Insight
Financial institutions operate in an environment of intense product competition and rising customer expectations. In recent years, the offerings of banks, leasing companies, and insurance providers have become largely comparable from the customer's perspective.
At the same time, sales in many organizations remain product-driven. Advisors focus primarily on presenting the parameters of financial offers -- such as interest rates, installment amounts, or insurance terms -- rather than on diagnosing the customer's situation and understanding their business or financial context.
As a result, sales conversations very often end with a comparison of offers from several financial institutions and a decision based mainly on price or financial conditions.
An additional challenge is that many financial institutions have very extensive sales structures -- covering both individual advisors and corporate sales teams -- yet working standards and sales management approaches differ between regions and teams.
Business Consequence
Sales results remain largely dependent on the individual competencies of advisors rather than on a repeatable sales process. Organizations struggle to scale sales and build the predictability of results.
Advisor turnover also generates high costs in terms of lost client relationships and rebuilding a client portfolio.
Additionally, client relationships are often transactional rather than long-term, which limits opportunities to grow sales of financial products and ancillary services.
Our Approach
We help financial institutions shift from a product-sales model to an advisory-sales model.
The key instrument of this transformation is the Sandler Selling System, which in the financial environment allows advisors to conduct conversations grounded in a diagnosis of the client's situation -- their goals, financial concerns, and the consequences of inaction (the PAIN -- BUDGET -- DECISION model). Rather than comparing products, the conversation focuses on building trust and understanding the client's business or personal context. The Sandler methodology also gives sales managers tools to manage the process and pipeline in a systematic and predictable way.
Our projects include:
- Designing a standard for client advisory conversations based on the Sandler methodology
- Developing the competencies of financial advisors
- Implementing a sales pipeline management process
- Developing the competencies of managers leading sales teams
Team
Head: Marcin Kwiatkowski
Consultants
