by James Schneider | Nov 13, 2018
The Wells Fargo “quota-gate” incident has exposed as myth many of the financial industry’s long held beliefs about what makes a great sales organization. Even the best sales practices become unethical when they encourage greed rather than customer satisfaction.
The unethical sales practices at Wells Fargo come as no surprise to those of us who follow bank sales practices closely. Wells has been recording industry best cross-sell ratios while churning customers and employees for several decades through relentless product pushing. If you ask many bank or credit union executives about their sales culture, their first response is usually, “We don’t want to be a Wells Fargo.”
The knee-jerk reaction to this news may be to pull back from selling and setting sales goals altogether. That would be a mistake. The Hay Group has found that the nation’s most admired companies actually set more challenging goals for employees than other companies.
The good news is that it’s entirely possible to have strong sales proficiency with ethical sales behavior. Our philosophy has always been to focus on the customer, rather than on the products, to help your customers and to increase sales. Here’s a good place to start.
At Schneider Sales Management, every sales manager and employee in a sales or service role is held to a shared Selling Creed of Ethics. This shared system of values guides each decision made from the top down when it comes to hiring, training, coaching, and evaluating sales behavior.
Our Personal Selling Code of Ethics
We do whatever it takes inside or outside the formal boundaries of our solutions yet within the legal constraints of our business to help our customers with our selling so the value they receive far exceeds what they pay.
We treat every customer with respect so he/she feels important, comfortable and understood, even adapting our behavior as necessary to maximize our rapport and mutual trust.
We do what’s right for our customers and for our organization, even if that results in the loss of an immediate sale.
We do our homework, listen carefully as customers speak, and ask the right questions to fully understand a customer’s situation and objectives before recommending solutions.
We’re proactive in seeking information, in offering new insight into the impact of each customer’s current way of doing things, in making recommendations and referrals, and in urging customers to move forward with good ideas to help them improve their current personal or business situation.
We never use high pressure selling tactics as a substitute for coaching customers to their own decisions with questions.
We conduct selling with integrity and high ethics by not misleading customers, by complying with all legal and company requirements for selling, and by not overpromising what we can do for customers.
We give as much importance to what happens after a sale to assure customer satisfaction as we do to what happens during the sales process.
We commit ourselves to continuous, disciplined learning of the core competencies required for our selling role so we remain competent and trusted advisors to our customers.
We outwork our competitors and we work smart in allocating our sales time to our established priorities.
If your financial institution isn’t living up to these standards, it’s time to reexamine your sales process from the top down. Schneider Sales Management provides audits and shops as part of our consulting services. Call us today at (303) 221-4511 and get on track for a better 2019.
by James Schneider | Nov 10, 2018
One of the most valuable ways that sales managers can impact the overall revenue of a bank or credit union is to adjust his or her mindset for success and support their sales staff as they adjust their mindsets about selling. It’s a non-negotiable part of achieving and exceeding your revenue goals, and while it’s a simple shift, it’s not always easy to change deeply-held beliefs about selling.
The biggest obstacle to making a quantum leap in sales production or profit contribution of 50% or more is the belief that it’s not possible. As consultants to financial institutions for more than forty years, our team at Schneider Sales Management, Inc. has seen this limiting belief again and again.
Making a quantum leap is possible. Believe it.
The difference in sales results between average and top performers is often 100%, or more, yet the differences in what they say or do to produce these results are usually very small. For many employees, achieving a quantum leap in performance may require doing 2 or 3 things different or better. For others, they may only have to apply more effort by increasing the number of sales interviews they have. Sales managers provide maximum value when they can identify these opportunities for explosive improvement.
Providing clear sales direction requires that sales managers narrow the focus for the sales team by translating company, regional, and branch business goals into specific target objectives, strategies, relationships and preferred behaviors for each employee.
Sales managers who keep a narrow focus can establish accountability for improvement and for getting done what needs to get done to accomplish the company’s goals.
Simplifying the mission for employees and explaining its importance builds employee engagement, and employee engagement is the best predictor of sales growth.
A great sales manager can impact an entire company’s success in selling by simply adopting a mindset of success and committing to the small, everyday changes that can lead to huge revenue growth. Salespeople look to sales managers to lead a cavalry charge in both behavior and in mindset.
Get your mindset right; get your sales up. It’s simple, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy.
Call us today for a conversation about how Schneider Sales Management can support your organization’s 2019 sales goals.
by Mike Shallanberger | Oct 15, 2018
The myth that the financial industry is more sophisticated than ever in selling is perpetuated by bankers at the nation’s very largest banks and credit unions.
They’re the primary tellers of their stories of sales and technological innovation at banking conferences, but most of their growth in sales has really been the result of their brand marketing clout and their ability to leverage big investments in data mining with target marketing, not the result of their skill at sales process or leading frontline employees in the sales effort.
The bottom line impact of allowing sales process and employee skills to atrophy is enormous. The sales reports we see show that sales per banker, referral sales, number of sales calls made, sales coaching observations, number of new customer onboarding calls made, and core product cross-sales are down throughout the industry. Many banks and credit unions are hitting growth goals through high-volume single-product transactional selling driven by targeted promotional offerings. To make matters worse, most of the targeted offers are at better-than-market pricing. In effect, the industry has reverted to buying low-margin transactional business.
So, what’s one step that can improve your sales by up to 30%?
Simply put, improve your organization’s sales scorecards and goal setting methodology.
In most banks and credit unions sales goals are set at the top and divided among business units and branches based on recent history, and then divided among individual salespeople equally by job role without negotiation. Typically, every salesperson in a job role like personal banker will have the same or similar goals regardless of experience, competence, sales opportunity or competitive landscape. This is infinitely better than no goals at all, but clearly not the best approach based on our assessment work at over 1,400 bank and credit unions.
Here are the most common goal setting approaches ranked best to worst…
- A combination of team/unit goals and individual goals that are negotiated based on skills, experience and opportunity of the employee.
- All individual goals – negotiated
- All individual goals – dictated / assigned
- All team goals / unit goals
- Use of only short-term, promotional or sprint goals
- No goals at all.
Historically, cross-sales of core products, closed referrals and revenue per employee all run about 30% to 36% higher at institutions that use individual goals that are negotiated.
The psychological foundation of goals as a factor in motivation is that salespeople accept far more ownership in goals that are negotiated rather than assigned and in goals which they believe are achievable because they’ve participated in sales activity planning that requires them to think about how their goals could be achieved.
For decades, we’ve recommended to our clients that they implement a simple goal setting process based on 90-day action plans negotiated between individual salespeople and their sales leader. Each plan includes 3-5 annual goals, 3-5 objectives for the quarter, activities and strategies to accomplish the short-term objectives, and the selling behavior the employee will work to improve.
This process enables an organization to change priorities every quarter based on their current financial focus and gives every unite leader a point of focus for coaching and for objectively evaluating an employee’s contributions and recognizing top performers. Done well, it gives every employee a sense of purpose, accomplishment and motivation.
When scorecards and goal setting reflect the values of the organization and the importance of connecting deeply with customers and members, revenue follows. Every time.
Start the sales process right by hiring right. When you implement the Optimum Performance Profile, you’ll be able to immediately see the strengths and weaknesses of potential sales and service employees. Hire right, then support your sales people with goals and scorecards that help each employee become a master of sales.
