I believe that people are happy to pay more for someone who provides a unique benefit that creates a substantial ROI value to them. I want that someone to be you.

In this episode, I’ll show you how to win all the business of your prospects without them ever asking about rate or fees. REALLY. I know it sounds crazy. But in our seminars, people tell me all the time that they’re now averaging 7–8 cross-sales when they never had more than two in their lives. If they can do it, your people can too.

Now, if you’re the kind of leader:

• Who knows you have some great unique selling points, but you’re frustrated that they don’t seem to be getting sold and you’re not seeing that you’re getting paid more for them, then you’re in the right place at the right time. I’ll make your day by showing you how to get that result consistently.
• If instead you are the type of leader whose people are already averaging 5–6 cross-sales on new accounts, but you think there might be more available, AND you think you can still get more pricing out of the equation, then stay tuned for some clear solutions.
• If, however, you are the person whose team is mostly still order-takers despite your attempts to fix this recurring problem, you’re going exhale when we finish because I’m going to offer you some fast help.

There are a few challenges to getting paid more for your unique selling propositions—those things that make you worth more:

• Some banks still struggle to nail down at least 40 USPs. Maybe they paid a branding firm hundreds of thousands and got one fairly weak Level 1 USP after all that expense and time. Usually, it’s the “we close loans up to blank size in 48 hours.” Alright, that’s one solid Level 1 USP—but really, they charged you how much for that? Because this has seemed so elusive to get good help with USPs, most banks don’t even know that it can be done.
• Even if you have some good USPs, your people are telling prospects about them. Telling ALWAYS feels sales-y, which is NOT what you want. The problem is that your people don’t know how to introduce your USPs without sounding sales-y.
• You have great sales managers—good people who “get it.” But you don’t have the proper support for them. By that I mean an ongoing, holistic education and “don’t run them out the door but grow them” accountability program to help them create the breakthrough results they can’t possibly manage otherwise.

Seems that almost every bank complains about these same three issues.

Here are four steps to help you get your USPs across to prospects the most effective way so you can improve your cross-sales and get paid more within 30 days.

Step 1:

Stop blaming your head of retail. It’s not their fault. Without the right support and tools, you’ve set them up to fail. If you fire and replace, you’ll just have a “Groundhog Day” situation where you just keep setting up the next person to fail.

Step 2: 

START by first nailing the unique selling propositions—you want a whole bunch, and they must be good. Selling a trip to the Caribbean is easy if you’re the only provider who has down comforters on cushy beds and your competition has tents with mats, right?

Don’t even start sales training until you have at least 20–30 great basic USPs. If you haven’t started on these, get a bunch of your executives to one of my seminars and you’ll walk away with plenty. If you have done them but they aren’t working, bring them along with that same team so we can polish that stone to make sure you have USPs that work.

Please don’t spend hundreds of thousands on branding and make that expensive error that ends up giving you the one USP I listed already. Instead, bring your team for two days to our seminars and you’ll get this solved once and for all. I LOVE helping banks get this part nailed because it is so important to feel the pride of knowing you are always the best choice.

Step 3:

Once you have your USPs in hand, know that people buy very scientifically, and you must follow the right steps in the right order in the sales system. Now, unlike most sales training involving “rote questions,” your people need to learn how to use good reasoning skills to ask the exact right positioning questions at the right time.

The positioning questions come right before the recommendations start because they give the prospect the chance to sell you on why they need you, instead of you selling them. Ah, you’re back in the “professional expert” status instead of the vendor status. You can feel the pride of knowing you are adding great value.

Step 4:

The refinement process begins. Teaching your team members to be elegant about knowing which positioning questions to use takes repetition of learning. Use blended learning comprised of virtual learning, drills, effective seminars with a process proven to double and triple cross-sales within a year, and on-site training, mixed with increasing accountability. Making sure the exact right steps happen at the right time is the answer.

Although I’ve had personal bankers who never had more than two cross-sales who then attended our seminars and had 13 the very next day at work, that isn’t the norm. Most need a tremendous amount of ongoing repetition of learning to move from 2–5 cross-sales, then to seven and then beyond.

Once you reach those heights, you want those numbers to stay up, so education must happen from now to the day your people retire to ensure that cross-sales numbers stays over 6–7. Repetition is the law of learning.

Here’s a quick rundown to reinforce these concepts:

• Stop blaming your head of retail when you haven’t set him or her up to win.
• Get your special positioning concepts in place with at least 20–30 USPs.
• Put the positioning questions in the right stage of the sales process and build a system to make sure your people don’t deviate from what works scientifically.
• Build the ongoing advancement and refinement process.

By doing these steps, you can command such respect in your market that your people will never have to match a rate again. They should easily cross-sell more products and services consistently, averaging 6–7 within a year or two.

Along the way they’ll build faith in themselves that they are masterful at what they do. They deserve the confidence gained from doing meaningful work and truly earning the trust of their customers.

In the next episode, I’ll show you how to build a system with the right order and the right interconnectedness of visibility, accountability and motivation to keep cross-sales metrics moving up consistently. Stay tuned.

To your continued success,

Roxanne Emmerich

Please watch the video above and share it with your exec team and board. 

P. S. Challenging times are proven as the moment to pull ahead. It’s your time to snap up low-cost deposits and seize your competitor’s best customers—but not if you have “order takers” in front of your customers and prospects. My Breakthrough Banking™ Blueprint Conference is designed especially to explore what smart banks do during tumultuous times. Register today.