Scaling Revenue in Fintech: The Proven Process for Winning Bank Buyers with Stacy Bishop

Welcome to the B2B Growth Blueprint podcast, where we talk with entrepreneurs, founders, and leaders at B2B services, tech, and SaaS companies to learn the systems and processes they've used to create success for their business. We'll also learn from marketing and sales experts to provide insights to help you grow your business. I'm your host, Mark Osborne, and the podcast is brought to you by Modern Revenue Strategies and their 10X ROI B2B Growth Guarantee. Schedule a free diagnostic call to learn the fastest path to double your B2B revenues in just 90 days. Hello and welcome to another episode of the B2B Growth Blueprint Podcast. I'm your host, Mark Osborne, And today I'm very excited to welcome my guest, Stacy Bishop. Now I'm going to read Stacy's bio to make sure I get this right. She's actually lived at the intersection of banking and financial technologies, or fintech, since early high school when she began working part-time at Jack Henry while also learning the ropes working at community banks. She spent 25 years in sales and marketing roles, securing over $300 million in revenue through enterprise sales to financial institutions. She has launched banking verticals at 2 different fintech companies and ran channel sales at 2 different organizations. These days, Stacy guides fintech founders in crafting repeatable go-to-market motions and sales strategies so they can sell better, win more, and discount less. So Stacy, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much, Mark. Man, I need more of you in my life. I feel like you can be a hype man for anyone that's on this show.

The towel.

Yeah. I love it. I love it. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to have this conversation today.

Yeah, me too. So you've obviously been doing this a little bit of time. Tell us a little bit about your story. Like, how did you— you know, we talked about in high school that you got kind of started working at community banks. How did that lead to sort of like your career and really what you're doing today?

Yeah, I'm happy to share that with you. So just for the purposes of giving you all some context, I grew up in this little town in Southwest Missouri. The only important part about that 'Cause it happened to be the headquarters for this very large core company in the fintech space, as you mentioned, called Jack Henry. So I like to joke that my career path was mapped out early, working at banks and then working at this large core company serving banks. And after I graduated from college, working at banks, working at Jack Henry in the summer, I started working there full-time teaching the software and then transitioning into sales where I was that person going out traveling the, the country, spending all this time on the road and just showcasing systems that I was proud to represent to these bankers and giving them something to consider. And I did that for many years before taking on leadership roles and ultimately deciding there is a great big world out here in fintech. And to your point, Mark, I stood up a couple of banking verticals. That's my specialty, working with banks, selling to banks. Helping other people, as you mentioned, sell to banks in the best possible way. And today that's working with fintech founders that may have a technical background, that sales was not exactly something they were taught, perhaps not like you and myself growing up in that space. And there's, there's knowledge we can share with those individuals. And that's, that's how I serve today, working with these fintech founders, trying to teach them how to communicate with banks and sell and position to banks. So me in a nutshell.

That's great. Well, and it's such a, you know, sort of self-referential— not, I wouldn't say insular, but definitely it's its own kind of niche and marketplace, the financial services and fintech space, where if you don't understand some of those market dynamics, like, you're really kind of out in the cold. And so you have to come to that, you know, with, uh, some knowledge and expertise. So I'm sure that a lot of these fintech founders, although they may know how their technology works very well, they may not necessarily understand the environment that they're trying to sell into. So I'm sure that expertise is really valuable for them.

Well, I hope so. I don't know if you've ever, if you've ever been in a scenario in which you know something so well inside and out that you're almost a little too close to it when you try to tell other people about, about your baby, about something you love so much. That is often a scenario that I find these founders founders get into, and not, not through any fault of their own. They are so in it. They're so intelligent, and they know exactly the problems they're solving and how they can help. But when you're so close to it, it's oftentimes difficult to translate that into, here's a problem in the market, here's how we solve for it, versus let me just share and dump all the features and functions. In your face and you connect the dots. So I think that's where some individuals like, like you and your background, me, we, we can prove valuable. And if I may, Mark, I don't mean to just dominate the conversation here, but one other thing I would just share is these bankers are typically so traditional. They have a very traditional approach to business. Their sales cycles tend to be very lengthy as well. Right. And when you juxtapose that against these fintech founders that are used to going so fast, and they have investors that expect them to sell and produce revenue so quickly, it can be a recipe for just the perfect storm if you don't have the right type of framing and messaging and expectations set over here on the fintech side for working with the customer segment that you're trying to, to serve over here. That looks so different than you. I hope that makes sense.

Oh, it makes total sense. And, and it's something that people don't think about so frequently. But, you know, certain industries have sort of a cadence of business. And we find, you know, when we're crafting, you know, a sales cycle for a particular company, they're like, well, so we do this meeting and then we present this proposal and then they sign. I'm like, well, how long does that take? Well, it should only take like 3 days. Well, but how long does it actually take? We actually were working with a company and they created this great white paper that like had a sort of a calculator to help their prospective clients figure out what would be the return on investment for doing this type of project. And it was a really sort of involved, almost like a workbook type white paper. And they were set where they were like calling to follow up on it the next day. And I'm like, they haven't had a chance to use it yet. Like, you need to give them some time. And so they changed that follow-up cycle to instead of the next day, they gave them 2 weeks. They followed up in 2 weeks. Suddenly people were ready to talk about it. They had done the sort of exercises, or they had found out it was more complicated than they thought it was. And now they were ready to talk to an outside expert. So it's understanding that, you know, that time cycle. of decision-making is really vital for any industry.

It really is. And sometimes you have to slow down to go fast. Truly, you truly, truly do.

That's right.

Love that example.

So you were talking before, before we kind of started up the show about some of the sort of big challenges and sort of common mistakes that when you're working with companies, you see them make as that, you know, as they start to build out the sales function. So, you know, the scenario of fintech company where founder was able to get some deals, he had enough of a Rolodex to, you know, bring in some clients, and now he's trying to create some scale and grow. Let's talk about some of those, you know, common challenges that you see, maybe some ways to overcome them. What's one of the big ones that you see companies making that, you know, maybe some of our listeners might be falling prey to?

Yeah, I— there's, there's 3 that come to mind that we were visiting before, before we kicked off. And the first one is something that's so top of mind to me, Mark, because it happens often. And this is where a fintech founder, your investors, your board members, you may have burned through your Rolodex, and now you're wanting to take the next step and start burning through other people's Rolodexes. So you reach out to people that Have connections at the— with the ICPs that you want to target, or you think they have a number of followers, and you think that you need them to sell and to refer business to you. And I bet, like you and many of the listeners out there, I get several of these outreaches over the course of each week or each month, and I'm always— I'm always trying to be very empathetic with the situation that, that folks are in, help where I can. If it's a product or a company I know, I know people often look for formal relationships with myself or with others, but here's what I tell people: you, you don't need someone like me. You don't need me just making intros to you. Start by doing the work. Start by doing the fundamental elements that are going to help you and any people you bring on in the future, be it people doing referrals for you, 1099 contract workers, actual sales hires. And the work I'm talking about, Mark, it is the— it's doing the things like, what is, what is the offer? What is the problem we're solving? What are the risks? Why would people say no to our solution? And how do we, how do we account for those? How do we solution for those problems and those risks? Package it in such a way that we can have a compelling and impactful conversation. So start with the offer always. That's always where I like to start. Give some attention to your ICP. Bless you, sir. Give some attention to your ICP because so many times fintech founders I work with think they need to speak to bank CEOs, and you probably do. You need to involve them. They're probably not your ICP. They will likely not be making a decision. There's lots of people involved in a decision. So do that work on the offer, the ICP, your messaging. Make sure you mentioned the sales cycle. Make sure that buying journey is mapped out. Just do the fundamental work so that when you— that's, that's another example of slowing down, getting things right so that you can go fast through a sales process that's gonna let you succeed in the long run. I don't know if any of that resonates with you.

Oh, totally. Well, and it's so funny because so often, and especially I see technical founders have this sort of mindset that, you know, sales is, it's a personality trait or it's, you know, something someone's born with. You're a born salesperson. But what I see so often is that, you know, really successful salespeople, especially in early stage companies, are really process-driven folks and they can come in and they can execute against a process. And so it's this misnomer that Oh, I just need someone that's got all of this Rolodex, but Rolodexes run out, but a process never runs out because if they know how to find, qualify, agitate needs, deliver consultative solutions, and then, you know, walk people through that change process of, you know, evaluating and deciding, that's what's scalable and that's what really moves. So it's so crazy that— and I see it too. sort of looking for— I'm looking for someone who's got a Rolodex of CEOs in this industry, and I think you might be one of those people. Let's have a conversation.

Yeah.

You really don't want a Rolodex. Uh, what you want is someone who brings those systems and processes. The other mistake that I see, and I'm curious if you see this, is that just as you said, you're taking the time to really build out, you know, who's your ideal customer, what are the different personas or avatars of decision makers or influencers that'll be part of the buying committee? What's their buyer's journey look like? What do we say to them at each stage? What's a trialable offer? Doing those things is really sort of vital for success for any sales hire because so often—

Yeah.

We'll see someone will say, well, we need our first sales hire. So, let's go find the guy who's the SVP at our biggest competitor or the, the big player in our industry, and surely they'll bring a Rolodex and they'll bring, you know, all of these clients over. But really, that's the wrong way. You got to build all those processes first.

Yes. Oh, you have nailed this. This is, this is something that has been fascinating for me to watch in working with fintech founders, this whole idea. And it's, it's— I understand where it comes from, Mark, but this whole idea that We need to sell stuff, so we need to hire CRO and/or VP of sales and/or these, these AEs. And then we need an SDR team because if we just have these people coming in and creating and building this top of funnel, we are going to land it. And then the truth of the matter is it's another example of where if we're not doing fundamental work on the marketing side, creating awareness, creating education, you're going to have a lot of salespeople twiddling their thumbs with not a lot to do. You're going to have SDRs trying to have conversations with people that don't know who you are, and that's okay. But if you haven't validated product market fit, it's uncomfortable. It is just not a great situation to be in. I mean, you're going to have a lot of AEs that are expecting SDRs to source leads for them. that may not have the skill set to source their own. I don't know. There's, there's a lot of full-cycle sellers. I've seen a lot of individuals that specialize a bit more mid and down funnel. But to your point, yes, I have seen this repeatedly at organizations I've come into or organizations that I consult with where they spend a great deal of money upfront on sellers. Anybody that needs to hear this or that would benefit from this, I would just like to tell you as an alternative, until you know you have product market fit or your unit economics, your, your LTV to CAC really drive necessitating sales hires, you're better served to spend money on marketing related, creating awareness, educating the market, building out a site. And when you start seeing those conversions from the website or from your marketing spend and your unit economics support it, That's when you hire those sellers, and that's when you start empowering them with those fundamentals that we've talked about beforehand, before they even, before they even get there. You don't, you don't want to hire sellers without a playbook, without an ICP, without the buying journey. How does, how does that hit you as far as spending on marketing first versus sales? I know this can be controversial. Where do you stand on that?

So I, like you, have sort of had the experience in my career of having to sort of be a full cycle, you know, full funnel marketing and sales. And I really, you know, sort of approach it that I think they're inextricably linked. Like, you can't be successful in one without some success in the other, because if marketing is generating all of the leads in the world, but there's no one to walk them through the sales process, You're not gonna get the revenue. Likewise, if you've got these great salespeople, but they don't have leads coming in, well, then you're not gonna be successful either. I do oftentimes find that, you know, companies look for— they go unicorn hunting, I call it, where they wanna find the best seller in the world who's also the best marketer in the world, who's also the best customer success manager in the world, and expect them to do all of it. But you need to do it all for commission only. And, you know, and a little bit of equity in the company, which is really the actuality of what happens. But we were talking before about this idea of, you know, go hire the SVP of the biggest competitor in the space. So often those people haven't generated leads maybe in their whole career because maybe they worked for the market leader the whole time.

Right.

They started as an SDR at that market leader, and then they grew into an AE, and then they grew into a manager, and now they're the, the big dog. But their entire career has been reaping the benefits of a well-oiled marketing process that was creating demand and awareness and then capturing that demand and had some lead flow that, that still needed to be worked. Like, these weren't opportunities delivered on a silver platter, but they've never done that front end. of that funnel, they're not gonna come in and be successful creating that front end of the funnel for a new company.

It is so much easier to sell with a big logo on your back than it is to create that type of brand recognition and establish yourself in the market. This is so, so true. That resonates with me so, so specifically. I am curious if I can back you up because I agree with you. on marketing. You have to have marketing so people, sellers have something to sell. And, you know, marketers, you need to have sellers to sell this demand that you've created. I guess what I was curious about, Mark, in your opinion, do you think product-led growth lends itself more to early marketing hires, fewer salespeople or high-titled sellers, or are you more in the camp of Doesn't matter, doesn't matter if it's, you know, product-led growth or an enterprise type of play, you need equal amounts of both.

Yeah.

Early on, I guess.

The way that we approach it. So first, it definitely matters sort of where you are on the sort of growth curve. And we see that companies go through the same kind of inflection points. And, you know, when you're trying to get that, you know, product market fit, That's really founder-led because the founder has sort of full visibility into the long-term vision for the product, can actually tell the product team we need to pivot because the last 3 conversations I had with clients, they were asking that we go in this direction and I promised them all we would. So now we're going in that direction. That's something a sales leader just can't do. So product-led growth or founder-led growth, absolutely at the beginning. And then as you start to sort of create some scale, what we typically do is look at what's the average size of the deal that you're looking to, you know, sort of capture. Are they, you know, $100 contracts or are they $100,000 contracts? And then how many of them are you expecting to capture in a year? Is it tens or is it hundreds? And then what is your sort of margin on each of those that you bring in? Is it very thin or is it, you know, sort of more robust? And it's those economics of the business that then guides what your go-to-market strategy looks like. And what we see happen sometimes is, you know, companies will sort of look at it and they'll say, well, you know, we have a fairly large-sized deal and we're not looking for too many of them a year. So account-based marketing strategically makes the most sense. We're gonna pick a finite number of targets. We're gonna assign them to the people and they're gonna go out and work them. But what they find is it doesn't generate the results as fast as they wanted it to. And it takes some time to bear fruit. So then they're like, now let's try hiring a bunch of SDRs and AEs that are gonna, you know, kind of just go out and cold call and dial folks. But it's not really account-based marketing because they don't have the time to do the research. So they throw that spaghetti against the wall and see if that sticks. Now let's also build an inbound. Yeah.

Now let's also get the massive emails. Yeah.

A whole separate inbound thing. And what we see is there's only so many hours in the day and there's only so many, so many dollars of resources. And every new go-to-market motion that you add detracts from your focus with the others and detracts from your overall resource.

Yeah.

And so it's the companies that pick a strategic approach and then they crank it out, even if it doesn't work perfectly for the first, you know, 90 days. They figure out what's wrong with it and they make improvements and they get better over time. And then they figure it out and their path to real growth is much faster than the folks that try this and then they try this and then they try this. And so they're all distracted.

Yes.

They never break through on any of them.

That resonates with me. I had had a company in my career, my past, that I always questioned whether they were giving the strategy enough time because it was more, let's try this for 60 days. Let's try this for 60 days. And there was a term in management training that I remember from years ago called slot machine management, where you're just trying something and just We're hoping to hit the jackpot each time you just keep pulling. So I— that is an important point, and I hope that resonates with everyone. Make sure that you pick the strategy just as Mark said. And it's so brilliant that you mentioned giving it time to truly see if it's gonna succeed or fail. And if it's failing, do we need to iterate on it or do we need to completely pivot?

That's—

it's so wise.

Well, and like you say, it could just be an iteration. It doesn't necessarily have to be, you know, do one thing and one thing only the way that we thought it would work the first day for 90 days. No, every 2 weeks, let's get everyone together and talk about what's working, what's not, how can we improve it, but don't throw the baby out with the bathwater and start from scratch.

So true. It's so true. So I know we obviously— go ahead. No, go ahead, sir.

Oh, I was just saying, obviously we're both really passionate about this. We could talk about it all day, but got to be mindful of your time and sort of the rest of the day. So what's something that's on the horizon for you that you're really excited about?

Yeah, I think for me, selfishly, I just kind of launched a new rebrand landing page. That's totally selfish. But more importantly, clients that I'm working with and serving going— I'll be at a couple of upcoming events, the Financial Brand Forum in Los in Vegas, and then also Finovate Spring, both fun events connecting fintech founders with banks and just allowing these individuals to, to just have conversations, let the interest percolate. And there's always great deals that are, that are inked and just established as a result of this. So those are some things that I think I have kind of on the horizon, more big picture, the way I serve and work with, with fintech founders. Looking for just all sorts of ways to be of service to people that I work with. So, yes, sir, those are some things that I would mention.

Well, you've obviously got tons of expertise and experience. So, you know, for those in our audience that are working in this financial services or financial technology space and want to sell to some of these, you know, banking institutions and financial services companies and need expertise like yours, Give us the pitch, like who should reach out to you and what should they call you for?

I will tell you the best type of service I can provide would be to very technical fintech founders or anyone that has never been taught how to sell. Selling doesn't exactly come naturally to everyone. I get it. But trust me, selling or at least adopting the process of selling is something that anyone can learn. Anyone can be good at. You just have to remove the expectation that you have to be a certain type of personality or present in a certain way. Everyone can be learned. Everyone can be taught how to help people buy your solutions. So technical fintech founders that would like guidance on setting up their go-to-market motions, their strategy, sales practices as well, would likely find some benefit from my solution. If you think that our personalities can jive, I understand that everyone has differences as far as who they wish to work with. But I help individuals with fractional work, also with one-on-one coaching, workshops, speaking gigs as well, SKOs. So just a whole variety of things right now, Mark. I appreciate you asking, but I'm a bit boring. If you want to look me up on LinkedIn, I am Stacy Bishop, S-T-A-C-Y Bishop. C-Y. My parents were not super creative. I'm a basic C-Y Bishop, B-I-S-H-O-P. I also have, as I mentioned, that new landing page, so you can check out www.stacybishop.com.

Awesome. Well, Stacy, thanks so much for taking the time to join us today. I really enjoyed it.

Me too, me too. Well, I appreciate you, Mark. Thanks so much for having me, and, uh, I will, I will continue to be an avid Uh-huh.

Talk to you soon. Thank you for joining this episode of the B2B Growth Blueprint podcast. We hope you've gained insights to grow your business. If you enjoyed this discussion, please rate, comment, like on your favorite platform, and share to others who will find it useful. Do you know a CEO, founder, or leader at an early-stage B2B services tech or SaaS company who would like to be a guest and share their story, send us a note. Let's schedule a conversation.