Comment: Best Practices for Achieving a True Sales Culture

Banks that are successful at sales know they cannot capture market share, gain share of wallet, and beat the competition by relying on a few superstars. Nor is any bank going to recruit its way to sales excellence and market dominance.

After a decade of field observation and data gathering, working with leading banks here and overseas, we have identified 10 "best practices" that separate high-performing commercial sales organizations from mediocre ones:

1.Winning banks value their sales culture as much as their credit culture. Every bank has an established and respected way of granting and monitoring credit. When we work with high-performing sales banks, we observe that the commercial sales culture is developed and maintained as conscientiously as the credit culture. Credit risk management is integrated and balanced with the search for opportunity.

2.The sales culture of a high-performing organization holds managers fully accountable for management practices such as:

*Being direct sellers, to take advantage of local market opportunities.

*Measuring, observing, and coaching sellers.

*Removing obstacles to sales.

*Building the sales and service team.

*Recognizing and rewarding worthy performance.

Practices like these are not just ideals to be admired. They are built into roles, responsibilities, and performance objectives.

3.Sales management drives and sustains consistent performance. Sales management makes the difference between a bank with a few high performers and an organization where high performance is the norm. When sales management is weak, the occasional high performer is a self-starter who is an exception to the rule.

4.The goal for relationships is full partnership.

A financial partner is the primary bank for its customer. More than a mere service provider, the financial partner creates innovative solutions for its customers' present and future business needs.

Full financial partnership is hard to achieve, but once in place it offers high competitive advantage. Our research indicates that true financial partners are very difficult for competitors to dislodge.

5.Coaching develops partnership performance.

Coaching is hardly a new idea, but bankers rarely do it well. Managers say they coach, but most of their team members say they're not being coached.

6.Cross-functional teams build full relationships. Winning banks field well-managed teams that present a seamless face of partnership to the customer. Winning teams relentlessly tear down the barriers to customer- focused sales and service. At low profit levels, the "team" may consist of only an assistant relationship manager buttressed by a coaching session with a product specialist. At the highest profit levels, the team may be a full cadre of product specialists collaborating to strategize relationship opportunities and orchestrate all meetings with the customer.

7.Relationship management is redefined as a sales role. Most relationship managers spend 5% to 15% of their time selling. Winning banks off-load administrative tasks and expect relationship managers to dedicate at least half their time to selling.

8.Prospecting is prioritized to strategic advantage. Prospecting is the cutting edge of business growth. Yet at most banks, prospecting is random, driven by calling quotas, and often lands the wrong customers. High- performing sales banks know that "managing the pipeline" is not enough. First they manage what gets into the pipeline.

9.Open communication is the norm. Building partnerships with coordinated sales teams requires speedy and unfettered sharing of data, new ideas, referrals, and customer information within teams and across the turf lines in the bank. At inward-looking organizations, information is a potent bargaining chip for protecting turf. In customer-focused organizations, information is a competitive advantage that flows quickly to the point of customer contact to enhance market responsiveness.

10.Primary investment in skills and tools goes to sales management. Successful nonbank sales organizations typically invest two dollars to build sales management skills for every one dollar spent on frontline salespeople. At most banks, it's the other way around.

Without strong sales management practices and the skill to apply them rigorously and regularly, banks will continue to rotate people through sales training every three years, like a change in fashion, but nothing will be done to sustain skills or institutionalize new behavior.

There is no quick fix to turn a bank into a high-performing sales organization. There isn't a book, or a guru, or a training event that can pull it off. Across the bank, people and structures need to learn new ways to work.

Ms. Blackford, a senior consultant with Omega Performance Corp., was a regional corporate banking manager for Wachovia Bank and Trust in North Carolina. Ms. Donahue, who heads Omega's commercial sales practice, was a senior vice president at Wachovia.

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