It's a rags-to-riches story to which any platform rep could aspire: David Merola started as a teller, participated in a Huntington Bancshares Inc. experiment a little over a decade ago to license branch staff, and now runs a team producing $3 million of sales a year.
Mr. Merola said starting at the bottom was critical to his success.
He left Iowa State University in 1983 with a degree in finance and a yen to be a commissioned broker, but as a newly married man with a mortgage to pay, he could not take a risk on a sink-or-swim job. Instead, he joined the management program at the now-defunct State Savings Bank in Columbus, Ohio. The program started management trainees as tellers and had them work up through the ranks, so they could experience firsthand the daily challenges of their future employees.
Mr. Merola worked for two years as a teller and two as an assistant manager before becoming a manager at a $40 million branch with a staff of 10, but that job was not all he had hoped for.
"You don't really control your world," he said. Mortgages and loans originated in branches but were managed from a central location. "You're paid on the profitability of your branch, so I'd run like crazy to originate loans that I wouldn't get paid much on."
Mr. Merola said he was much happier when he became a mortgage officer. It was his first taste of working as a producer, and he loved it.
"There was a lot more potential for income," he said. "As a mortgage officer, the sky's the limit in terms of pay, and you're not stuck in an office. I like to be out and about, talking to people."
Mr. Merola had 60 or 70 loans on the boil at any time, but when you sell one type of product, it's feast or famine, and famine hit in 1989, when the market fell, and his loan pipeline dropped to 15. Since he had experience as a branch manager, he returned to that role when he joined the $36 billion-asset Huntington in Columbus in 1990.
Huntington had several subsidiaries, including a brokerage. "I knew that if I could get my foot in the door, there would be plenty of ways I could go," he said.
Three years later, when the Glass-Steagall Act was repealed, allowing licensed branch staff to talk to clients about securities, Mr. Merola was quick to get licensed. "I was excited, because I always wanted to sell investments," he said. "I would get paid 50 basis points on a sale; it was like shooting fish in a barrel."
His team leader noticed his enthusiasm and took him to meet the brokers in the downtown office. "It was hugely beneficial to me in terms of learning the business - I'd only started selling investments that year," Mr. Merola said. "They would take me to lunches with mutual fund and annuity people, and that started me thinking about cross-pollination."
Huntington had some variable and fixed annuities on the shelf, but Mr. Merola learned how to research other products, and he started selling American Funds and individual bonds to his clients. His product suite back then was somewhat broader than platform reps' is now, he said, but in those early days "I could sell anything I wanted, so long as it was a product with a load."
He was Huntington's top platform rep his first year.
When the team leader left, he recommended Mr. Merola for the spot, and his training from State Savings made him a perfect fit, he said.
"Because I'd worked in almost all areas in banking, I could relate to the 12 other things bankers had to juggle every day, whereas the traditional brokers couldn't understand that," Mr. Merola said. "Bankers need to generate loans and mortgages, too, so you have to try to give them that business. It's a tough job, because you have to be a coach, a salesperson, and a manager without any power."
As team leader, he could finally be a real broker, he said. "It was scary at first going from a salary job. I demanded a guarantee, because I was completely panicked. But I blew past all that stuff. I loved it - jobs where you don't know what you're going to make are exciting, and I like helping people meet their goals."
As team leader, Mr. Merola also had to train and mentor bankers in 10 branches. "It was a huge challenge working with the bankers, because they weren't up to speed at all on investments, and I had to sell at the same time I was training them," he said. "But when they referred business, they'd make a little bit of extra money, so I positioned myself as someone who could help them make more money."
Though the money helped, Mr. Merola found that constant training was critical to generating consistent referrals. Whenever possible, he killed two birds with one stone by combining training with selling, he said.
"The best way to train bankers is through joint appointments where they watch how you sell," he said. "You can role-play all you want, but it's not the same as being there at the point of sale."
Huntington now mandates that team leaders give each platform rep an hour of one-on-one training a week. But with over 40 platform reps, training would take a standard working week, so Huntington lets team leaders with large territories hire an associate team leader for every $600,000 of production. It took Mr. Merola two years as a team leader/broker to earn his first associate leader.
By any standard, his growth rate was impressive, despite his training responsibilities - Mr. Merola produced $300,000 in his first year and $600,000 in his second. Since then he has hired three associate team leaders and two assistants. The associate leaders work as trainers as well as producers.
The team now produces $3 million a year, or $500,000 ahead of the next highest-producing team.
"Success brings support, which brings with it more success," Mr. Merola said. "I run my own show now, which is very satisfying. Huntington has allowed us to build up our teams, and that's why I want to stay here."
