MODULE EXAMPLE: Financial Products Sales Applications

Problem Objective Solution Results

Problem

A leading financial institution was going through organizational redesign where the portfolio of products offered by the individual salespeople expanded dramatically. The company sought an effective and scalable means of distributing the most current product research and marketing information to the sales force without taxing either its product research or IT staffs.

Objective

The company is working with PortBlue to develop a series of Applications designed to support their institutional asset management sales efforts. The Applications incorporate all 150 products sold by the new division-level asset management sales force and covered by the research team.

Solution

These Applications would allow others in the organization to follow the same sales processes as that of their top performers. The approach of this process is as follows:

Capture process and information

• Aggregate product information and sales know-how into a single application
• Provide a systematic approach to account & sales planning

Distribute knowledge

• Distribute the know-how of the best salespeople throughout an organization
• Allows access via the web 24/7 anywhere in the world
• Ensure availability of most effective collateral materials
• Recognize and address competitor vulnerabilities
• Identify upselling and cross-selling opportunities
• Integrate account planning and contact management tools

Interacts with users

• Allow for customized call preparation by individual client or product
• Help "know what you don't know" about the client
• Coach in real time as if management were in the room
• Alert salesperson of information not yet acquired from prospect
• Operate in cases of sales rep uncertainty
• Trigger higher sales profitability

Reuse to augment knowledge

• Gauge the effectiveness of best practices
• Identify new initiatives by capturing sales rep's interaction
• Discover marketing insights through data mining capabilities

Results

In less than six weeks, PortBlue used existing customer and sales force presentations and spent approximately 20 hours with a top sales expert in its Knowledge Capture process to build a module that helped:

• Ensure that salespeople have the quantitative (most recent financial performance data) and qualitative (third party research and perspectives) information required to respond to a client or sales prospect's stated needs
• Identify opportunities to introduce additional products to customers or prospects to meet a client or sales prospect's latent needs (e.g., opportunities to displace under performing competitors and/or reallocate assets into underrepresented asset classes)
• Instill greater consistency in the sales process by having salespeople apply expert-generated logic that assesses sales potential and determines the most attractive products to introduce to sales prospects
• Reduce the time to competency required for new sales personnel

Meeting Stated Needs

The PortBlue modules were designed as a series of questions and analyses that identified the key drivers that optimize the matching of client characteristics and product characteristics. This included the nature of the client, the asset/liability mix, the client's relationship with incumbent investment managers, and the client's belief structure. An embedded Optimizer links customer characteristics to product attractiveness measures. For example, salespeople can enter information about a specific, stated customer need (e.g., from an RFP). The Optimizer, developed by the company's experts with PortBlue's assistance, will identify the most suitable products for this need. Operating even in cases of incomplete customer information, the Optimizer is designed to be easily tuned and expanded as experience with it grows.

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This sample input page indicates both the informative content provided for novice salespersons as well as the type of information they will be asked to enter about the client (each question also has an associated answer certainty rating from 0% to 100%). Links to appendices with further information (white papers, product literature, etc.) can be provided as needed.

Meeting Latent Needs

While most salespeople can close a sale if the client has identified a specific need, the difference between a great salesperson and the rest is that most salespeople are uncomfortable proceeding with uncertainty. PortBlue captures and imbeds real, practical and valuable expertise that will empower multiple sales forces. One of PortBlue's key objectives is to improve the sales force's sense of confidence in the completeness of the information they have about products and clients so that they can go forward and sell aggressively. While it may seem odd, often a salesperson must be convinced that there is an opportunity to sell. This is the point of PortBlue's focus on latent demand.

• Meeting latent needs (competitor displacement)
  Where competitive product information is available, PortBlue's optimizer will compare products to comparable company offerings and determine where competitors have under performed on key metrics and may therefore be vulnerable.

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This sample output page indicates the customer's current portfolio of competitor products, ranked in order of their vulnerability to replacement by products offered by PortBlue's client. For each recommended product, the PortBlue module will also present a "product fact sheet".

• Meeting latent needs (asset reallocation)
  Where peer comparison information or internal guidelines are available, the optimizer will present company products to bring customers into recommended asset allocation bands.

Greater Consistency of the Sales Process

PortBlue's Account Planning sub-application helps provide a systematic, transparent approach to account and sales planning and call preparation, by individual client and product. Sales managers can make the PortBlue application results a required part of the management-reporting stream, so that PortBlue becomes the consistent medium for shaping and tracking the sales strategy and plan. As the broader sales support technology platform is put in place, PortBlue can be linked to account planning and contact management tools.

Reducing Time To Competency

Representing a consistent approach to sales within the organization, the PortBlue modules will help new sales reps become more productive quickly and provide both the expert framework and quantitative and qualitative data required to make the sale. Moreover, as more data is contributed, PortBlue's data mining capabilities help identify marketing insights that aid in segmentation and new initiatives.