In addition to a consumer channel (B2C)
many financial services businesses have a business to business channel (B2B) that is critical to how they distribute their products and services to their markets.
Success in their B2B distribution channels for most
financial services businesses depends on how well they answer these questions:Have we delivered the best quality product and service in the market?
Have we informed and and helped our colombia cell phone database channel sellers communicate the benefits of our products to their customers?
Have we incentivized and compensated our sellers effectively?
These questions speak to the importance of meeting the needs of sellers in order to gain market share: you need to have a good product to sell, a compelling reason for the seller’s customer to buy it and just as compelling a reason for the seller to sell it.
But there is one more question that often becomes decisive when we’re selling into a competitive market: Have we built strong enough relationships with people we sell to and through?
Social disruption in the B2B channel
From the largest product manufacturers to the smallest professional service providers, the B2B distribution model is everywhere you look in financial service businesses. For example:
insurance distribution relies heavily on regional and national agent/advisor networks;
investment products are distributed though a dizzying array of financial/investment advisors, planners, brokers, fiduciaries, etc.; and
many professional and business advisory services, including accounting, legal, etc., are sourced through less formal B2B and peer networks.
Virtually everyone within these elaborate distribution networks are at the same time selling and being sold to.
At the same time as products are being sold to customers and advice is being
proffered to clients, agents, advisors and other professionals are selling themselves to each other to receive referrals to provide the complementary services that everyone’s clients and customers need. This is familiar turf for anyone in financial services.
Enter social media and it’s transformative impact on consumers’ access to information, our communications systems and even our professional business networks themselves. Consumers get more information online about products and services than they’ve ever had access to before. And they’re sharing this information and their feelings about it directly in their social networks and among their peers like never before.