Creating an effective sales culture requires a lot more than improving the sales skills of frontline staff, said Terence Roche, principal of Scottsdale, Ariz.-based Cornerstone Advisors, Inc.

“There are three legs to the stool,” Roche said, speaking Monday at BAI’s SmartTactics conference in Las Vegas. “You do have to have sales skills, but those have to come after strong product/industry knowledge and excellent execution.”

In a talk entitled “Banking Sales Culture: Separating Myth from Reality,” Roche said too many bankers believe sales skills is the “missing piece” to sales success. Instead, he said, sales skills should be placed in the context of “knowledge, expertise and customer trust.”

Roche said this requirement conflicts with banks’ actions in recent years to reduce operational and pricing authority in the branches. “They’ve automated most of the decisions banks have to make, especially on credit, and they pushed customers to self-service channels.”

As a result, branch employees are poorly prepared to cross-sell complex investment or loan products, he said. “You don’t reduce authority and knowledge and then tell your employees, ‘Go and become a trusted financial advisor to your customers.’”

Roche said he asked an audience of bankers during BAI’s Retail Delivery Conference & Expo last November if their branch employees could pass a written test on rules and definitions for making loans. “Nobody raised their hand,” Roche said. “And of course, that was the point.”

Roche said restoring expertise and authority in the branches will promote trust in the institution and encourage customers to purchase more products. “If you’re going to win in sales, it’s a cumulative relationship built up over a series of events,” he said. “Show your competence first, and then customers might buy something.”

To build an “expertise-based sales culture,” Roche recommended that banks take the following steps:

1. Increase authority levels in the front line so that employees can provide better service.
2. Focus training more on expertise and execution rather than sales.
3. Prepare frontline bankers to make sales pitches in response to specific customer needs or life events.
4. Eliminate generic customer-profiling activities that waste employee (and customer) time.
5. Reinvigorate the branch banker’s role as a lender.

Noting that most branch-based loans are now underwritten in centralized back offices, Roche said he wasn’t advocating returning credit authority to branch managers. “But even if they’re not making the decision, the customer needs to think they’re making the decision,” Roche said.

Roche said building an expertise-based culture is hard and time-consuming work. “But if you’re telling your branch people that all they have to do is ask for the business and everything’s going to be okay, you’re kidding yourself.”

More Articles in This Issue

» A HAPPY MEDIUM IN BRANCH MANAGEMENT
Centralize or decentralize? It may be the oldest debate in branch management, as banks swing between the two schools of thought..  »more

» BRANCH DESIGN AND 'BANK PROS' DIFFERENTIATE
How does a community bank compete with much larger organizations? Personal service is a common approach. But Hauppauge, N.Y. based Bank of Smithtown goes a step further to include branch differentiation.  »more

» THE CHEAPER FIX FOR EMPLOYEE RETENTION
When it comes to improving call center performance, bank executives often look for a technological fix rather than a cheaper—and more effective—focus on employee hiring and training practices, says Erika van Noort, director, management consulting, with Montreal-based BCE Elix.  »more

» PODCASTS AT SMARTTACTICS
For more from BAI SmartTactics™ conference, listen to Banking Strategies’ Senior Editor Kenneth Cline’s podcasts with executives from Novantas, TowerGroup, GRFI Ltd. and the Frerichs Group. »more

» RANDOM NOTES
Among financial services providers, who’s likely to get the lion’s share of the business for Health Savings Accounts (HSAs)? Banks and savings institutions, according to Atlanta-based Synergistics Research Corp..  »more

» BAI Home
» BAI Banking Strategies Online
   To subscribe/renew
   Articles archives
   To advertise
» BAI Conferences & Events
» BAI Education & Training
» BAI Research & Benchmarking
» Resource Directory