The Adapter’s Advantage: Bill Harmon on Selling With Greater Purpose

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Welcome to The Adapter’s Advantage: Breakthrough Moments that Lead to Success.

In this episode, financial services executive Bill Harmon, chief client officer at Voya Financial, discusses selling with a greater purpose, the importance of a holistic approach to financial planning, how sellers can help clients prepare for retirement, and why improving employee benefits helps attract and retain top talent.

Bill Harmon is chief client officer for Voya Financial. In his role, Harmon leads the health and wealth sales, distribution and relationship management teams at Voya. He and his team support Voya’s efforts to deliver holistic solutions that help employers and their employees address their health and wealth needs and achieve greater financial wellness. He also serves on Voya’s Enterprise Leadership Team.

Prior to this role, Harmon oversaw all aspects of Voya’s Corporate Markets business, which includes 401(k) and non-qualified plans. Harmon was responsible for sales, relationship management, strategy and profitable growth for all segments of the market. Prior to joining Voya in 2017, Harmon served as senior vice president, Core Markets, for Empower Retirement.

Listen as Bill discusses the importance of being customer-centric, how to keep customers engaged in hybrid environments, what it takes to successfully deploy sales enablement software, and more.

Host Mark Magnacca: “What advice do you have for ensuring organizations adopt and use sales enablement technology?”

Bill Harmon: “First, the technology needs to be really personalized. It needs to be personalized to the customer or personalized to the user.

“It also needs to be very intuitive to use and easy to find content and assets. If sales enablement says to the sales team, ‘We have all this information. Just go to that site and find it,’ they won’t.

“Instead, you want a tool that allows sellers to type in text and gives them all the items related to that topic, plus explains how to deliver that content and includes some talking points.

“You also need to get buy-in from the management team and get your noisy alphas using it. Our head of sales enablement will find the noisy alpha and train them because then they will be noisy in the platform.

“So, you get the leaders to say to use it, you get peers to say it, and you get that noisy alpha who says it loudly. Then everyone will be saying, ‘Wow, if John Doe is doing that, I need to be doing that because look at his or her numbers.’”

Our podcast features leaders from sales, training, and industry who share their personal journeys of transformation and how they are adapting to an ever-changing environment. As your host, I’ll introduce you to some of the most interesting and inspiring people I’ve met over the last 20 years.

The conversations dive into the ups and downs of their journey. Our guests focus on inflection points—the aha moments that, in retrospect, had a critical impact on their success. These interviews will leave you with practical, real-world advice that you can apply to your life.

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