*Taken from ‘A Day in the Life of a Salesperson’ by Quotable, a Saleforce publication. **Data reported is out of a base of respondents in a sales rep or self-employment role. Salesforce Research

It’s no secret that sales productivity is a major issue. But the key point here is that the greatest chunk of time spent on non-selling activities isn’t spent on coffee breaks or meetings. It’s spent on administrative tasks. 25% of a sales person’s time—2 hours out of 8—are spent on trivial, often manual procedures.


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The key to sales productivityThe biggest time sink for sales people is administrative work. There’s a solution for that. In fact, there are many highly efficient and effective tools out there to address this issue. Companies that invest in and integrate this type of solution can see huge payoffs.

The benefits of end-to-end sales acceleration

Companies that streamline with end-to-end sales optimization integrate every step and automate wherever possible for better, faster, cleaner sales. Taking out ineffective, inefficient manual tasks, eliminating errors, improving visibility, and creating consistent, integrated, accelerated processes leads to huge gains in productivity. There’s the added benefit of happier sales people and agents. Reps will have higher job satisfaction spending less time updating CRM records and more time meeting—and exceeding—quota.

“ Any given sales rep may have his or her own preferred route to a close, and anything can happen along the way. By increasing effectiveness at hastening sales workflows, however, organizations essentially build high-speed, direct highways—from the start of the sales process—to its ultimate close … like the impact of highways on travel, the result is transformative.” (Aberdeen Group)


5.6%Companies with efficient sales processes shorten the length of their sales cycle 5.6% YOY,

whereas all others lengthen the YOY sales cycles by 2.6%.

(Aberdeen Group)

198%Companies that effectively refine their sales workflows see huge

benefits, increasing revenue at 2.2 times the rate of all others and

increasing profit margins at 198% greater rate than all others, year

over year. (Aberdeen Group)

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Getting down to brass tacks: The major sales pitfalls You might ask where, precisely, optimization needs to occur. What are the major pitfalls, the places that the most selling time is lost on administrative processes?

The importance of data in financial services

Financial services is a data-heavy sector, requiring frequent data updates and aggregation. Client communications/reporting, analytics for investment insights, and regulatory compliance requirements mean that data must be accurate, up-to-date and readily accessible.

Pitfall #1: Dirty data• Time spent updating CRM data—or not. Sales people, agents, and

advisors can spend a lot of time updating data in a CRM. If they do thismanually, customer service suffers, but it is a task that is required.

• Lack of insight into priorities. Poor data upkeep can make it difficult forsales people to have clear insight into their own opportunities, tasks anddaily priorities. It also creates data quality issues system-wide, which hasa ripple effect.

• Inaccurate pipeline and forecasting information. Sales leadershipneeds accurate data for transparency into business processes, forlooking across the business and understanding what’s working andwhat isn’t. Without up-to-date, accurate sales data in an organization’sCRM, visibility is compromised, the effectiveness of processes can’t beaccurately gauged, and overall sales performance suffers.

27%of salespeople input data into

Salesforce just to satisfy reporting requirements.

(Bluewolf, State of Salesforce)

30%of salespeople believe the

top barrier to deriving insights from Salesforce comes from

limited access to different types of data (including data

outside of Salesforce.)(Bluewolf, State of Salesforce)

79%of salespeople regularly

spend time during their day inputting the same data into

multiple systems. (Bluewolf, State of Salesforce)

$3.1TrillionHow much IBM estimates

that inaccurate data cost the U.S. economy in 2016.(Harvard Business Review)

25%believe the biggest

issue is poor or inconsistent data quality.

(Bluewolf, State of Salesforce)

“ CSO Insights found that the average win rate of forecast deals was 45.8%. This continued inability of many organizations to accurately predict their sales performance can cause challenges for not just sales, but the rest of the enterprise as well.” (CSO Insights)


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Solution #1: Data optimization with a data management solutionA robust data management solution can make the process of working with financial data much easier for your sales people, and has benefits company-wide:

• It’s easier and faster to work with data, improving efficiency in data tasks up to 10x (remember your sales team isn’t the only team that works with data.)

• Data updates can be done quickly and accurately, guaranteeing that the data in your CRM is clean and up-to-date.

• A grid interface (like Conga ActionGrid) can provide intuitive, single-screen views that drive Salesforce adoption and understanding.

• It’s easy to view, report on and act on sales information. Internal, enterprise-wide visibility improves, as well as the ability to be responsive to customer reporting requests and regulatory requirements..

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2XWhen data quality is strong,

salespeople are almost twice as likely to believe they will achieve

their goals. (Bluewolf, State of Salesforce)

“Using ActionGrid and Composer, Stan Johnson Company is increasing our productivity, cutting costs and helping our brokers provide an exceptional experience for their clients.” Will Crowley, Manager, Information Systems, Stan Johnson Company


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SUCCESS STORY

CompanyUnited Capital is a Financial Life Management firm, with more than 80 offices nationwide and more than $16 billion in assets under management

Challenge United Capital uses Salesforce as its central repository for confidential data about the complete financial picture of its thousands of customers. However, producing customer facing reports reflecting the full breadth of the data required significant manual effort and re-keying.

SolutionUnited Capital accesses the data in its Salesforce instance and accurately transfers it to pre-formatted, client facing documents with Conga Composer. With the press of a single button, employees can generate client profiles, advise agreements and meeting prep documents that pull data from every object in their highly customized application.

Results

Through its document automation solution, United Capital:

• Automated advise agreements to save 25% of a Full Time Equivalent annually.

• Eliminated process latency; any user can produce mailings for their purposes, with no need to manage mailing templates centrally.

• Benefitted from additional use cases: automated meeting prep documents and mail merge letters

“We needed to select merge templates from a user’s PC, not

Salesforce. I called Conga, and the next day it was in the product. That’s

when I knew we’d partnered with the right company. I’ve never worked with a better company. Conga, I wish I could give you higher than 5 out of 5.”

—Brandon Gage SVP Information Technology


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Pitfall #2: Manual document creationSales people have to create a lot of documents during the sales cycle: quotes, contracts, account plans, account briefs or summaries, and customer facing reports make up just part of the list. If your sales people, agents or advisors are creating these documents manually, it is taking a lot of their time.

Document management in financial services

No industry is more document heavy than financial services. Regardless of the use case, numerous documents are required throughout the customer lifecycle: think investment proposals, portfolio summaries, loan underwriting documents, banking disclosures, new account forms, and more.

The dark side of manual document creation

Besides being an inefficient process, creating documents manually by copying and pasting data or content has other down sides.

• Errors are often introduced into documents that go out. Say you’vebeen recognizing revenue on a closed/won opportunity for a coupleof months, and when you look back at it, you realize the sales personmade a clerical error while cutting and pasting a document together.Something was sold improperly, simply due to human error, thatcauses a lot of headaches to undo and correct.

• Inconsistent formatting and branding: If your sales team is generatingdocuments individually, chances are that there are as many versionsand formats out there as you have sales people. This affects howprospects and customers see your company, and their perception ofhow professional your organization is will suffer.

• Lack of visibility into document status: It’s hard for sales reps to keeptrack of where a document is in the process, whether it’s with a customerfor signature or in internal review, or whether it had the most up-to-datepricing structure. Documents can disappear into a black hole, which makesit difficult for sales people to track and respond as needed in a timely way.

43%of teams say that they have to use several disconnected systems or applications and

often copy/paste or rekey information.

(IDC)

46%of execs and managers say

that disconnected document processes impair their abilities to plan, forecast and budget,

due to a lack of visibility. (IDC)

45%of business leaders say

they get documents back that are missing key information, such as signatures, approvals

or dates. (IDC)

51%of business leaders say

that poor document processes lead to documents that

are misfiled or lost. (IDC)


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Solution #2: Automate document generationIf your internal sales team or channel agents automate document generation, there are a number of results and benefits:

• Documents will be error-free. Information populates directly from your CRM into the document, eliminating the need to cut and paste and taking human error out of the equation.

• Documents are produced almost instantly, saving your sales people significant time and giving them time back for those core selling activities.

• Documents are templated, formatted and consistent, creating a professional, on-brand image of your company.

• Documents are automatically saved into Salesforce, making it easy for individual sales people to track their status and content, and creating visibility for everyone on the team and across the company.

• Documents can be automatically personalized based on CRM data, provided the individualized touch that the financial services sector requires.

46%of business leaders say that

creating connected document processes would reduce cycle

times and speed results. (IDC)

73%agree that improving document

processes would increase customer satisfaction and/or

increase brand value. (IDC)


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SUCCESS STORY

CompanyFineMark Bank & Trust is a private bank and wealth and asset management company.

Challenge As a small, client-centered organization, FineMark Bank’s staff was struggling to create all of the documents required of financial institutions to remain compliant. Employees were manually inputting detailed, sensitive client data into Word documents. Transferring massive amounts of data into a massive number of documents was time-intensive, error-prone, and was creating a severe bottleneck in the bank’s workflow.

SolutionFineMark Bank & Trust implemented document automation with Conga Composer to eliminate the manual administrative processes that slowed down work, took time away from customer interaction, and exposed the organization to risk through the manual cutting and pasting of sensitive financial information.

Results

Through its document generation solution, FineMark Bank:

• Improved document generation efficiency 30%

• Can create the individualized trust information package ofdocuments for client in just 20 seconds (up to 9 documents of upto 11 pages each)

• Vastly reduced error and risk

• Maintained compliance and gained more time to focus on clients

“Using Conga, I’ve brought my organization to a different level of

efficiency. We’re a small organization and we’ve only been established for 10 years. Bringing the group into a more

technologically and digitally driven path is fantastic. Conga Composer has created a technologically-driven, one-click process within my organization.”

—Kim Wargo, Assoc. VP, Salesforce Admin,FineMark Bank & Trust


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Pitfall #3: Manual contract managementIf your sales team is managing contracts manually, there are some definite downsides.

Contract management in financial services

As a heavily regulated industry, the financial services sector creates numerous use cases for contract management. Legal and account agreements must be signed, stored, updated when necessary, and remain accessible whenever needed for compliance.

• Keeping it on paper. A manual, paper-based system for keeping andtracking contracts is expensive (printing, faxing, overnight shipping)and slow. Alternatively, if you are using a collection of disparate tools(your CRM, email, Word, and eSignature) that aren’t integrated, it’s alaborious, error-prone, disjointed process as well. Keeping sensitivefinancial information on paper records also creates risk.

• Waiting on legal. Legal reviews often take time, and slow down thecontract process, just when both parties to the sale most want thedeal to close and cross the finish line. It’s legal’s job to protect thecompany, but it’s the sales team’s job to make quota by the end ofquarter, which can create friction.

• Keeping track of versions and redlines. If you’ve ever tried to track andnegotiate a contract via versions emailed back and forth, there’s a goodchance that you’ve edited the wrong version, or forgot to track all of yourchanges—or the other party has. Because it’s a legally binding agreement,these types of problems can cause major headaches. Is it the best use ofanyone’s time to work over versions with a fine-toothed comb?


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• Errors. As with other documents, using manual processes to transfer data—like typing information on a signed form back into your CRM—creates errors.

• Status & visibility. Knowing where a contract is in the negotiation process—who has it and for how long they’ve had it—is key to knowing whether action is called for. Has a customer been sitting on the contract for too long, and is a call required to move the process forward?

Alternatively, there might be steps in your team’s contract processes that are taking a long time, or certain types of contracts that cause more headaches than others. But if you don’t have visibility into your processes, giving you the data you need for these insights, it’s hard to get a handle on these issues.

67%of best-in-class sales

organizations have identified a process for streamlining a sales

contracting workflow, versus on 33% of industry average

organizations.(Aberdeen)

55%of business leaders say that

incoherent document processes create problems with visibility,

so they can’t tell whether documents have been viewed/

reviewed/signed. (IDC)

24%of managers and execs say

that getting documents routed, reviewed and approved is labor-intensive, slow and

takes too long. (IDC)


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Solution #3: Automate contract management An efficient, on-platform contract management solution can streamline the final mile of the sales process.

• All contract data can be generated, negotiated securely (tracking allversions and redlines), signed and stored within your CRM. No morepaper, no more shipping or faxing, no more time lost trying to find thatcontract in the filing cabinet. Risk is reduced when sensitive financialinformation is securely digitized.

• Legal can provide pre-approved contract language or clauses in avirtual library that sales people can access when generating contracts.This empowers your sales people and agents to create, negotiate, andclose the deal without legal having to get involved on a case-by-case (orstage-by-stage) basis. It accelerates the sales cycle while still ensuringthat your legal protections are solid.

• Version tracking is automated and written back into the CRM record,so that no more time will be lost and no more errors will be made frommanual versioning.

• An automated system tracks where contracts are in the cycle, sothat nothing falls through the cracks. The system can also creategreater insight across contract processes, so that you can gain betterunderstanding of slow-downs in your system and address them.

• A contract management solution is a key piece in creating system-wide efficiency, giving time back to your sales team. Better productivitycreates cost savings, reduces human error, and shortens contractcycles. Both sales teams and customers will be satisfied with astreamlined contract process.


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“Conga Composer tied all of our business process automation together. We are now able to market, sell and service our customers better and more efficiently than ever. Conga helped make us a connected enterprise.”

—Vernon Keenan CEO of Telnexus

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End-to-end acceleration of the sales cycle Sales people need to spend their time—and spend it well—on selling

“In the financial services sector, sales processes are rapidly evolving to keep up with the increasing demands of a competitive marketplace, heavy regulatory requirements, and an empowered customer. Reconciling these competing demands requires sales people to focus on core selling activities, streamlining and optimizing their activities wherever possible.

A major area to focus on when seeking to improve sales productivity is reducing manual, administrative tasks. The top administrative pitfalls for sales teams include: dirty data; manual, error-ridden document generation; and, outdated contract management processes.

Introducing integrated solutions to address each of these pitfalls ties together and speeds up the disparate pieces of the sales cycle, allowing teams to flourish in today’s accelerated sales landscape.

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