How to Build Iron-Clad Accountability around Loan Growth

I believe most people really want to do a good job.

In this session, I’m going to show you how to take your “ok” performers and help them focus on what matters so they can create far better sales results than they ever dreamed possible.

If you’re the kind of leader:

• Who has great accountability already, you’ll love this because I’ll show you how to get lenders to up the ante on their performance quickly.
• Who feels like you struggle to get accountability in your workplace and people all “look” busy, but they’re just not unleashing high performance, you’ll love what’s coming because you can get some nice loan growth on good accounts in just a few weeks.
• Who has accountability in place, but maybe you could better optimize what your people are accountable to, and THAT could be your big breakthrough, brace yourself because your breakthrough is in sight.

Three challenges get in the way of optimized accountability:

• First, most people don’t want to be accountable because then it is clear how they’re doing. They fear they won’t succeed, so they play games, pretend not to get it, or don’t turn in reports hoping you’ll give up.
• Second, when accountability is introduced, people who have not evolved themselves and grown enough personally can start game playing, and that gets weird real fast as they have every excuse in the world for why they don’t quite “understand” what you want or when you want it.
• Third, gravity exists. Even if you get accountability for a while, forces are working against you to bring you back to a state of “no accountability.”

If you’re like hundreds of bank CEOs I’ve talked with, you have seen all of these at one time or another.

I’m now going to give you three steps to get your people some accountability traction right within a few short weeks.

Step 1: In contrast to so many initiatives where they suggest that if you set goals and change incentive pay, results will happen, the reality is that hundreds of bank CEOs nod when I bring up that it doesn’t work.

Regardless, so many bank executives still introduce those tactics hoping for a different result. Instead, you need to understand that you don’t have a sales training issue—you have a confidence issue. Until you get the right system in place to normalize winning, accountability will ALWAYS blow up.

Step 2: UNLIKE so many approaches that start out setting a target that is too high, realize that you want some quick wins on the basics at the beginning. By bringing visibility to the basics AND celebrating them, you can then slowly raise the bar. By going slow, you go REALLY fast.

Step 3: Raise the bar every week from the week before. By celebrating the progress weekly, you can enjoy the buy-in. Follow that by building the “franchise system” of reporting, celebrating, visibility, and coaching. By doing that, you’ll avoid the “this too shall pass” experience (and return to lackluster results) that is almost otherwise guaranteed.

Just three steps:

• Build confidence.
• Create the “raise the bar” system.
• Build the “stickiness” system.

Go through this process, and you can get accountability for the right things in place quickly. And you can sleep well at night knowing you won’t have to repeat this in a few years with people doing the “slow walk” thinking they’ll win again in their fight against accountability.

Be sure to check out the next episode, where I’ll show you how to help your sales managers get better results in growing your loans.