The anti-sales approach

Who is your customer?

Investors are smart.

Savvy investors seek to maximize returns and minimize cost. They know to examine fees. Investors today have developed a healthy skepticism of those in the investment space who aim to part them from their hard-earned savings.

Investors care about values such as integrity and transparency.

Most of all, savvy investors hate to be sold to.

What about accredited vs. non-accredited?

All the foregoing is true enough of both accredited and non-accredited investors so as to make the distinction far less important in how you approach them than the contrast with institutional investment sales or consumer good sales.

Pick an approach

Selling investments to savvy investors requires a thoughtful approach. Cmd+Shift+Convert calls it "anti-sales".

Cmd+Shift+Convert's anti-sales approach lets the customer feel they are in the driver’s seat. The decision to buy, subscribe, or invest should ultimately feel like their own original idea, not something they were manipulated into, as the latter inevitably leads to high churn rates and may even risk reputational damage. The best part is, this high-touch, experience-focused approach is — counterintuitively — extremely efficient and facilitated by automation. 

The anti-sales approach has three pillars:

1. Mutual trust
2. Respect for the customer
3. Transparency and clarity of information

You can talk until you're blue in the face about how you're "democratizing access", but a savvy investor knows that's not why you do what you do. You're in this to make money, and so are they. Transparency around this fact shows you respect your customer's intelligence, and doing anything else is destructive of trust.

Where others go wrong

Here is precisely where so many fintech operators today misstep: they underestimate their customer's intelligence. This mindset produces messaging that comes off as condescending and/or manipulative. Savvy investors will be turned off by this and simply look elsewhere.

The few folks these misguided operators may succeed in hooking will not be sustainable — at some point they will "get smart" and resent feeling manipulated into a decision where the investment or timing wasn't right for them. And when that happens, at best they will exercise whatever liquidity might be available to them; worse, they may do that and share their negative experience in a public forum. Don't risk your reputation for a cheap sale.

Anti-sales vs. traditional approaches

Let's examine some of the hallmarks of the anti-sales approach versus a traditional investment sales approach:

It's (also) about efficiency

The anti-sales approach is not only about respect for the customer. It's also just more efficient.

Lower headcount

When you create high-value content, you'll generate more interest and leads will be apt to reach out to you. When you can activate inbound sales, you can skip the deep bench of SDRs calling down lists and going to voicemail.

You can and should develop knowledgable sales talent. Prioritize customer service backgrounds. What you call them matters; here are a few options worth considering (note the word "sales" is conspicuously absent):

• Client Relationship Managers
• Investment Consultants
• Member Experience Associates

Focused activities

Instead of dialing for dollars, your sales team will spend their time responding to inbound inquiries, taking meeting requests, hosting webinars, and prospecting among a set of the leads most likely to convert.

Your leads will be systematically nurtured over time using your customer-serving content. Your sales ops command center will track your leads' engagement behaviors with that content and algorithmically score them.

With your leads neatly organized by likelihood to convert, you can essentially discard the rest. The timing may not be right today, but your automations will help you stay top-of-mind until it is.