Are you ready to find new clients?

Whether you started your own boutique bank or joined an existing one, you likely have a hefty Rolodex of industry contacts, name recognition, and strong relationships within your specific area of expertise. As vital to running a successful boutique bank is not the size of your assets but your depth of knowledge and earning client recognition that a call to your firm should be the first to be made if considering a particular issue.

But what about when it’s time to find new clients?

Finding, connecting, and engaging with new clients can be the difference between hearing about a recent multi-million deal and being the one asked to execute it. Client outreach or business development is probably already high on your list of things to do, but so are many other tasks. That’s why I believe it’s worth spending a little bit of time learning about and leveraging some of the tricks and tools already in use by other sales-based industries to help you capture new contacts and ensure you get a crack at that next multi-million deal.

Critical to this is your sales stack, a combination of software tools and systems that you deploy throughout the sales process to help manage outreach and store information.

The good news is that you’re probably already using some form of client relationship management (CRM) software package. But the bad news is that this is just the tip of the iceberg if you really want to maximize efficiencies and insights. While there is no tech sales stack silver bullet as no single piece of software will do everything for you (even if it claims to) you can build your own tech stack using the hub and spoke model.

The hub

The hub is a centralized repository of information, usually a CRM. It connects to each spoke, which in turn specializes in a single element of the sales process. Information flows from the spoke into the hub and vice versa, ensuring all tools pull from and update the same repository of information. This not only provides a comprehensive view into potential leads but also ensures accuracy across systems.

You probably already have your hub as a CRM, maybe you use Salesforce, Sugar or, Zoho CRM. The CRM will act as your database of information, holding details about every client, their activity, and contact information.

The spokes

The spokes are key. Each spoke focuses solely on executing a single task. When choosing these tools, you need to make sure that everything can connect back to the centralized hub. In addition to best of breed specialization, this hub and spoke model is efficient as by breaking down tasks, you can pass some things off to an intern or executive assistant with a bit of spare time.

The challenge is finding the right spokes that will advance your business and not be a distraction. For example, there are a wide variety of social media analytics tools out there, but if your clients aren’t active on these channels, this spoke may be a waste of time.

The first approach to choosing your spokes should be to consider a typical sales process, shown below recalibrated for a boutique bank:

Spend ten minutes writing down everything you need for each stage of the process. For example, DEMONSTRATE may include a web-demo tool, PowerPoint presentation, video conferencing tool and more. Once you have a list for each you can begin to research tools and schedule demos feeling informed about what you need and what is important so you don’t get distracted by any bells or whistles.

It will take about an hour to do this for the entire sales process but saves time later as you avoid buying, setting up, and then dismantling a platform you don't really need. And you can also spot possible synergies across tools early on.

Crucially, when choosing your spokes you need to ensure they can all integrate with your selected hub. Some tools will offer native integration and some will connect through Zapier or an API, which is more manual and requires some engineering talent. Also, when considering spokes confirm if the information is pushed in just one direction or both (bidirectional).

Investment banking is perfectly placed to start reaping the benefits of some of the advancements that have been tried and tested by sales teams small and large in other industries. By combining technology packages you can maximize opportunities and automate more of your sales workflow, saving time and energy to focus on pitching to your strongest prospects.

Do you have a sales stack? Shoot me an email with any questions at adrian.s.crockett@gmail.com.