In financial services, what are the biggest hold ups within the sales pipeline, and how can these be
To stay ahead in financial services, it is crucial that businesses are using a flawless pipeline strategy tailored to the financial industry.
Based on a survey of Pipedrive customers, the biggest sticking points across most financial services include moving deals forward, consolidating sales data and spending lots of time on manual admin tasks.
No matter what financial product is being sold, there’s a good chance that one stage of the pipeline is slowing down the entire process.
A typical pipeline within, let’s say, an insurance company, might be:
- Target (early days, the lead has not yet been contacted)
- Contacted (you’ve called or emailed your lead and they’ve potentially become a prospect)
- Meeting agreed (you’ve agreed an agenda and a date in the diary)
- Proposal sent (you’ve submitted a formal proposal with insurance policy terms)
- Buyer reassured (you’ve sent a simplified policy breakdown and answered all their questions)
- Close (time to get their signature on the bottom line)
Within any pipeline such as the one above, it’s crucial that salespeople are able to understand where regulations, procedures, tools and legal processes might be causing a pause in the process. From here, a plan can be made to smooth over the specific tasks that are taking too long by introducing a solution.
What are some of the common barriers to sales you’ve come across in financial services and how do you resolve these?