Meeting The Unique Needs Of The Financial Services Sector

As Dana Klein, VP of Sales Strategy and Planning at Resolute Investment Managers, describes it, financial services is an industry that favors face-to-face sales work.

“Our business changed dramatically with the pandemic – virtual meetings using Highspot became essential – but it’s still a business that’s based on relationships,” he says. With that in mind, Klein and his colleagues at Resolute gravitated towards sales enablement software that brings the personalized touch of in-person sales work to a digital platform.

Today, the business uses Highspot in combination with Salesforce to track KPI’s, streamline training, and share content. “Highspot is the second most-used piece of software [after Salesforce] by our sales team,” says Laurel Tucker, Manager of Sales Intelligence at Resolute. “The ease of use that Highspot provides, along with the Salesforce integration, made it something our sales team got on board with quickly.”

Tracking Sales Success in a Heavily Regulated Industry 

The sales team at Resolute faces a selling landscape unique to their industry. Case in point: the leads they follow are finite. “We sell to people who we know are registered within our industry to be able to sell our mutual funds,” explains Tucker, meaning Resolute wholesalers sell to a fixed number of financial advisors.

This makes the use of Highspot highly intentional. “Our sales team uses Highspot to pitch from within the Salesforce platform,” says Tucker. “The combination of Highspot and Salesforce helps us relate pitches to specific deals and track KPI’s.” The insights derived from Highspot and Salesforce help leaders ensure that salespeople are hitting certain goals. “Our rule is, if it’s not in Salesforce, it didn’t happen,” says Klein, making the integration of Highspot in Salesforce particularly valuable.

And, in a highly regulated industry where even commenting on a social media post can be seen as non-compliant, the sales team at Resolute uses Highspot to keep up with strict regulations. “When we create content to share externally, it’s a multi-step process to get it approved,” explains Klein. “Highspot is very useful in that it helps us organize content into internal and external spots, helping us stay compliant.”

Resolute also uses Highspot to keep up with industry regulatory requirements, including Global Investment Performance Standards (GIPS) that require asset management firms to provide yearly performance information on investments. “We use Highspot to pitch those updates to everyone who we are required to share the information with,” says Klein. “That way, we have a record of who received the original report, so we can send them the latest version. We can even see who opened it, which is helpful. This wouldn’t be possible if we simply sent the updates via email attachment.”

A Right-Sized Sales Enablement Solution 

In the past, Resolute used multiple platforms to share content and track simple metrics. When it was announced that one of them would no longer be available, Klein and his colleagues had a year to evaluate and choose a replacement enablement platform, this time with more robust capabilities. “We evaluated a variety of alternatives,” he recalls, before ultimately settling on Highspot because it offered a competitive price, had robust reporting and analytics functions and didn’t make us pay for features we didn’t need when we already had a redundant solution.” he notes. In addition to bi-weekly calls with the Highspot team, Tucker appreciates the ongoing new feature releases in Highspot. “That’s always refreshing,” she says. “I am not getting upsold on something. We are able to use the new features as they become available.”

Boosting Engagement and Bringing Content to Sellers Instantly 

For a recent series of webinars, Klein and Tucker decided to conduct a “social experiment” and see how the use of Highspot would affect engagement. “We directed everyone to use Highspot rather than email to share information about the upcoming webinars,” says Klein. A Highspot Play contained the latest information on the new campaigns – everything from lead lists to what to include when contacting prospective customers. “It was a learning curve, but what we found was the people who were most successful were the ones who used the Highspot sales play we built for them.”

Tucker and Klein also use Highspot to gain insights into how individuals on the sales team are performing, and what might be affecting their success. “We noticed one individual who bumped up their performance significantly,” says Tucker. “When we took a look into what he was doing, we saw that he was following the Highspot sales play exactly.” Overall, the sales team at Resolute has been using Highspot to achieve more: 60% more sellers have achieved quota since launching the tool.

The use of Highspot is making it easier for salespeople to find content, something Klein thinks is key to the tool’s success. “We have great adoption and it’s easy to use,” he says. “Salespeople just type what they need in the search box and get the right content, instantly. We have seen 10 times more content adoption with Highspot compared to our previous solution.” And, Highspot analytics help Klein and Tucker make informed decisions about what content is valuable and what needs to go. “We keep track of how many salespeople are sending various pieces of content,” says Klein. “If we see that something isn’t being used, that is our sign to clean it up.”

While the sales landscape of financial services may still be changing, the team at Resolute is ahead of the curve, using Highspot to gain powerful insights and navigate a unique industry.