Financial Services Sales Training

Technology continues to change the game for financial services sales professionals as more and more fintech solutions pervade the financial service industry.

When customers conduct their banking through digital channels, financial services sales professionals do not have the opportunity to access the valuable information that surfaces during person-to-person interactions.

This fundamental change has intensified challenges around driving fee income growth, loan growth, and developing profitability within expansion markets.

As a result, financial sales professionals are struggling to adapt to challenges like:

• Prospecting and networking despite slowing foot traffic
• Cross-selling diverse and complex products
• Positioning differentiation beyond rates and terms

Financial sales professionals can overcome these challenges with a consultative approach. Doing so enables them to better serve the customer’s detailed needs.

Sales training programs from Richardson Sales Performance help increase sales by:

• Building consistency into the customer’s banking experience to execute change at scale
• Properly tracking the customer’s changing financial needs across a range of relationships
• Considering the “soft” and “hard” financial factors when deciding what customers to pursue

Developing and sustaining these skills means investing in training for financial services professionals. Training should build a framework that can be applied to all customer interactions across a range of financial needs. Financial professionals need to build trust in their customer relationships.

This approach means moving beyond product features and making people the differentiator. At Richardson Sales Performance, our financial sales training teaches your team to do this with a thorough questioning strategy that reveals the details beneath the customer’s needs.

“The customization for our field force was critical, and it is something we will take into our L&D organization and sustain as we continue to move the needle from wholesaler to consultant.” - Oppenheimer Funds

Richardson Sales Performance's Banking Clients Have Outperformed both the S&P 500 and the S&P 500 Banking Index. We have worked with 35 banks and their financial advisors over the last 10 years, 11 of whom have made significant enterprise investments.

Addressing Your Financial Services Sales Training Needs

Our sales training for bankers and financial services professionals has worked across dozens of Fortune 500 financial businesses. We design the learning experience around the company’s specific, ground-level needs. We conduct interviews with senior leadership to understand their goals. We use these conversations as a basis for our customized sales training program design, which combines online training and face-to-face instructor-led workshops. The resulting curriculum is built to fully leverage the unique value of the company’s financial products and sales professionals.

Our customization process accounts for challenges like the industry’s intricate regulatory framework and the complexities of financial products. With highly customized training, we help financial professionals develop the sales skills that matter.

Financial Sales Training Programs

SPRINT SALES COACHING

Managers learn how to help team members self-discover and use their strengths. The result is a team of self-aware, self-reliant, and skilled financial professionals who independently meet business goals. This sales coaching program arms financial sales managers with the process, skills, and tools needed to reinforce learning, effect lasting behavior change, and improve results.

SPRINT PROSPECTING

Financial and banking sales professionals need new ways to reach customers. The sales training program includes four powerful elements to increase effectiveness in gaining access to prospect opportunities. The Consultative Prospecting program helps financial sales professionals get to the customer’s needs faster by delivering a tailored, needs-based message.

CONSULTATIVE SELLING

Every banking customer’s need is different. The Consultative Selling program equips financial sales professionals with the skills to understand those needs faster.

The program offers a consistent, repeatable process to more effectively execute sales conversations with the Six Critical Skills. Sales professionals learn to leverage the breadth of their financial knowledge to open more doors, better understand customer needs, more persuasively articulate value, and close more deals.

ENHANCED SERVICE FOR RETAIL BANKING

Retail banking professionals must become comfortable with proactively positioning solutions. This program teaches retail banking professionals to deliver exemplary customer service. Information learned in their customer conversations empowers them to provide unexpected value by positioning additional products and services to solve customer needs.

How Financial Services Sales Training Drove Measurable Results for Oppenheimer Funds

Investment management company Oppenheimer Funds faced the challenge of commoditization. More competitors were offering similar services. By working with Richardson Sales Performance, the leadership at Oppenheimer Funds realized that success meant delivering a deeper customer experience. Sales professionals learned to engage customers with better questions. As a result, they developed new ways to deliver relevant value to customers that went beyond the product’s surface features.

Using this approach to drive long-term results also meant adopting coaching skills. Leaders and managers needed the capability to create a culture of consistency. With our coaching program, Oppenheimer Funds was able to drive change at scale. Financial sales professionals understood the new direction and could commit because they saw that leaders were dedicated to change.

• Participants demonstrated a 60% improvement in “Strategic Dialogue.”
• Trainees exhibited a 23% increase in follow-up skills critical to closing the sale.
• Participants exhibited a 17% increase in the skills required to gain access and build trust with prospects.

Download the full case study.