News Flash—Markets Don’t Dictate Premium Pricing [VIDEO]
Every time I meet a new bank CEO, I hear the same thing I’ve heard from thousands of other bank CEOs before. They say, “Roxanne, it’s different here.” Here, we have to...
Do you feel good about yourself when you help other people?
What if you could get your team excited about having your clients acquire all the products and services that would help them. A cross sales ratio is just a measure of trust. If a client trusts you and sees value, they bring everything to you and continue to add more as they need it. It’s not sales. It’s a measure that they see you as a trusted adviser.
Now if you’re the kind of leader who begs pleads and bribes your team with incentive pay to increase their cross sales, maybe for decades to no avail, and you just can’t seem to move that needle, even though the average person has at least 16 pricing services at various financial institutions, you’ll greatly benefit from this video where you will learn how to finally get out of this endless loop of effort without a breakthrough.
Or if you’re the leader who has people who already have cross-sales of six or seven on average, but you know, that’s nowhere near the 16 products and services that customers actually have. In other words, you’re still not their banker. This is the place for you.
Or maybe you have employees who ran from the big banks and their pushy, manipulative sales systems, and ended up convincing the rest of your team to believe that sales is bad. So now nobody is helping your customers buy what they need.
In whatever case, you’re going to love finding out how to take back your ability to get your people to believe that sales is simply helping people buy what they need. It is one of the most honorable things that they can be doing.
Order taking has been an industry dilemma for over 30 years, and it seems that cross sales needles haven’t moved one bit in three decades, despite millions of dollars wasted on bank sales training. Perhaps that’s not so surprising considering the challenges that you must overcome to make it happen.
For example, many people perceive sales as slick—presentations and pushy. We have a special approach, and they don’t want anything to do with it. Even though they won’t always say it, it does show in their results, doesn’t it?
Or perhaps you struggle like most banks that have sales attempt battle fatigue. Millions of dollars have been spent on attempts and improving sales cultures in banks, and less than a few 100 really accomplish the desired results.
Still, others do what they’ve been doing for so long that they’re insulted that you suggest it’s not enough. They think and act as if they care about the customers. But it isn’t obvious as their clients still run around town to competitors to meet their banking needs.
Let’s cover three steps that will help you move the cross sales needle in just a few weeks.
Step one, you have to forget what you believe regarding cross sales, or what folks are telling you is true. With zero evidence it seems like every bank CEO does the same thing when they want cross sales. There are three components, hire a sales training company, set goals, and create an incentive program. If that ever worked, it would be worth a try. But I have a mountain of evidence that a doesn’t.
Hundreds of if not thousands of CEOs have told me that they have tried that before coming to me, surprised and disheartened that it didn’t work. Before you sign that contract with the sales trainer, ask them to show you what percentage of their clients last year doubled their cross sales on new accounts within four to five months. How many of them picked up at least 40 basis points of NIM minimum over the year of their training? How many of them are increasing net interest-bearing deposits as a percentage of total deposits?
In God We Trust, for all others, show me the data, right? If it’s not over 70 to 90% know that you risk losing good employees and customers. Once the inevitable failure of the sales frame networking happens, you also risk losing credibility to fix the problem going forward. Which you of course, still need to fix.
Step two, in contrast to what sales training firms tell you to do, which sells their program but doesn’t deliver the results you need, you will be best served by starting your sales culture transformation with something outside of sales. Do you know why we Mystery Shop, every bank that attends our events prior to them attending? Those who tell us that they have great service that doesn’t need to be improved, get a thorough report of their mystery shops, and their teams mostly average in the 3.2 to 4.2 range.
Step number one of a breakthrough or performance is dealing with the facts. Almost without exception, the banks that say we have great people, and we have great service score in that range. Start by moving that needle up to over nine and do it fast. It needs to happen in six weeks, and you can’t miss getting it right the first time or the second attempt is at least three times more difficult.
When and only when your people are feeling confident that they’re being of extreme service to customers will they be open and ready for sales. Because now they’ve realized that sales is really just the next level of taking care of people. It is what good service entails. And it sure shouldn’t feel like sales.
After we do our proprietary kick butt kickoff process, we show bank executives the few things they need to do. In 30 years, we haven’t had one bank that hasn’t doubled their mystery shopping scores, and over 90% have tripled. In fact, all of them move to well above eight; an epic improvement from the 3.2 average start. Without a foundation of knowing that every point person can do the basics and the phones as they help people buy, sales training would be an expensive train wreck for you, combined with disgruntled employees and customers who feel sold to. In other words, you need sales readiness to be mastered before you start sales training.
Step three, once they move that mystery shopping needle fast, really fast, they build confidence. In our seminars, we show you how to pop that needle past nine almost without exception within six weeks. Now and only now when the birdies mouth is opened as a mother bird brings the first worm by getting extraordinary results through being open to helping people buy, as demonstrated by a good mystery shopping process, one that shows that they care about customers, you can now embark on the sales process. One with the right type of blended learning and progressive stage appropriate accountability, visibility, follow up, and motivational components weaved in at the right times, and must be a proven system woven together or you’re setting yourself up for another disaster.
Again, these three steps:
One, do a lobotomy for your executive team on everything they have heard and believed to be true about the sales training, incentive pay, and goals plan that has never worked.
Two, move the client experience needle fast, really fast so that clients are amazed at the experience, and your people are loving the experience of what real service looks like.
Three, then start the transformation and interweave blended learning as you increase your accountability process.
It’s not easy, but you will get a predictable result if you follow a predictable process.
Watch the next video to discover how to choose the right people for your sales slots.
To your continued success,
Roxanne Emmerich
Please watch the video above and share it with your exec team and board.
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