I’d like to share with you what I learned while simultaneously riding a sales horse and a compliance horse recently. I know – it’s been suggested that it’s impossible to do it with one behind, but well… women are great at multitasking.

So, what do FinTech sales and FinTech compliance functions actually have in common?

• In both cases – it is a long game where you need to stay laser-focused and have a negotiation strategy.
• Both functions are becoming more and more geographically agnostic – you absolutely do not need to be a specialist in one country or one geography.
• Both functions make exactly the same mistakes. For example, a lot of compliance people and a lot of salespeople believe that every situation is very unique, therefore, they improvise and firefight a lot, waste time in useless meetings, and don’t really know how to track progress when the process is so long. They also have a tendency to blame others for the delays and setbacks.

What’s different? 🧐

• Compliance people more often want to do their research and prepare documentation alone and not be disturbed while sales want to talk and be in action without having to prepare any documentation if they can help it.
• Compliance people typically do not have distinct personalities in terms of departments or functions they do, but they often differ depending on what they do before. Former auditors or accountants are more numerical, and pragmatic, and have an easier time understanding technical fields such as fraud management or InfoSec. Former lawyers are generally better at government relationships and less than excellent with technology and operational issues and numbers.  
• Funnily enough, I noticed that salespeople in FinTech don’t need to understand as much about technology as compliance experts to be successful in their negotiations, but they do need to understand a lot more about the industry and economic trends, as compared to compliance.

Would you agree?