
Ask HN: Anyone with fintech sales experience? - tixocloud
Working in financial services and although I&#x27;m constantly thinking of new ideas to improve things, I&#x27;d like to get an outsiders&#x27; perspective on how to successfully sell to financial services companies.
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ga110578
1)-Focus on what's in for them. 2)-Get a common 'friend' to endorse/introduce-
preferably board member, investor, or someone credible from CEO's graph.
3)-Position your product/solution on these levers- Increase Revenue, Reduce
Expenses, Lower Losses. 4)-Select right approach- relationship vs
transactional 5)-Don't try to close in Meeting 1 6) Demonstrate how your
product has helped other clients/business partners.

[Was CEO of a financial services company and worked with large banks and
FI's.]

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tixocloud
Thanks. Would you be able to comment on sales cycles and landing our first
user/customer?

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ga110578
Sure, sales-cycle will depend on the size of potential customer/company. Big
organizations = Longer decision making. First user/customer is always through
personal referrals/reputation/network. Easiest way to do this is: 1) Focus on
Small/Mid-sized Financial services companies to establish a beachhead/ First
few customers. 2) Sharply define your product/solution and how it fits in that
particular company's narrative. 3) Find "side doors"-Independently pitch to
1-2 board members, and separately to the CEO. Specific to "marketing
automation software" \- connect with CMO/Sales head and demonstrate the value
prop. The objective is 'decision makers' should hear positively about your
company from different sources. 4) Be flexible with the commercial model to
get first few clients ( many prefer outcome based pricing) 5) Get a subtle PR
cycle activated for your company/product. 6) Minimize integration effort:
Ensure that your product can easily be integrated with customer's existing
infra. (Preference is for API-based solutions)

If orchestrated correctly, you will have 2-3 'paying customers' in month 1-2.
All the best.

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tixocloud
Thanks! I'll give it a shot.

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qwrusz
Work in finance. I am curious about this topic too.

I think it depends what you are selling and who the users at the fin services
company will be (IT department? compliance? everyone? etc...)

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tixocloud
Would love to connect to discuss your experience. Is there any way that I can
reach you?

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qwrusz
Sure. Just to make sure I'm the right guy, what area is of interest or what
sorts of things are you looking to discuss?

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tixocloud
Analytics is a hot topic so I'm curious to know if there's any opportunity
within finance. Also, happy to discuss any ideas you might have - my
experience has mostly been in financial services.

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qwrusz
What is analytics? What does that encompass? Not trying to play dumb.

I am familiar with multi-strategy buyside >$1B firms, analyst and management
work. More on PM side (equity, HY, macro research,) and less with sales and
marketing or middle office but have experience across groups.

I don't work at a quant shop but do think its the future of finance - in
general computers are already better at finance than humans and that gap will
grow.

There are tons of problems to fix in finance if you're thinking as a founder
or VC. But many would-be fintech startups don't realize the extent finance
can't make big changes without regulatory level changes too, that can be a
good or bad thing, but this is the opposite of some "move fast and break
things" industry. It must be addressed and execution of many solutions can
become impractical and inefficient at the startup level, with exceptions,
fintech involves a lot of "move slow, don't break anything, call me in 10-15
years". I think Zenefits is an example right now going through learning this
the hard way but I am impressed by what Dave Sacks is doing.

What sort of thing are you thinking about when you say fintech?

What types of ideas? This is HackerNews everyone has a million ideas, me
included.

