TAKING THE LEAP INTO A CORPORATE FINANCIAL SERVICES SALES ROLE
Taking the leap into Corporate Financial Services sales is often a big jump for professional individuals, even those with prior experience in financial institutions.
It’s common for successful individuals from retail or product development divisions within financial institutions to be promoted or transferred to customer-facing corporate sales roles. However, these transitions pose big challenges, as the landscape of corporate sales has evolved considerably in recent years.
Many of these professionals find themselves propelled into the field with little preparation beyond reading product manuals, facing a “sink or swim” scenario as they are asked to go out into the field and deliver results.
When I meet individuals in this situation, and it happens more often than you’d imagine, I can’t help but feel sorry for them. The absence of sufficient support not only sets them up for failure but also risks deterring them from pursuing a sales role ever again. It’s a disheartening outcome that could have long-lasting consequences.
The key dilemmas these people often face include the following;
How do I know what type of customers to actually pursue?
Deciding what corporate customer to pursue is a million miles away from developing a new retail co-branded credit card or retail payment app. Individuals moving into corporate financial services sales need very clear guidance on which type of customers they should be spending their time researching and pursuing.
How do I actually engage with prospective customers?
We are now in a world where many decision makers are working remotely and not answering mobiles due to mobile scamming concerns. The methods individuals moving into corporate financial services sales use to contact customers will be wildly different to methods they are used to.
How do I actually differentiate my proposition to target customers in a commoditised environment?
Individuals moving into corporate financial services sales, soon find out once they have read the product manuals and undertaken some brief competitive analysis, that their offering is often very similar to the competition.
It can be demoralising and demotivating for these individuals moving into corporate sales if they have no clear guidance and training on how to differentiate their propositions.
What actions do I take and what process do I follow to actually win business?
There is often no clear process or steps individuals should follow to be successful in corporate financial services sales. Individuals migrating into these roles generally have to pick it up as they go along from a cocktail of different sales approaches used across the organisation.
There is a better way to help individuals moving into Corporate Financial Services sales be successful. It is based on a modularised sales program I have developed called TRANSFORM which is an end-to-end sales process from Targeting initial clients to Managing them once you have won them.
Don’t demotivate new people joining your corporate sales team and let them flounder. Drop me a note and let’s work out how we can support them to succeed together.
