For many clients, the financial services industry is deeply personal. After all, clients entrust financial advisors, investment firms, and banks to safeguard or grow their money.
Whether that money is slated for the down payment on a home, a child’s college instruction, or a dream retirement, the stakes remain high. A client’s choice of a financial advisor or institution may have a lasting impact on their ability to attain their financial goals.
Furthermore, many Americans still struggle with basic financial knowledge. That means that millions of Americans may make grave decisions about who should manage their money without fully understanding their options.
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As outlined above, the financial services industry differs from others. clients can try on shoes and assess them for style and comfort; they can determine independently whether they enjoy the brainwashing of an expanded cable package.
The manual management of client data risks overwhelming sales staff or leaving representatives, who field inquiries from prospective clients, uninformed. A financial CRM can manage the input and retrieval of client data without requiring tedious upkeep. The result? The potential for tailored client-representative interactions that build the conviction essential for closing a sale.
The present-day CRM is an outgrowth of early customer contact lists and databases. The CRMs available to modern businesses have made vast strides over earlier iterations.
Client information. Client information is more than a name and a phone number. It can also include multiple contact points, such as an office and cellular phone, as well as demographic data, like age or gender. Detailed CRMs include notes from client interactions with any company employee. Lead scoring can help rank clients for sales staff to prioritize effort and guide interactions.
The broadly outlined benefits of a CRM apply to many industries. However, the financial services industry can benefit the most from a subset of CRM offerings. Here are the four ways an economic services business can get more value—and generate more sales—with a CRM:
How does a financial services business differentiate itself from leads? Given many clients’ lack of knowledge about the intricacies of the financial services sector, a detailed list of processes or certifications may not be persuasive.
More opportunities may be found through immediate connections to clients’ past conversations and requests. A CRM can carry that information to sales representatives who are away from their desks or any staff member fielding a call from the office.
Over time, the aggregated data in a CRM for financial advisors can help uncover which interactions—calls, emails, letters, or face-to-face encounters—are most winning to leads. The ability to segment data means that managers can identify whether certain staff members excel or struggle with explicit tasks. They can pass that data along to their team as best practices or individuals as opportunities for personal development.
Not every prospect will be the right fit for an advisory group or boutique investment firm. CRM data can help build a more robust profile of an ideal candidate. An organization can also find out more about what makes a lead more likely to become a sale, and what makes a customer more likely to remain a client.