The Top Five Skills for Financial Services Sales

Just 50% of financial salespeople expect to hit their target

TRUMBULL, Conn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Questionmark, the online assessment provider, has identified five skills that financial services salespeople must develop to maximize their performance.

Financial services firms depend on making sales. But half of financial services salespeople expect to miss their annual target¹. Employers can improve performance by first understanding the behaviors of the most successful. Then they can identify how widespread they are among workers and build them up with more training and support.

The top five skills

1. Digital marketing – 82% of buyers look up salespeople or their companies on LinkedIn before responding to their communications.² A compelling digital presence will help with lead generation.
2. First-class knowledge – customers know they can get the basic information online. During a conversation with salespeople, they want to go to the next level of detail.
3. Consultancy – a would-be customer expects a salesperson to understand their business and identify products that are right for them. They want advice on how to use products effectively.
4. Qualifying leads accurately – people waste too much time pursuing leads that are unlikely to convert. They should be able to spot a future opportunity early on and be ruthless in ignoring those that are unlikely to bear fruit.
5. Communication – both speed and quality of communication are essential. Calls must be returned. Emails have to be answered quickly.

Lars Pedersen, CEO of Questionmark, said: “The business environment is ever changing which presents a world of opportunities for financial services salespeople. Employers must ensure teams have the skills to thrive. Understanding what the best people do and replicating those skills across the workforce will ensure results improve.

“Regular skills assessments give employers reliable information on the strengths and weaknesses of their salesforce. They can introduce training to correct weaknesses. They can test the effect of that training with further assessments.”

Questionmark can help employers make better decisions on managing their salesforce by:

• Enabling them to identify the skills of the most effective salespeople
• Providing ready-made assessment content to test the digital marketing and lead qualification skills of team members
• Testing the effectiveness of training to ensure it’s equipping salespeople with the skills they need

www.questionmark.com

Notes to editors

About Questionmark

Questionmark unlocks performance through reliable and secure online assessments.

Questionmark provides a secure enterprise-grade assessment platform and professional services to leading organizations around the world, delivered with care and unequalled expertise. Its full-service online assessment tool and professional services help customers to improve their performance and meet their compliance requirements. Questionmark enables organizations to unlock their potential by delivering assessments which are valid, reliable, fair and defensible.

Questionmark offers secure powerful integration with other LMS, LRS and proctoring services making it easy to bring everything together in one place. Questionmark's cloud-based assessment management platform offers rapid deployment, scalability for high-volume test delivery, 24/7 support, and the peace-of-mind of secure, audited U.S., Australian and European-based data centers.

¹ https://c1.sfdcstatic.com/content/dam/web/en_us/www/documents/reports/sales/state-of-sales-3rd-ed.pdf
² https://www.rainsalestraining.com/blog/9-tips-for-success-in-financial-services-sales