The RevOps Revolution

RevOps for Financial Services

The world of financial services has been upended over the past decade or so with the rise of nimble, aggressive fintech competitors offering personalized experiences and, often, significant cost savings compared to traditional service providers.

Coupled with this abundance of personalized products and segment-specific offerings, the new breed of key decision makers at many potential clients tends to find information in very different ways than may have been the case several years ago. Where once reputation and word of mouth were key components of any company’s lead generation strategy, today’s decision makers approach their research in much the same way that they find information for any other decision, big or small: by turning to Google.

That, in turn, has led to a shift in the way that companies in the sector go to market. The once-rigid barriers between marketing, sales and service have essentially collapsed, offering an unprecedented opportunity for companies to reach, convert and retain prospects by leveraging operational efficiencies built around hyper-personalized data that flows freely across the entire organization.

The Problem Facing Financial Services Firms

Against this ever-more-competitive backdrop, traditional firms face a significant challenge when it comes to re-tooling their approaches to meet their buyers where they are.

Here are just a handful of the factors impacting these firms’ ability to find and close business using traditional playbooks:

• COVID-19 has changed the game
  Although the world is beginning to return to normal, there is no doubt that some of the changes wrought by life in a global pandemic are here to stay. Chief among these: the rapid digital transformation of financial institutions, which has not been matched by asset management firms. Shifting from a mindset of digital optimization to transformation will be key for competing in the years ahead.

• Direct-to-consumer models
  Financial services has been slower than most industries to feel the weight of disruption. However, a rising technology-enabled, direct-to-consumer model is taking hold across the landscape, impacting distribution models, asset flow and fees, and forcing firms to innovate just to keep up. And it’s a model that is only going to keep growing: according to a report by Gartner, fully 33% of all buyers desire a “seller-free” sales experience, with that number climbing to 44% among Millennial buyers.

• Data, data, everywhere
  Your company’s data is only as good as the insights you gain from it--and the decisions you base on those insights. With so many disparate platforms and tools, many financial services companies lack a single source of truth for their data, and even more struggle to identify their most important data points.
  
  
• Personalization problems
  In a world where consumers increasingly expect brands to provide a personalized experience, many financial institutions continue to store data in silos, meaning that insights learned during the customer acquisition process don’t get passed along to the service teams responsible for delighting the customer.
  
  

Consider, also, how some of those problems manifest themselves in today’s financial services market. According to a 2020 research paper on financial services personalization: 70 percent of retail banking brands with product comparison don’t offer the ability to select which products to compare.

Fewer than half of insurance, wealth management and asset management brands with agent or advisor finder tools enable users to search, filter or sort based on criteria other than location.

Over half of retail banking sites provide educational calculators for loans or financing, but only 30% of sites have calculators for payments and/or savings, with even fewer offering solutions for budgeting or rates.

All of this adds up to a significant challenge for firms just to catch up with the shifting technological and generational trends and preferences that have been reshaping other industries for years. Getting ahead requires a whole new approach entirely.

The RevOps Revolution

The key to surviving disruption in any field is to innovate in order to remain competitive. As any number of business school textbooks can attest, firms that lose out to disruptors tend to have at least two elements in common: they are slow to recognize change, and even slower to react to it in a meaningful way.

One way that financial services firms can avoid this fate is to look to examples of companies that are succeeding using new models--particularly startups in the field--and implement similar processes. Increasingly, the key differentiator for successful startups across financial services is a focus on Revenue Operations (RevOps). This approach relies on continuous customer engagement throughout the entire lifecycle, from prospect to service, in order to generate outsized financial returns--often 2-3X higher than traditional competitors.

Owning and Extending the Customer Lifecycle

While there are a number of different ways to measure the lifetime value of a customer, they all tend to wind up pointing to the same thing: retaining customers is by far the simplest way to increase profits.

Two significant reasons for this are as follows:

1. It can cost up to 5x more to find a new client than to retain an existing one.
   
2. Existing clients are more likely to add additional or premium services as they scale, compared to new customers.

How to Choose a RevOps Partner

It’s important to understand that RevOps is about redefining your Go-To-Market strategy from top to bottom. It isn’t another quick fix that “aligns” sales and marketing (until it doesn’t). And it doesn’t add personnel, remain siloed, or sit on top of your other processes.

With that in mind, choosing a partner to help place RevOps at the heart of your business is a critical business decision. Here are a few success factors to weigh in any potential partner:

• Industry knowledge
  It is vital that your partner not only understands business processes but how those processes pertain specifically to the financial services industry. In a sector with knowledgeable, highly specialized buyers, and a range of product types not found in any other industry, a partner that knows the terrain is a must.

• Customer knowledge
  The very core of RevOps is built on customer engagement. A strong partner will be able to assist with everything from persona development to the personalization of messaging and bring value to the table at every stage of the buyer’s journey.

• Compliance
  Put simply, there is no room for any partner to learn about regulatory and reporting requirements within financial services on the job. Simple mistakes can have devastating financial consequences, making a seasoned industry partner a must.

• Educational ability
  Every buyer’s journey has touchpoints that require teaching a prospect about aspects of their role, potential solutions, and more. A partner with a background in educating buyers will be a strong asset.

All of this adds up to a significant challenge for firms just to catch up with the shifting technological and generational trends and preferences that have been reshaping other industries for years. Getting ahead requires a whole new approach entirely.

The RevOps Revolution: Key Takeaways

The pandemic has forced all firms to digitally transform their operations. The trend towards direct-to-consumer models and new GTM strategies being pioneered by some of the successful fintechs, are leading to revenue models that are more data driven and deliver value across the entire customer lifecycle.

This translates to harmonization of marketing, sales, and customer service with not just shared goals and revenue targets, but also shared data, tools, and processes across teams and departmental siloes.

RevOps provides this alignment by redefining the GTM strategy from the ground up to companies that are scaling rapidly. It is important to support this rapid growth with the right platform and processes that can scale with the business and be flexible enough to keep up with changing customer behaviors.

Choosing the right RevOps partner is equally as important, one that has experience with not just with technology, but also have knowledge about the industry, customers, and the regulatory environment. Your RevOps partner should guide you be providing a baseline of your current RevOp maturity level, and then chart a course for optimization consistent with your revenue growth targets.