Overview
A top asset manager planned to launch a new product line in a new market, and they needed to prepare their noncaptive channel sales partners: independent financial advisors.
They also wanted to explore new avenues of establishing trust, building brand awareness, and gaining a competitive advantage among this key audience. Meanwhile, financial advisors needed trustworthy information they could use to attract new clients and provide better client service.
The training program pilot garnered an 95% approval rating, won two Gold Brandon Hall Group Awards, and set the stage for a scalable partner training program.
Organization
We partnered with two firms on this project: an enterprise wealth management organization and their management consulting partner. The project team included diverse, cross-functional stakeholders from our client’s digital teams, their content/service areas, sales, and marketing departments.
Challenge
Our wealth management partner relies on a large network of independent, non-captive financial advisors to sell their products. They faced two key, related challenges:
1. They needed to educate their channel sales partners on both a new market and a new product line for that new market.
Our partner was expanding into a new, adjacent market. Advisor education was critical to their endeavor. They needed their advisor network to understand both the market and the new products. Advisors needed to feel confident that they had sufficient knowledge to provide excellent client service.
2. They wanted to create a scalable learning experience to differentiate them from their competitors.
It was essential for our client to build and maintain trust so that financial advisors felt confident recommending our client’s products. They wanted to position themselves as the go-to resource for advisors on this topic. A digital learning experience provided the forum to connect with this key audience and to address key pain points advisors felt in their existing workflows and tool sets.
Additionally, they had a series of successful in-person workshops that they wanted to transform into digital experiences, capturing the level of engagement from in-person training in a digital medium.
Solution
Both challenges could be addressed by a single solution: the implementation of an engaging digital learning experience that centered learners’ needs while simultaneously working towards our clients’ GTM and brand goals.
Matching strategy to business objectives
Studion’s learning expertise helped transform our partner’s marketing strategy into a learning strategy that achieved marketing objectives, thereby making the learning product strategically viable.
To define a learning experience that would best meet the needs of financial advisors, we used the existing user and market research to inform a High Engagement at Scale® strategy. We determined the mix of High Engagement at Scale ingredients that would best meet the needs of the target learner personas, provide the most brand recognition, and play in the “whitespace” without direct competition. The High Engagement at Scale framework maps to features in a digital learning experience, so it’s also a tool for feature prioritization.
We proposed several different strategies based on High Engagement at Scale, and our partner ultimately chose the one that best met their business objectives and feasibility requirements.
Building a pilot and testing Signature Moments
Once we had chosen a strategic direction, it was time to build a pilot to test and validate our findings. The pilot learning experience educated financial advisors on the new market opportunity and explained the benefits of our clients’ new product line. We developed, tested, and refined over 25 concepts, wireframes, and mockups with over 100 users to create a digital experience that achieved our client’s brand goals.
One key feature in the learning experience was to take learners from theory to practice by providing advisors with client-ready materials. Advisors walked away from every topic with talking points, downloadable summaries, and client-ready handouts they can take into their next meeting. The training experience provided immediate, real-world value.
Impact
Our High Engagement at Scale framework allowed a large team of internal stakeholders to build strategic alignment around their learners’ needs in order to launch a pilot learning experience. In a market saturated with “bait and switch” educational products and marketing-disguised-as-learning, focusing on truly engaging learners differentiated our client’s GTM strategy.
The pilot achieved 95% positive feedback from learners. The pilot’s success validated digital learning experiences as an effective tool for GTM plans, successfully setting sales channel partners up for success, building trust and brand awareness, and providing a competitive advantage.
Based on the pilot’s success, our client has been able to scale their training program to additional products and partner segments. Training has transformed into a strategic lever to build partner preference and capture mindshare.
Furthermore, the data they’ll gather on the behavior of their target audience and the way they engage with learning content will enable the marketing team to refine and optimize their strategies.
The end result is a differentiated learning experience that provides efficient, valuable learning to help financial advisors achieve their main goal, great client service, while also allowing our client to achieve their main goal, product sales.
