What really happens during a sales interaction?
For years, Novantas has been a leader in developing data-based insights for financial services companies worldwide. Requests from clients to improve their person-to-person sales effectiveness by deeply and richly understanding the sales and service experience for both customers and prospective customers beyond traditional 'mystery shops' as well as relationship and telephone managed channels led to the development of StratShop – a sales effectiveness improvement program that delivers specific sales behavior improvement recommendations based-on a foundation of Six Sigma analytics and best practices - across all sales channels.
Many have found that traditional "shops" just don't provide the comprehensiveness, quality and analytical rigor of information they require to continuously improve the sales performance of their front-line sales representatives... the shop scenarios are typically simplistic, the shoppers lack relevant financial industry experience, the data is limited and the results lack specific behavior improvement recommendations. And, most institutions don't assess the sales interaction in their highest cost and highest revenue per customer relationship-managed channels (e.g. business bankers). As the result, some institutions have replaced their traditional program with StratShop; others use both.
StratShop is a periodic assessment service that recommends specific sales enhancements that increase sales effectiveness and competitive advantage by objectively assessing the effectiveness of the sales experience and comparing it to competitors and Novantas best sales practice database. Specifically,
- What is the sales experience today for current and prospective clients?
- Which aspects of our training are sticking? Which special behaviors need improvements?
- How do we compare to the sales experiences of our key competitors?
- Are there sales interaction best practices within our bank to adopt more broadly?
- From competitors that we should consider adapting or adopting?
- How important are the sales interaction differences between us and our competitors?
- What sales behavior benchmark metrics can be used to assess sales behavior progress and identify other areas for improvement focus?
StratShop works in a wide range of person-to-person sales environments worldwide:
- Walk-in interactions with bank, brokerage and insurance offices, this includes referrals within the office and to other colleagues outside that office, e.g., branch to a business banker
- Appointment-based relationship management channels such as business banking, affluent market, private banking, securities brokers, insurance agents and the like
- Telephone sales and service channels
- Sales of deposit, loan, cash management, investments, insurance and related products
How can sales and service experiences be improved?
StratShop takes traditional mystery shopping to the next level:
Specific recommended sales and service improvements to the client institution's sales and service model, sales process and sales behaviors based on assessing their performance across their network, compared to key competitors and compared to our best practices database. Additional deliverables include StratShop scores, sales defect rates, scorecards and of other analytics.
Assessors are all former retail financial services managers with 12+ years of industry experience so they can focus on the nuances of the sales experience and can readily field more complex personal, small business, affluent or investment scenarios
Assessment Scenarios can be deep and complex. They may require appointment setting with multiple follow-up conversations, each assessor has telephone, email and address contact information so any follow-ups can be assessed
Initial Curbside/Call Experience to Follow-up for any sales rep follow-ups by phone, mail and/or email since assessors can provide this information
Six Sigma Analytical Insights and Anecdotes for each component of the experience that are captured in a comprehensive 30 page Field Guide for each assessment. For each interaction, StratShop assesses the content (what did they say and do?), the process (how did they manage the conversation and convey the information?) and the quality (how did the experience feel?).
Clients use the StratShop to accelerate their sales growth by improving their sales execution: sales model, sales behaviors, sales training and sales management:
- Define their target sales experience
- Improve the customer and prospective customer sales and service experience
- Benchmark strengths/weaknesses across their network and vs. competitors
- Focus their training investments in the specific areas (e.g., closing) that need remedial work, in each major marketplace
- Focus sales management investments in the same way to be sure the training not only sticks, but is also implemented in a high quality way
In addition, clients have used StratShop to improve M&A and competitive intelligence:
- Assess a potential acquisition's sales strengths/weaknesses
- Determine new competitor's sales strengths/weaknesses before they enter our markets, so we can better thwart their entry
- Determine new competitor's sales strengths/weaknesses before we enter their markets so we can improve our entry success
StratShop delivers immediate and ongoing value to clients from a combination of specific sales enhancements that increase sales effectiveness and competitive advantage based on a comprehensive analytical foundation.