How to make sales training pay off for your bank.

Bankers spend money on sales training because they expect a decent return on the expenditure. If the returns don't materialize, the bankers criticize the training and blame the trainer.

In the majority of cases, they're looking in the wrong place for the cause of failure. Most often, they should examine their own institutions, because without doubt the leading cause of disappointing sales results is the absence of an effective sales culture within the bank. Without the right kind of culture, even the best sales training won't help.

A Sales Quiz

Unfortunately, many bankers who say they have a sales culture do not really have an effective one. Where does your bank stand? Take a quiz. Confirmation of a productive sales culture requires a "yes" answer to all of the following questions.

* Has the CEO delivered a sales-culture mission statement, delineating senior management's expectations, to all division heads?

* Has senior management implemented policies to foster interdivisional cooperation and customer-sharing?

* Have sales goals been assigned to every line manager?

* Have line managers assigned sales goals to the sales staff?

* Is eyeryone - managers and staff - required to track actions and revenue results daily.

* Along with positive reinforcement, is there consistent daily and weekly acoountability?

* Are incentive compensation and recognition programs, tied to specific sales goals, in place?

* Have job descriptions been written to incorporate such sales-related responsibilities as prospecting, financial profiling, and cross-selling?

* Has the bank installed a time-management system to increase opportunities to sell?

The Process Approach

If all the answers are yes, you might have a valid sales culture. But whether your sales culture is successful depends on how the bank handles the sales-management process. A process-driven approach to sales management is the glue that holds a sales culture together, and here are the ingredients that make the glue sticky:

Vision. Every manager, from the CEO down to the branch managers, must set and internalize a vision for the manager's unit of responsibility. To internalize the vision means to make it a part of the everyday life of every banker; the vision must get bankers to think of achieving goals they normally would not consider and must set action and revenue goals with deadlines.

Mission statement. The mission statement specifies expected levels of actions and performance.

Goal management. A manager must set goals for his or her unit and for every banker in it. Goals specify actions, dollar volume of business, and deadlines. Managers must track results daily and follow this rule: Inspect what you expect.

Action planning and action goals. Managers at every level should have an action plan spelling out goals for specific actions, such as the daily number of pro-active customer contacts, referrals, financial profiles, and the like.

Minimum daily action plan. Every banker, every day, must commit to a specific amount of time dedicated to business-development activities.

Individual sales and service plan. Every banker's daily plan includes a schedule of specific activities to develop business, and managers too should have their own daily action plans. Furthermore, managers should review plans and actions daily.

Sales and service management plan. The philosophy of the sales management plan is that you operate on a weekly sales cycle - you are "born on Monday and die on Sunday," and are reborn the following Monday. Each Monday begins with a sales meeting; throughout the week, a manager holds daily debriefings, coaching sessions, and clinics for specific problems, and demands accountability. The following Monday it begins anew.

Sales meetings. Sales managers must hold a sales meeting every week, preferably on Monday. Set a 15-minute limit and restrict discussion to one hot, revenue-generating topic that will increase revenues within 48 hours.

Sales rounds. Managers hold workshops in which bankers assist each other in solving sales problems. They also cross-pollinate their best practices.

Accountability and Reinforcement. Managers right up to the CEO must debrief their direct-reports on sales results and follow up quickly with the appropriate response - positive reinforcement or appropriate coaching and counseling.

Publishing results. Managers at every level should publish sales results to create positive peer pressure. Publicly praise the achievers but avoid publicly criticizing the nonachievers.

Look Outside for Help

This 11-point sales-management process ensures that bankers will alter their behavior and continuously practice what they learned in training. Without it, performance typically, regresses to pre-training levels.

The emphasis on sales culture and on management does not minimize the importance of the training itself. To say that the training should be of the best quality is to say the obvious, but that doesn't help identify good sales training. Here are specific pointers that will help.

First, it's necessary to go to an outside specialist because most bankers don't know what constitutes an effective sales culture. Additionally, internal training too often is concerned with user-friendly training methods rather than bottom-line results. Typically the attitude of the internal training department is: "Results are not our responsibility. It's up to the line divisions to get results." The right training vendor will be as dedicated to getting results as to teaching techniques.

Hire a vendor who can customize a program for your bank and for your individual business lines.

The Curriculum

The trainer's syllabus for retail banking, commercial banking, trust banking, and investment management should include:

Current sales-culture research and evaluation, including compensation and recognition programs.

A sales-management culture-change process that extends from the top down and from the bottom up, with accountability at every level.

Individual sales plans and sales-management plans.

Motivation, time-management and, when necessary, even stress management.

Consultative relationship selling.

Consultative, service-driven teleconsulting (as opposed to product-specific telemarketing).

Account segmentation to identify the 20% of customers who provide 80% of the revenues.

A needs-analysis, consultative profiling approach for the entire customer base in commercial banking, trust banking and upscale investment management. For retail accounts, however. the needs-analysis profiling approach typically applies to the top 20% only.

Consultative miniprofiling for the balance of accounts in retail banking.

Proactive and reactive cross-selling of all divisions' services.

Select a program with plenty of interaction built in, including real-world role playing by the trainees, realistic consultative scripting clinics, objections clinics, closing clinics, a hiatus during which the techniques are applied, and a debriefing.

The training should take the bankers to progressively higher levels of education as skills improve and experience grows.

And select a trainer whose presentations are entertaining as well as educational. A bored trainee learns little.

Attaining and maintaining an effective sales culture is not easy, but bankers must ask whether they have a choice in this era of diminished opportunities for loan and deposit profitability and of increased competition for fee business.

A return on investment of 1,000% on the cost of training is attainable when the training is done right and within the right culture. The cost of training in that case is not an expense; it's an investment with a worthwhile payoff.

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