Selling to Banks Blog

Ten Tips for Sales Prospecting

In my last post, I outlined seven tips to improve sales prospecting results. These were focused on gathering sales intelligence on target accounts and important decision makers in those accounts.

Here are some more tips:

1. Call in to the IT department to find out if there are any projects related to the business issues you have identified or the market space your company is in. This will tell you two important things: a) your target executive probably initiated the project and funding; b) you can be much more specific when you email/call them, especially if the project has a name you can refer to;

2. Create something unique and very relevant to catch the attention of executives. Remember the Annual Report, 10K and the quarterly earnings transcript? There will either be a theme, strategic business goal, initiative or something else that is unique you can identify that you can align with your product or service. 

They key here is to come up with a subject line (for an email) that piques their curiosity and gets them to open it and read it. Here are three examples of subject lines that have been successful: 

- "Your response to Jim Smith about margins" (Jim being an analyst from the earnings call)

- "The goals in your 10K"

- "Your competitors are doing it" (this one always works well - if you have case studies or stories about their competitors)

The subject line should be no more than 30-35 characters, shorter if possible so it can be seen easily at a glance on mobile devices. The email should be short (no more than 100-150 words). You have to prove this was not a form letter sent to many recipients. Best to send on a Tuesday or Wednesday morning before 8 am - your chances of them reading it will be better.

Without referring to your product or service specifically, your call to action should be related to offering ways to help address the business issues or challenges they face - this can be a meeting, phone call, sending them a case study, etc. It is important to not pitch your product at this point.

The key objective is to get them to respond to your offer to help with a quick reply.

3. After sending the email, phone the prospect the next morning before 8 am. You want to avoid the admin screening your call.

One of three things will happen:

- You will get the executive on the phone. Great! Ask them if they read your email about (subject line) and why you felt it would be important for them, showing you did your homework. This is your chance to engage, be positive about how you can offer ways to address their challenges. Keep it to 3-5 minutes, ask them for a meeting or to reply to your email;

- You get the executive's voicemail. If it is their voice and not their admin, leave a specific message that begins immediately with the issue(s) you have discovered and how you have helped others/their peers solve them. The message should refer them to the email subject line, and be no longer than 30-45 seconds. Close with your phone number, letting them know you will call back;

- You get the admin, they came in early. Leave them a specific message for the executive to look for the subject line of your email and have the admin schedule a meeting if he/she is interested in meeting. Don't depend on the admin, call back until you get to the executive. Switch your calling to after 5 pm if mornings don't work.

Good luck in your sales prospecting!

 

 

Ten Tips for Sales Prospecting

Ever wake up in the middle of the night worrying about your sales prospecting efforts and the lack of new prospects in your sales pipeline?

Successful sales prospecting is about knowing your prospect thoroughly and aligning your value proposition to communicate relevant value. Do this right and you will grow your sales pipeline.

In this post, I review seven tips on how to know your prospect. In the next post, I reveal three ways to use this information to improve sales prospecting:

1. Review the Letter to Shareholders from the CEO in the Annual Report. You can often find both the areas of business success and the areas where the company's performance is not measuring up. In addition, it will give you a picture of the business priorities the company has;

2. You can find more thorough information in the Annual 10K Report. You will find categories like key corporate initiatives, strategic lines of business, financial review and analysis of results, areas of risk, factors that could cause the business to underperform or in some cases fail. 

3. Another source to always review is the quarterly earnings call transcripts. It will contain comments from the CEO & CFO about the quarterly results. These transcripts include questions from analysts that follow the company. The better analysts ask probing questions that force management to address specific business problems that are not evident or avoided during the initial presentation.

4. Identify the key business owners of the critical business problems and initiatives that you uncover. This requires you to learn the roles and responsibilities of their management team. They are usually identified by title or function, but not always. For example, the SVP of Retail Banking may seem the logical choice for anything related to increasing revenue with additional financial products for customers, but the VP of Marketing may own the initiative to segment most profitable customers and determine which products would be most appropriate to market to the right customers at the right time.

5. Call the administrative assistant of your target executive to verify the executive is the person responsible for the specific business issue or intiative you have uncovered in your research. There may be a pause, but wait to see the answer you get. It will tell you whether or not this admin can be a valuable asset to you. If she/he can confirm or not, that allows you to probe more on the organization and who the relevant players are in making a decision in this area.

6. Find case studies of your customers in the same industry that have faced similar business challenges and solved them with your product or service. It is important to learn the names of the key executives and the ways in which they benefited. 

7. Use Google's new search function to find background information and current news related to the people you have identified as participants in the decision process. It is important to have very timely information.

Now that we have done the homework, we can talk next about how to use this information to improve sales prospecting in the next post.

 

 

7 Ways and More To Use New Google Search To Get Sales Intelligence

I have been saying how important it is to do research on banks and bank executives before reaching out to them. Knowledge is power and the more you have on your target accounts, the more likely will be your success in gaining their attention and turning them into high quality leads.

Very often, salespeople do not have a lot of time to get the latest sales intelligence on their accounts quickly and easily before going on a sales call or even writing an email or making a phone call. Google has made it easier than ever to help you with the new release of their search page yesterday, May 6th.

The link below will take you to Sam Richter's step-by-step instructions on how to use the new Google search capabilities. If you have never heard of Sam, he is well-known for his book, "Take The Cold Out of Cold Calling" which gives you a wealth of information on how to gain in-depth sales intelligence on accounts and decision makers in those accounts. It is definitely worth the read. I do not get a dime if you order the book

Use this link to see 7 ways and more to use new Google search

Make it work for your sales prospecting as well!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Five Ways To Improve Sales Prospecting and Increase Win Rates

What is the one key attribute of a great salesperson? I say consistency over time, just like I would rate a great basketball player or great baseball player. It is not what you do for one, two or three seasons, it is what you do over many years that matters.

Of the top performers I have known, another thing is true - they discipline themselves to allot a certain percentage of time for sales prospecting all the time. It is the only way they will have the pipeline they need to close sales and consistently exceed quota.

With that in mind, here are five ways to improve sales prospecting and increase your win rate:

1. Talk to your best source of information, your customers. Find out if they have peers in their industry or groups/social media they belong to where they share thoughts and ideas. Start building a list with the connections a customer has to others and the groups they share ideas with. Ask your customer if they mind if you use their name when you contact others. Even if they don't want to, you can always drop the company name in any sales prospecting you do. Either way, you start to improve your odds of getting "hits" while sales prospecting. This technique is already proven in the way "connections" are used in LinkedIn, one of the most successful business social media sites;

2. Make a target list of accounts that you want to penetrate each quarter. From that list, make a list of executives you need to reach. First, see if they are in the list of connections you have built in # 1; if so, leverage the relevant customer for a referral; second, create a profile of each executive. The profile should contain as much relevant information as possible about the current business problems, issues and challenges they are facing. Use resources like Hoovers, OneSource, ZoomInfo and search engines to find this information;most importantly, see if you can find speeches or presentations they have given in the last 3 months.

3.Gain their attention. Although it is never easy to reach decision makers, you will have given yourself a leg up by doing #'s 1 and 2. Now you have some options:

- Using phone or email, open your comments by mentioning one of your customers by name as someone who referred you - your chances of a good response will triple at the least

-If you can't mention a name, use a company name as an example of a company you do business with from the list of connections

- Use a quote or other relevant information of theirs from a presentation or keynote speech they gave. If you can print a part of it, and send it direct mail with comments about how you have input from his/her peers about how they have addressed similar problems, you will have a great chance of getting a meeting;

- Use email with a very personalized message regarding one or more of their most pressing business problems. Let them know you would like to discuss ways some of their peers have addressed similar issues; the more personalized the email, the more likely they will respond to your call for action;

4. Prepare for the first meeting. Take the information you collected in # 2, and prepare a well-thought out list of questions you could ask that would get them to let you learn more. For example, they may have a goal of increasing profit margins by 3%; your question could be" "I know one of your goals is to increase profit margins by 3%, how would you prioritize the actions you can take to make that happen? When they see you have done your homework, your credibility rises, the conversation will expand, and they will start to trust you - a key to increasing your win rate

5. If you still can't get their attention, and you followed this advice, the timing might not be right. Persist. Keep abreast of events at their company. Look for trigger events that you might be able to leverage like pending acquisitions, initiatives that are announced, promotions (especially theirs), etc.

If you do not reach them this quarter, roll them into next quarter.What matters in the end is your ability to show them you care about helping them with their issues and concerns, not about selling your product.

You will become much better at sales prospecting and your win rates will go up!

Happy Hunting!

 

 

 

How To Use Personalized Marketing to Generate Leads With Executives

Suppose you have been given a major bank as a target account by your VP, Sales. Your company has never done business with this bank before and your software solution ranges in price from $ 500K to $ 5MM so the VP gave you a huge quota based on the large size of the bank.

You need to reach the key bank executive(s) that can authorize that kind of expenditure. But you also know that will be very hard with all the gatekeepers preventing you from getting to them. 

What should you do?

One way to gain the attention of senior executives is by using personalized marketing with emails. By that I mean fine-tuning your message based on finding out as much as possible about the executive to give you a 360 degree view of that person. You can then align the benefits of your software solution with problems, challenges and other things they care most about.

Listed below are some important sources of information you absolutely need to read if you expect personalized marketing to generate leads with senior executives at banks:

- Annual Report

- Investor Presentations

- Quarterly Earnings with Earnings Call Transcripts

- Press Releases within the last 3 months 

For each executive, you want to find specific items such as:

- Their history of accomplishments, where did they work before, do they get things done?

- Goals, objectives or plans they have for next 1 - 3 years

- Problems/issues they must address if they are to be successful

- Quotes that give insight into how they view ways to solve these issues 

The list could go on but, hopefully, you get the idea.

Now you need to do two things:

- Look at your customer base to see if there are other banks that solved similar problems with your software solution; make sure to speak to the support people on these banks to ensure they are happy with the results they see from using your solution

- Sit down with your SEs, support people, other salespeople to come up with ideas on how to help the executives solve their issues with your solution

Finally, the hardest part:

Remember, these executives don't know your company or you. Make certain:

- The subject line is short, simple, relevant and timely or it will be a victim of the delete key. It must let the executive know the message is specifically meant for them and that you did your homework before sending it. 

- The first sentence of the email should be in the form of a question, e.g. With Reg E changes about to hurt your customer profitability, are you looking for ways to increase wallet share of your customers? (This would have come from your research)

- You must emphasize you would like to discuss ways to address his/her issues, do NOT try to sell your product in the email - too soon - stay with their issues

- It will be important to include what I call a "teaser" to show credibility by referring very briefly to the fact you were able to  help other bank(s) address similar issue(s)

- The email should be no longer than 100 - 150 words max - executives don't have the time - get to the point - make it short

- Last but not least, you got their attention, now you need a call to action that is easy for them to respond to. Here is something I found works well - give them three one-line choices they can check off in an email reply, this also helps get them to reply:

__ Call me so we can discuss

__ Call my admin so we can schedule a meeting

__ Send me more information

__ Other - please specify

If you get them to reply, you have started to engage them - don't rush to sell your software solution, stay with better understanding their problems/issues and discussing ways to address them - they will let you know when the time is right to discuss product.

Happy prospecting! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Seven Hot Opportunities for Software Sales To Banks: Part 2

These are the remaining hot opportunities for banking software companies selling to to banks.

5. P2P PAYMENTS/MOBILE APPS

The big buzz at this year's BAI Retail Delivery Conference & Expo was around peer-to-peer (P2P) payments. Major players including S1 and FIS announced that they have teamed with PayPal to offer banks mobile or online P2P solutions. Meanwhile Fiserv has started to offer a new P2P personal payments service to the 3,000-plus financial institutions in its online payment network. In many ways the personal payments space is the last bastion of the personal check, but perhaps with these new developments, that will finally start to change.

6. CORE SYSTEMS

Many large U.S. banks are using core systems that are decades old, and observers have repeatedly said the applications are not up to the task of processing transactions in real time, as the market now demands. As consumers from every demographic grow increasingly comfortable conducting business on the Web, new standards are emerging regarding the customer experience. When dealing with Internet giants such as Amazon and PayPal, consumers conduct transactions in real time, or at least close to it.

Many banks' core systems, however, can't offer that same convenience. "There are a lot more interactions on the Internet, so a core system is going to have to handle a lot more requests and traffic. It's also going to have to respond with greater speed," contends Erich Litch, SVP and GM, consumer services, at Fiserv (Brookfield, Wis.) Electronic Banking Services.

Citigroup is said to Be First Big Bank in Core Overhaul: was a headline that caught wide attention. They are switching the entire North American banking operations to a core processing application.

7. REG E CHANGES

Bank of America and Citigroup are taking a higher-and less profitable-road than other banks by not offering fee-based overdraft protection to debit card users who exceed their available balance. But many other banks in the industry can't afford to abandon the entire revenue stream, leaving them with a marketing and technical challenge to get customers to opt in or out of overdraft protection by summer.

The technical and operational challenges posed by the changes to Reg E hit three touch points:

a)    marketing, or how to effectively reach those customers who currently drive the most NSF/OD revenue;
b)    compliance, how to receive and create an audit trail for the requisite opt in or opt out decisions;
c)    core banking, how to integrate the rules associated with the new preferences into the bank's core processing application.

Many banks have outsourced most of the technical and operational tasks associated with marketing and compliance to a marketing vendor. This will be fertile ground for vendors who can address these issues.

These are the seven hot areas for banking software. Do you have others you want to contribute?

Seven Hot Opportunities for Software Sales to Banks: Part 1

I will be covering seven hot opportunities for software companies selling to banks. Here are the first four:

1. FRAUD

Major banks have a dilemma: They want to make it easier for customers to do wire transfers, but face the prospect of inviting fraudsters into their systems.
In 2009, fraud attacks on online business banking escalated so rapidly and with such staggering losses that the FBIi and FDICii were moved to issue multiple warnings of the dangers of online banking. Well-funded cyber criminals executed a full-scale assault on authentication, leveraging widespread infection of end-user computers with banking trojans to sneak into online banking accounts completely undetected. Additionally, they perfected methods of moving large sums of money out undetected via wire, ACH, and bill pay, often resulting in six and seven figure fraudiii . It is expected to get worse before it gets better.

2. PFM – Personal Financial Management

Most banks have just a fraction of the average consumer's wallet. According to a September 2009 report from Forrester Research, adults own an average of 8.2 financial products, but generally have no more than two or three products at any one financial institution.

PFM, which aggregates a consumer's financial information in one place, is widely perceived to be among the "stickiest" services a bank can offer. According to research from Digital Insight of Calabasas, Calif., an Intuit division that sells FinanceWorks to banks, households that use FinanceWorks tend to have higher average account balances and average one more product with their banks than other households.

PFM looks to be an ideal way for banks to improve customer experience and loyalty and to leverage their online banking platforms.

3. CRM

Software that provides customer-profitability data so that bank representatives can focus their attention on those who have a greater likelihood of buying another product is a very important area for banks to address. You can sell them the wrong products and never make a dime off of them. It's about giving the frontline personnel the ability to look at a given moment, what's in the customer's wallet today and what's missing from that wallet that can be sold profitably to that customer.

4. RISK MANAGEMENT

Banks looking to manage the risks and costs of increased lending activity are going to depend on technology -- including more-sophisticated credit risk-modeling capabilities, to do so. According to TowerGroup's 2010 consumer lending forecast, "Financial services institutions will increase IT investment for integrated credit risk management, and new loan collections and portfolio risk management solutions.”

i FBI Alert, Fraudulent Automated Clearing House (ACH) Transfers Connected to Malware and Work-at-Home Scams, Oct 2009
ii FDIC Special Alerts, August and October 2009
iii Washington Post, Security Fix – Small Business Victims, 2009

Do Executive Profiles Result In High Quality Leads? - Part 5

In Part 3, we found out that 80% of senior executives get involved in the buying cycle very early in the process. We also found out they focus on ways to solve business problems they are facing. The terms they use to do Web searches are focused around business problems, they do not consider specific software products at this stage.

If there was a way to reach senior executives at this point, you would have a unique  opportunity to engage her/him on issues they care most about and begin building a relationship. The problem is: how can you know enough about that executive to know what business issues are of most concern to them?

Various forms of sales intelligence can help in this regard:

- Triggers that tell you about an upcoming acquisition or merger

- News releases that tell you about a promotion of the executive to a new position

- Announcement of a competitor releasing a new product line

These help point you in the right direction. But what has this executive explicitly said about any of these events or other business issues? When and where has she/he laid out their vision for moving their company forward? What is unique about this executive? What are their opinions on important issues?

This is where you can separate yourself from other salespeople that may also use sales intelligence. The deeper your knowledge of an executive, the more likely you are to reach them at the right time in their buying cycle.

Senior executives spend a good amount of their time giving speeches, interviews, presentations, keynote addresses at conferences, meeting with analysts, media, and many more activities. This is when you can gain insight into their thought process and what they view as pressing business problems and opportunities they may have. The clues are there, you just have to dig deep enough to find them.

When you learn to leverage the special "golden nuggets" of information buried in these sources, you raise your odds of being the first one to engage the executive at the right time with the right issues.

This is the essence of an in-depth Executive Profile. It provides this type of actionable information in an easy-to-understand format for the salesperson. You then have the foundation to begin relationship selling. 

If used wisely, executive profiles can result in high quality leads.

 

  

Stop Cold Calling: High Quality Sales Intelligence - Part 4

Like anyone else in software sales, I hated cold calling. While I learned the times of day I could most likely reach a particular executive, it all came down to the fear of rejection, not knowing the response I would get, and being able to respond in seconds to whatever might be said. It was only later in my software sales career, that I began to use the Web to research executives before cold calling them or sending them an email.

I was surprised - things began to change. By spending 30 minutes to an hour researching an executive, I was able to hone in on a business issue or business challenge I could identify that was of concern to that bank executive. Rather than trying to come up with some capability of my software that would interest the executive, I could now open an email or phone conversation with the relevant business issue or business challenge he/she was facing.

What was most interesting was that I didn't necessarily need to refer directly to my software product at all. I learned that what mattered most was referring to things I learned from the research like:

- issues spoken about in a speech or presentation given by the executive

- factors identified in an earnings call transcript by the executive related to quarterly earnings reports

- news announcements referring to recent developments

- analysts reviews of the executives' company performance

- interviews given by the executive where I could find relevant quotes

What was very important was to be able to tell the executive about a client of ours who had a similar business challenge or business issue and how they solved it with our solution. I was still not talking about our software product, but how it helped solve a problem one of his/her peers had.

I quickly learned that doing in-depth research paid big dividends. Cold calling became fun, but it was no longer cold calling, it became warm calling.

Due to the fact that executives have become much harder to reach by phone, I did opt for sending personalized email first before calling the executive. This gave me an opportunity to use the subject line in the email to gain the executives' attention by including a unique reference from the research. It really worked! Very often I would get a reply email from the executive. At the very least, I could refer to the email the next day in my phone call referring to the subject line.

High quality sales intelligence helps get high response rates, but you need to put the time in to do in-depth research if you want good results.

 

 

 

High Quality Sales Intelligence: Part 3 - Higher ROI?

Aberdeen Group has produced significant sales metrics that easily justify the return on investment (ROI) of sales intelligence year-over-year for best in class companies in the areas of Revenue/Account, Bid/Win Ratio, Average Deal Size, Market Share and Lead Qualification Rate.

While it is good to know that investing in sales intelligence technology pays returns, what is left out of these types of studies is an analysis of when in the sales cycle sales intelligence pays the highest returns on investment. If you accept the premise that establishing relationships with senior executives gives a salesperson a real competitive advantage, it only stands to reason that high quality, in-depth sales intelligence on senior executives can pay the highest returns.

The book, "Selling to the C-Suite", is based on in-depth interviews with 500 senior executives (all CXO levels) across many industries. The authors wanted to find out what was most important to them in dealing with salespeople. In that research, they devote a chapter, "When Do Executives Get Involved?" to three studies that focused on when in the sales cycle they got involved.

Consistent in all three studies was the finding that 80% of executives usually or always get involved early in the buying cycle; their motivation at that stage is to understand current business issues, establish project objectives and set the overall project strategy. What jumped off the page at me was how those senior executives used the Internet to inform themselves on business problems - they searched based on the problem confronting them.

Give it a try. Type a problem like "customer retention" into Google, look at the top 10 organic hits. Look to see if any solution vendors are listed. Did you find any? What does that tell you about marketing strategy of solution vendors?

The point is two-fold: executives are focused on researching ways to solve their most pressing business problems early in their buying cycle; once they set the vision, they delegate downward to others to find specific solutions. That is when they are least involved and least likely to meet with salespeople.

That leaves the salesperson with two challenges:

1. How does she/he know when the executive is in that early buying cycle?

2. If you find an executive that is in that early stage, how do you know those key pressing business problems they are faced with? If you knew what those were, and had some insight into why solving them was so important, you could engage them with an approach around those issues and ways in which they could be addressed. Your chances of getting a meeting with that executive would be much higher.

For # 1, no easy answer, but triggers would be helpful as clues to when the timing might be right, e.g. a recent merger of the executive's company with another. News stories would also be helpful to gain these timing clues.

For # 2, there is a definitive answer: high quality sales intelligence based on high quality research that provides the salesperson with an executive profile that hits on those pressing business issues the executive is facing.

If you have enough executive profiles, you can look for similar business problems across an industry vertical like banking. You can decide whether to approach each bank separately, or run a marketing campaign to all banks around those business problems to uncover those in the early stage of their buying cycle.

In either case, arming your salespeople with these executive profiles may gain your sales organization the highest ROI.