Successful sales are no longer just about product and brand - they also hinge on the client experience. In today’s digital world, engagement strategy is a critical part of the modern sales process and determines whether the audience pays attention or passes you by. Learn more about the benefits of sales engagement and how to build your strategy.
The definition
The Oxford Learner’s Dictionary definition of an experience is an event or activity that affects you in some way. Creating customer experiences is nothing new for many industries; in the luxury car industry, it is now more common to have customers collect cars from their beautiful factories, sit in an experience room when ordering their car spec, or visit track days to race cars around a track. From wine-tasting in restaurants and hotels, to personal shoppers and tailoring, customers are increasingly in search of something more special, something that helps them appreciate the product more than just a picture on a website. They are looking for a special experience that’s personalised for them.
The same goes for online. In a world of increasingly homogenised online sales strategies, creating experiences not only provides competitive advantages but may be the only way to re-engage an increasingly disengaged audience who are saturated with emails and PDF attachments.
So what are digital sales experiences? They are interactive sales communications, between organisation and client, delivered via a digital channel.
And in our case, rather than an old-fashioned sales push – where a customer receives product information via phone, in person, or over the web, and it tends to be full of writing with an attachment just like any other email experience – a digital sales experience invites the receiver into a more welcoming online environment that is likely specifically tailored to their profile. It’s a place the user enjoys discovering, featuring intuitive functionality and a sense of wow. A place that can be visited at the ease of the user, which in our context means a delight to use on both mobile as well as desktop screens.
Sales touchpoints become digital experiences
What are the benefits of digital sales experiences?
The financial services industry has long been behind the curve when it comes to digital sales experiences. Most industries, such as luxury and travel, have figured this out long ago. The best way to sell to someone is to create an experience for them that makes them feel special, delights them and fits their needs.
Now the industry is desperately trying to catch up because in a world where success is increasingly reliant on digital engagement, they are losing credibility, market share, and relevance.
There are two key benefits of the digital sales experience:
- Increased client engagement. You can wow your clients in ways that you never could before. Convey a clear message; no more beating around the bush. And create a positive, memorable experience for them in a format that you know they want to consume. That formula is going to drive more engagement. And that translates to more business.
- Data capture. You can capture data on a recipient’s interactions with what you send. This data capture is a far more effective way of understanding their behaviour and can be used to power machine learning so that in the future, the computer can help the salesperson to provide great, personal service to many more clients than before.
The benefits of digital sales experiences
What do digital sales experiences mean for wealth and asset managers?
The challenge for the wealth and asset management industry is how to keep up with an increasingly digitally savvy consumer. Ten years ago, digital savviness and preference were reserved for the younger generation. But thanks to the underlying digital trend, accelerated by the pandemic, digital sophistication now transcends age and increasingly transcends geographic and cultural digital nuances too.
According to a recent McKinsey survey, companies need to improve digital experiences if they plan on holding on to newly digital consumers.
When it comes to sales, the industry is generally stuck in the dark ages of emails and attachments. They rely heavily on the in-person ‘experience’, which involves nicely decorated meeting rooms and reception areas in their offices where they invite clients. Whilst email is still an important communication channel, the way that it is still used is not at all engaging. Moreover, it is actually disengaging to have to read long emails and open PDF attachments, and it is prohibitive to do so on a mobile phone which in itself is a significant impediment to driving engagement.
Digital sales experiences offer wealth and asset managers the chance to re-capture the attention of their prospects and clients. They can communicate in a way that their customers want to communicate, and that is a game-changer. The question that we answer below is how to create these experiences - it is easier than you might think, and the barriers that asset and wealth managers typically have to adopt new, and innovative approaches such as expertise, cost, and regulatory hurdles - are easily overcome.
Traditional wealth and asset manager customer touchpoints
Digital experience success stories
Since the concept of digital sales experiences may be new to some readers, let’s contextualise it with some well-known digital experiences that have driven new models for doing business.
Offline experiences have long been recognised in many industries as a benefit for brand sales. When a customer buys a Rolls-Royce, they are invited to collect it at the factory in Goodwood, England. Equally, buying a Ferrari has become an experience at their dealer, with simulation rooms, and a plethora of personalisation options that you can touch and feel. You can even go on a driving course to ensure you can drive your new Ferrari at its maximum... The high-end Danish electronics company, Bang and Olufsen, have speaker rooms in their showrooms where you can experience the crisp, clear audio before purchasing. Even the age-old wine vineyards of France were the first to offer tasting rooms - try before you buy - which has been a well-repeated way of driving sales.
These have been brought online too, and let’s call out some game-changers for the digital experience. An overused, but great example, is how the Netflix experience has spawned a generation of digital businesses attempting to replicate their infamous movie selection screens. Similarly, Spotify has been a leader in music discovery, and Uber in the ride-hailing sector.
Trend-setting digital experiences
The role of design and user experience
In every experience, there is an element of design and presentation. In today’s world, where customers, young and old, are interacting with digital experiences, the appreciation of design, both conscious and subconscious, means it’s an important lever to pull to ensure customer success.
With daily use of social media such as TikTok and Instagram, media consumption on streaming networks like Netflix, ride-hailing on Uber, and all-encompassing payment, message and shopping platforms such as Grab and Line, the user is now more discerning than ever about their digital experience. This is bad news for new entrants like wealth and asset managers, is that if experiences are not done well, then there will be little uplift over the current ways of communicating long, copy-heavy PDF documents. There’s no room for poorly designed experiences. Good technology will natively bring design best practices and that’s important because design and user experiences are not ranking high in the strengths of wealth and asset managers. It also eliminates the need to have lots of different design, technology and in-house professionals all working together, which is a drain on time and money.
Design is good for business
How to create digital sales experiences?
Emails and attractive price offers are no longer the way forward for those in the wealth and asset management industry. Companies within this sector think that because this has been the way for so long, it is the only way to do things. Anything else is expensive, time-consuming and outside of their comfort zone. Sound familiar?
There are considerable advantages to digitalising, and the cost is not expensive, as is so often perceived. It doesn’t involve a massive investment in digital transformation and human capital. You can create a digital sales experience by following our simple journey.
The top four building blocks for digital sales experiences:
- Well-designed sales material - it does not matter how good your digital experiences are; if your products are not well presented, then customers will not consume them.
- Sales material that’s easy to find and use - to build digital sales experiences, you need to ensure your sales team can easily access the right information and quickly build experiences.
- Digital page building software - Be able to represent your content inside of a digital experience, replacing those long emails and attachments.
- Data capture - be able to collect data on customer interactivity to be used to optimise future engagement.
Digital sales experiences by GoUpscale
GoUpscale does the heavy lifting for you. Our software creates digital sales experiences that will engage the recipient in three easy steps:
- Build personalised stories to your prospects and clients – product pushing is a thing of the past with our Digital Catalogue
- Deliver that story through any channel that the receiver wants – say goodbye to long, word heavy emails
- Wow the recipient with beautiful content on any device – our design studio makes your sales material look great
GoUpscale makes it easy for you to create digital sales experiences that your customers will love. Let’s have a conversation, click here.
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