Relationship building in the financial services marketplace: The importance of personal selling

Radical changes have resulted in heightened consumer mobility and intense competition in the financial services industry. In order to create and maintain a competitive edge, today’s financial service firms must establish and maintain a highly integrative, customer-oriented sales culture based on building trust and relationship enhancement. Importantly, in the twenty-first century, financial service firms have to utilize technology effectively so as to provide easily understandable and usable employee and customer information. In this article, we suggest that traditional and non-traditional financial services firms will benefit from adopting technological methods from the direct selling industry. To this end, we offer managerial implications for successful implementation of technologically astute personal selling processes in the financial services marketplace.