Lost in Conversation

There are many steps in the retail banking sales process where it could be a demand for increased effectiveness. During a personal meeting, the agent might miss several opportunities to get to know the client and give them a more precise, more tailored offer.

There is, for example, one of the first steps of a personal consultation, when the agent tries to find out as much as possible about the client’s financial situation. The conversation will eventually shed light on the type of advice the client needs, considering their existing or non-existent savings (credit-focused or savings-focused), but the mid-term and long-term plans usually remain unexplored. As a consequence, financial institutions lose billions by not knowing the client enough.

With the current administration practices, documenting “hints” is accidental and depends on the preparedness of the agent. The management, on the other hand, only has limited possibilities to intervene in the process. They mostly have to rely on the onboarding and training period to get their messages through or suggest a necessary change while controlling productivity.

There is a problem with transparency, too. During the necessary data registration process, the retail banking agents don’t use systems that could allow them to share the registered information with the client (e.g., financial snapshot or sending a colorful PDF about the suggested products), and there is no possibility to make the necessary calculations together. It makes winning the trust of the “always-on” clients, and the fact that the agents only send out the quotes days or weeks later doesn’t help either.

Value for the Client

An application that was developed keeping in mind the priorities of personal sales meetings helps to complete the consultation and keep it transparent. A piece of software that serves as a central access point for the official documents, contracts, as well as the product brochures, client databases or quote calculators, will make it easier for both the consultant and client, as well as shorten the sales cycle. Such an application is a useful tool for the sales managers, too, to coordinate teamwork and to better distribute the available resources.

Because of the integration with internal legacy systems, many would think it a desktop application is the solution. But the surprising truth is that a tablet application is a way more modern sales tool, and it is also easier to implement. When using a tablet, the agent and the client sit next to each other, the client is involved in the sales process, increasing its effectiveness.

The application can easily integrate internal systems, so it can contain all the necessary information and also make it available to the client immediately or as an attachment of a follow-up email. If it’s a returning client, some of the data can be accessed from the database, so it reduces the administration. Even the calculators can be used outside of the corporate website, by accessing it directly from the application, and print a contract right on site if the client accepts the quote.

Financial Planning as an Experience

Using a mobile application in retail banking radically transforms the current processes without making them more difficult. Due to the smooth operation, the agents are happy to incorporate the tool into their workflows. The client will experience a new way of banking: during a personal meeting, sitting next to the agent, they can be active participants of the financial planning – a feature that builds trust and increases satisfaction.

By accessing the documents quickly, the agent can get from the first registration of data to the contract, and they can also complete their administration duties without paper. Meanwhile, the managers can control all steps of the process, keep the information up-to-date, and receive automatic reports. The sales agents can always see in the application what meetings they have and when do they have to follow up with a particular client.

According to SCOLVO’s industry-specific experience, the mobile sales enablement tool has dramatically increased task management, both on a team as on a personal level. The productivity of the banks has increased in general, with the help of the features accessible through the tablet and due to the modern sales tool. Further advantages that financial institutions mentioned included the seamless data flow, a proper CRM-usage, current reports, and paperless processes.

SCOLVO Sales – The ultimate selling machine for financial institutions has arrived:

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Financial services companies are constantly haunted by the competition but it has been proved that new, innovative solutions, such as mobilization, are able to keep them in the game. Still, it’s not a cheap bet, so smart budgeting is essential.

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Through the following examples, we show you how to build strong commitment by the smart allocation of resources, in order to achieve success in the banking sales department.

Changing the perspective

Imagine your firm, a financial services company, has a digital transformation strategy in place and, as a part of it, a mobilization project for the whole workforce. Your task as the sales department head, will have to work on translating your own team’s corporate workflows to a targeted app on a mobile device. You will have specific needs, though, in terms of devices, mobile and desktop applications. How do you make sure you’ll get a fair share of the budget while not asking too much of an already huge financial commitment?

Media reports that giant global corporations easily spend billions of dollars on digital transformation projects. At the same time, Gartner’s recent forecast on IT spendings had an interesting statement: they claimed that while it was clear that companies would keep on spending on digital devices and IT services, the political and economic uncertainties would restrain them from spending as much as previously thought. The device budgets remain flat at $USD 589 and the services budgets will only grow by 4.2% this year.

To better achieve your mid- and long-term goals, try opting for a fixed percentage of the total technology budget: your actual spending on the different elements of the mix will depend on the developments in other areas, such as the back office, the data security and management, and the likes. One global firm was not afraid to allocate 30% of its total technology budget to mobility and collaboration projects, affecting 100,000 employees, and changed the entire ballgame with solutions like intuitive mobile dashboards and work chats.

Getting the C-suite on board

The strategy of your company focuses on eradicating inefficiencies in operations by giving people consumer-like technologies to work with. In practice, it means creating a BYOD-policy completed with the development of easy-to-use enterprise mobile applications.

While it’s not hard to see how such mobilization would benefit the sales team in their field work and would result in improved figures, the fact it is not an isolated project makes more room to negotiate the department budgets.

Be part of something big: when C-level executives are convinced to digitalize the enterprise and allocate the necessary budgets, it will be a large-scale opportunity for the sales department to up the game with more innovative solutions. One way to do that is link every line of the department budget back to the corporate strategy. Spending on a top enterprise mobility management tool ensures the most secure operations for the field team. Or, the high customer engagement, resulting from the increased responsiveness, validates the costs of a disruptive mobile application.

Securing a quick win

When breaking the down the costs of your project, it is useful to keep in mind that, although making the switch to digital and mobile is at least a few years’ investment, there are possibilities to ease the risk anxiety by securing a quick win.

Carefully examine the usual elements of a mobile plan: it is quite rare to spend equally on new hardware purchases, consultancy, mobility management and collaboration tools. Some of these areas will stand out either with their lower costs or by providing a quicker or higher return.

In our example, cutting device acquisition costs will not be a highlight since the strategy already builds on employees bringing their own devices to work. Consequently, you will not be able to save much on management tools, either. But if you can make these tools work sooner? That would be your win on the ROI-side and the more chances you get to have your budget approved.

Scoop the market for ready-to-use software solutions that are most likely to fit your operational workflows. Individual development not only costs more but also takes more time, and these sacrifices are seldom justified in use. You can also find sales-specific, ready-to-use applications that can even be customized, but not to the extent where it actually slows down the processes instead of accelerating them.

You can also focus on the savings side: sales can be especially strong in saving on paper costs when digitalizing its processes or cutting down on down times when mobilizing the field team. Also, If you make a good software choice as seen above, that means your team can use them from day one, saving on training costs as well.

Enjoy simplicity and ease of use and make your employees more productive in a days – Request a demo

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