Secure Your Recipe For Financial Service Success

We’ve become a bit spoiled for experiences (well, I have — I can’t really speak for you), which is crazy when you think about how far they’ve come. I’m old enough to remember dialup and young enough to remember how hot the Motorola Razr was. I won’t wait longer than five seconds for a browser to load. And it’s hard — not the experiences, those keep getting better — because as a customer, I’ve come to expect a certain level of experience everywhere. Apple, Amazon, Adobe, anywhere an experience can be had, I’ve learned not to compromise. And I’m not alone, which can be a problem for financial institutions. And don’t get me started on B2B Data for Financial Services.

Yeah. That’s where we’re heading with this.

There’re a number of ways that financial institutions can meet their customers where they are — especially if those customers are new or tenured — to make sure that they’re getting the treatment that they not only deserve, but they’ve come to expect. Oh, and the fact that you’re in B2B doesn’t mean that your experiences have to be a snooze-fest. Anyone can create great experiences for their customers, but it has to start with data.

Like I said: it’s not easy.

We recently hosted the first webinar as part of a series where we’re aiming to crack the code on the FinServ customer experience from multiple vantage points, and for this first installment we counted on the presence and expertise of our General Counsel Andrew Epstein and Imran Ahmed to get into the nitty gritty of B2B Data for Financial Services. Here are some highlights from that conversation.

The challenge

Today, the Financial Services industry has to compete with the rise in customer expectations for experiences and find ways to deliver more value to those customers all while their landscape continues to change. But data can help.

Technographics, demographics, behaviors, intent — there are so many different types of data available today that it can be a struggle to figure out how to capitalize on the data you need when you have more than you know what to do with. It can be enough to make your head spin!

So how, then, do you know when a customer is about to churn? How do you increase customer loyalty and satisfaction?

…How do you put the data to work for you?

When you’re a B2B Data for Financial Services provider, you walk a fine line between being personable when selling and cross-selling, and being overly-intrusive or downright creepy. Unfortunately, data can make it easy for you to be either (or both).

Data may be the fuel for the modern marketing engine, but that doesn’t mean that you should trust your data right off the bat. We’ve all been burned by a bad campaign or list in the past — it’s one of those unavoidable rights of passage that we all have to go through. But even with that, 70% of revenue leaders say that data management is a high priority.

So how do you — keeping in mind all of the rising complexities across the B2B landscape — make sure that you don’t get burned again?

Squeeze the most out of your data: 3 tactics to kickstart your internal data processes

What to do with your data

One of the biggest things that can trip you up while you figure out what to do with your data is how clean it is. Or, how unclean. And it’s important that you’re honest with yourself here, because whether or not your data is reliable makes a big difference.

Unfortunately, there are vendors out there who will sell you outdated, unvalidated lists, and the worst part about that is there’s no way for you to know how good those lists are until after you’ve launched your campaign. Yikes!

When you don’t take the time to make sure your data’s integrity is up to snuff, your teams run the risk of wasting time and money calling wrong numbers, bouncing emails, and chasing contacts who no longer work at an account. So before you go setting up your next campaign, please make sure that you’ve combed your data for duplicate accounts or contacts, made sure all of the emails and phone numbers are valid, and all of your accounts are up to date.

How you can take action

So now that you’ve validated your information and made sure that it’s clean, you’re ready to take action. But which actions? A lot of companies get stuck here because — among other things — they have no end goal in sight. The best way to get unstuck, or avoid getting stuck in the first place, is to make sure that you start small before scaling up.

“Instead of immediately launching into a full sales campaign that’s company-wide, take a segment of the market you’re going after and then make sure that all of your data is up to date. Basically, treat this like a test-pilot for your campaign.”

— Imran Ahmed 

By, for example, giving your teams access to technographic data, they’ll get a snapshot of each account’s tech stack before going into a meeting. This is a huge leg up because it lets your teams know whether or not your solution is even a match for each of those accounts as well as gives them insights into what kinds of technology they’re looking to purchase next and what kind of IT-spend behavior each account has among other things.

Really what it all boils down to is this: Without access to the right B2B Data for Financial Services, you may find yourself unprepared or unequipped to answer even basic questions from a potential client, and you definitely don’t want that.

How to scale your data

Once your teams are comfortable working with your clean datasets, it’s time to inject them into an actual campaign. We still suggest that you start small, so pick a sales team in a region that’s had a good quarter. Then, because you already know that team’s quarter is doing well, apply the data on top of their current strategy so you can see the impact that the data has.

If instead, we layered the data on top of an underperforming team’s strategy, it would be a lot more difficult to see the success driven by the data as opposed to other changed variables.

When you amplify a single, successful team with data, you don’t just see high close rates, more accounts, more pipe, and a jump in that team’s revenue dollars; you also set up a team of data-champions in your sales org who will sing this data-driven approach’s praises until it has spread completely across the revenue org. And once everyone is a champion of the data-driven campaign, you’re looking at a lot of success stories across your organization.

Meet customer expectations by providing a holistic experience

Hopefully, you can see now why having good, clean, accurate data, and knowing your customers on a deeper level will help you meet customer expectations and blow them out of the water.

Just imagine having a true understanding of an account’s intent and buying behaviors before getting them on the phone instead of formulating a pitch based on industry benchmarks.

Keep an eye out for the technologies that your ICP are looking into and the triggers that they trip online, then use your wealth of clean, validated data to determine whether or not an account is actually worth pursuing.

Bringing it all together

Data doesn’t have to be complicated, you just need to know how to apply it. And if you can simplify it, you’ll be very, very successful using it.

With Demandbase, you can do just that. Build lists so that you can target accounts with personalized, key messaging and send everyone to customized landing pages that highlights what makes you a better fit than the competition.

We’ll even help you take it to the next level with a nurture series and a cohesive SDR strategy so that every move you make is tailored to your unique audience so you can rest assured that everything associated with your campaign resonates with your ICP.

To learn more about cooking up FinServ wins and how Demandbase is serving success, crack open our recipe book: Smarter Go-To-Market™ Powered By Account Intelligence.