WEST JORDAN, Utah — Mountain America Credit Union has improved its internal sales culture thanks to a team of sales consultants who make regular visits to its branches, resulting in significantly more new accounts and a Credit Union Journal Best Practices award.
The $3.6 billion-asset CU hired four sales consultants last fall. Dennis Bromley, SVP of member development and engagement, said they began visiting the branches in January 2013, with the purpose of focusing on one topic per month related to Solonis, MACU's member relationship management tool.
"For the first year, the focus was on showing managers of the branches the tools we have and how to use those tools to better serve the members," Bromley said. "The consultants also demonstrated how simple it is for employees to track information and put it in to our MRM tool.
Going forward, we will share best practices of what is working well at a particular branch to find out member needs and find a product to go with it."
In the future, Bromley sees a potential growth area in internal operations rather than just the branches, including the call center, and the mortgage, investments and tax services departments.
"We don't rely on the tool to help us do the job, we try to uncover the need through conversation. The tool just helps us uncover it," he said. "The consultants help everyone understand the capabilities of the tool and deliver better service at each touchpoint. They play a big role in showing how that tool works and what it can do."
What it has done so far is to generate more of what Mountain America calls "referrals," a broad category that includes getting members to sign up for electronic services, mortgages, loans, or other products and services. From a baseline of 2,000 to 3,000 referrals per month prior to using the sales consultants, MACU has seen referrals jump to 6,000 per month.
Another measure of success is improvements in the onboarding process and suggesting new products and services. The onboarding efforts have more than doubled, as measured by the number of opportunities versus the number of opportunities executed on.
'Rescuing' Loans
"Rescuing" loans - or bringing accounts to Mountain America from another lender - also has seen an increase since the sales consultants began their work. In 2011 MACU brought in approximately 400 loans per month, then, in 2012, the rescue figure dipped to 250 loans per month.
In 2013, through September the lowest monthly total was 600 and best month registered 1,300 loans rescued.
According to Bromley, the sales consultants' role was helping to identify opportunities within the tool to rescue loans and help managers coach employees. "It has been a team effort on the loan rescue front."
Overall, management is "very happy" with how the program is working, according to Bromley. He said sales conferences used to be almost exclusively for the leadership of sales force, with perhaps a few producers invited. Now, MACU is breaking up sales conferences into separate sessions designed to help everyone do their job better.
"The new focus has been on culture and philosophy," he said. "These conferences have been a huge success and have made a big contribution to these increased numbers. We focused on behavior on the people side. The tool documents and looks for the next best product, but the real success has come from hitting the streets and meeting with people face to face."
Mountain America is considering increasing the sales conferences in 2014 to include tellers, as well as others in the organization, he added.
"We want to teach people who do not have a sales position how they can contribute to our sales culture."
