Bank Sales Training Basics—with an Important Twist

I believe that we humans can make easy tasks MUCH harder than they need to be. We all do it. The people at your bank struggling with sales effectiveness do it, too.

In this session, I’m going to show you how you can take a trouble spot, like getting enough deposits, and turn it into a big win quickly. Quick hint: It’s about moving away from “training” but instead “educating” your team the right way.

If you’re the kind of banker:

• Who needs more deposits and can’t seem to figure out what the banks who don’t have that problem are doing, you can’t miss this.
• If instead, you are a bank exec who has plenty of deposits but would like to magnetically attract them at lesser pricing, this is for you.
• Or, if you feel like a puppet on strings—dependent on the market and rates and potentially paying up, you are going to love these next few minutes.

As with anything worthwhile, it won’t be a cakewalk. Here are some of the challenges you’ll face along your journey:

• Getting your team to engage in the right way when a potential customer is “rate shopping” with you. BankShop®, the largest database of mystery shops for community banks, shows 90-97% of your people don’t ask any engagement questions that could break the preoccupation with the rate or even attempt to do business!
• Even if you have ONLY one person on the team, who doesn’t get it, when Mr. Big Bucks calls in, that one person might sabotage the potential deal and lose a customer with a million-dollar lifetime value.
• Also, when even one person gets sloppy on how to handle rate inquiries, it breeds lackluster performance from others who continue to lower the performance bar.

Most banks do mystery shopping year after year. Sadly, based on results, it doesn’t do much to move the deposit needle if it isn’t a part of a transformative process—scores aren’t linked to creating cross-sales that average over six. Some banks just get the same sad report every month, and it’s doing them little good because the cross-sales and the mystery shopping scores aren’t going up. It’s not their fault—they were sold a mystery shopping package that wasn’t proven to do just that.

EVERY bank is facing these challenges. But, let’s dare to be different, shall we?

I’m now going to give you three steps to get you out of this endless “effort with nothing to show for it” pattern and get you more deposits in just a few weeks.

Step 1: UNLIKE so many sales training and service training programs that don‘t have immediate accountabilities and needles to move, you need to have a system that finds out the biggest holes in the bucket—where you’re falling short and need improvement.

If your people aren’t showing you that they are using your sales and service system consistently by getting all 10s on their mystery shops, or at least averaging 9.4 out of 10, doesn’t it seem a little silly to do more sales training and goal setting or offer more incentives? Instead, you need to get impeccable at how they do the basics.

Step 2: Build confidence. Start by mystery shopping your team to know how they are handling every inquiry. Even one inquiry that isn’t optimized can have a million-dollar lifetime value. Be prepared.

BankShop® specializes in community bank mystery shopping as it applies to rapid and sustainable sales and service culture transformations. Their data shows that the average bank starts at around 3.5 out of 10. WHAT AN OPPORTUNITY! If your competition is that bad, imagine what you can do if you get your score up. The key is to move that number up to over 9.4 within six weeks so your people can feel the pride of quickly moving a needle that matters. THAT builds confidence. If you can’t assuredly move that needle that fast, don’t attempt. Every “this too shall pass” initiative that doesn’t move a needle quickly creates a culture of false attempts, and then it becomes harder and harder with every new attempt.

Step 3: Once they have the basics down, like knowing:

• how to break preoccupation with the rate;
• how to ask good needs questions that get people to open up and fall in love with the banker; and
• how to offer solutions to those needs in a way that never feels like sales

Then you can move to even more effective tools, such as how to use your USPs or effective sales systems as power tools to close every deal you want. But first, we walk; then we run.

You MUST always start with the mastering of the sales basics, or you’ll breed another “this too shall pass” mantra instead of filling your coffers with good deposits and maintaining a system that works.

You’ll do it by following these steps:

1) Follow a system proven to double or triple mystery shopping scores.
2) Build confidence with a consistent system to jump numbers fast.
3) Build on your progress to incorporate clear execution steps so that you capture 100% of all rate inquiries and convert them into whole-relationship clients immediately and consistently for a rapid profit impact.

That’s all for now. But make sure you tune in to the next video where I’ll show you the best way to get the entire deposit relationship for your most desired prospects and best customers.