1. Keep your contact database current and complete. This means more than a name, address, and phone number. Birthdays, anniversaries, spouse/children names, notes from conversations, and items to follow through on the need to be entered and kept current.
2. Convert your conversations. Take notes when you talk to your customers, and as soon as possible afterward, convert the notes into your contact database. Include small things (a child’s soccer championship win) and big things (need for financial planning session). This will create an “audit trail” for you that will help make the conversation more personal and helpful the next time you talk.
3. Track and follow through on your commitments. Use the contact database and your conversation notes to track any commitments you have made to your customer. Make sure you follow through on any actions you have promised to take; if for some reason you are unable to complete an action within the time frame you’ve offered, be sure to follow up with the customer and make a new commitment. And note the new date in your database.
4. Schedule specific times for follow up tasks. Discipline yourself to devote a specific amount of time at the same time every day (or every other day) to attend to the above three items.

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1) Bundle your products so there are no apple to apple comparisons: “Our 7-year mortgage program happens to come with free checking, free bill pay, free Internet banking, a free debit card AND a line of credit that will cover overdrafts at a reduced rate of $____ if you sign up for this package prior to closing.”

2) Teach wisdom: your clients want you to teach them how to make wise financial decisions. Show them how to ladder CDs, so they maximize returns without giving up access to their cash… and they’ll shift the focus from rate to the relationship.

3) Expect that you will earn all the relationship: Let your client know that you don’t want to be an afterthought… but rather the place where all their finances are handled, so their life is made easier. When you declare your intention to be a key player, you will earn their confidence to be exactly that.

4) Think beyond today: Look for ways to do a loss leader that allows you to capture a lifetime stream of income. NEVER do loss leaders if your people do not have the mindsets or skill sets to upsell.

5) Tell them you WANT the business: A man once said, “I’m only interested in women who are extremely interested in me.” There is nothing more alluring than letting a client know that you really want to work with them.

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‘DO’—Break the preoccupation with rate
Nothing will be accomplished until the prospective client has made the transition from rate-focused to value-focused. So the first question in the scale must be “Are you looking for the best rate or the best value?”—followed by an explanation of the difference.

‘RE’—Situational questions
These are the basic, relevant-to-product questions that need asking. “How long do you intend to live in this house?” is an example of a situational question.

‘MI’—Needs questions
This is where we head for the emotional heart of the matter. “Why did you start this business?” and “What are the greatest challenges you face in your business?” are needs questions.

‘FA’—Relationship questions
These are the third-date questions—time to talk about your blossoming relationship: “What’s important to you in a banking relationship?” “What would you have changed about your relationship with your previous bank?” Here’s your chance to figure out how the previous beau blew it by not caring enough about her needs, leaving the seat up, etc.

‘SO’—Positioning questions
Time to drive home your own unique qualities: “How important is it to you to [fill in the blank with your own Unique Selling Proposition]?” If you’ve managed the question scale well to this point, this is the moment the prospective client puts the close fit between her needs and your product into words.

‘LA’—The presentation
At this point the salesperson will have sufficient information to make concrete recommendations. “Based on what you’re telling me, I’m going to make some recommendations. You mentioned [need] was important to you, so I’m going to recommend [solution]. You also mentioned [need] was important, so I’ll also recommend [solution].”

‘TI’—The closing question
There is only one closing question you’ll ever need and it doesn’t even feel salesy. “Do you have any further questions or would you like to get started?

Salespeople are often so eager to display their wares that they skip straight to the presentation. The prospective client, still stuck in a preoccupation with rate, hears just a single note, hammered over and over—and walks out of the concert!

By playing all seven different notes of the question scale, your salespeople will find themselves and their clients making beautiful music together.

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If you don’t uncover your prospect’s pain, all you have is a prospect who is intellectually curious but not economically serious. Until you start poking and prodding, all you’ll get is a casual conversation—and YOU have better things than that to do with YOUR time.

Make it your main goal to discover all the things your prospect would like to be different—or better—in their current financial business relationship. Uncover ways in which their current vendor serves them incorrectly. By asking pain-probing questions, you allow them to reveal the improvements they want. This also takes the pressure off you to talk in any depth about your pricing or about why they should consider your company.

Realize that when you approach prospects about a possible relationship, the prospect sees you as an agent of change. They know you want to talk them into changing their behavior. And what do we know about human beings and behavior change? They hate it! But once the pain has been identified, you become the source not just of change but of relief.

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That’s a golden opportunity for those of us in the piggy-bank business.

There was a time when banks encouraged saving, sponsoring school programs, and Christmas accounts and a hundred other ways to save. But most aren’t doing this anymore. There has never been a better time to bring back the creative and simple programs that once made saving a piece of cake.

Encourage your customers to make and keep a budget that includes savings NOT as something to do when there’s money left over but as an expense as regular and non-negotiable as the car insurance and groceries. Urge them to see if their employers offer an automatic deposit program that puts a percentage of each paycheck into savings.

Saving is a habit like any other. Make it easy for your customers to develop this habit, and they’ll never forget you for it. Soon enough, our culture might very well recover the long-lost value of thrift that our parents tried so hard to get through our collective heads. And banks with the foresight to do so can lead the way.

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His Moments of Truth included the cleanliness of the waiting area, the announcements of the pilot, the check-in process, and even the cleanliness of the plane. If a customer saw a coffee stain on a tray when it was pulled down from the seat back, Carlzon knew that the person’s first thought would be, “Uh oh, I wonder if they remembered to service the engines.”

But that’s unreasonable, you say. Darn right, it is. But customers WILL make unreasonable assumptions about whether small things are predictors of something more serious. So it’s essential to manage the perceptions.

Not all cuts are the same. The companies that fare best in tough times are those who figure out how to cut costs in ways that register least with the people who matter most—the customers.

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Comedian Demetri Martin gets at the difference between satisfaction and passion when he calls graffiti “the most passionate literature there is.” It’s always something like “U2 ROCKS!” or “I LOVE SHERYL!” He wonders why you never see “indifferent graffiti,” like “TOY STORY 2 WAS OKAY,” or “I LIKE SHERYL AS A FRIEND,” or “THIS IS A BRIDGE.”

Of course, he knows why, and so do you. That’s why it’s funny. People don’t act on mere satisfaction. They don’t express mere contentment in five-foot-high spray-painted letters. They act on PASSION. And the best thing you can do to turn your market into a buzzing hive of passionate customers is to spend the first 90 days of your relationship, giving and giving and giving. And giving.

Research has shown that you generally have 90 days to convince the client that they’ve chosen the right bank. Let those 90 days expire, and you’ve lost the best chance you’ll ever have to capture their heart and soul, earning their undying devotion as they pledge to you every aspect of their financial lives—and buzz to their friends and colleagues about the great decision they made. Yet many banks close the sale, then turn their attention to other sales, other prospects. And the honeymoon’s over before it even begins.

You want to make those first few weeks a time of tremendous generosity on your part, so your new client knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that he or she made the right choice. Short, sweet, personal touches are best. If you know your client is relocating, send a pizza during move-in week. Send over a lawn-mowing service. Promote their businesses in the bank lobby. Send laminated articles about their business or offer shredding service. Offer a customer orientation program to help them maximize their own potential.

If you let your customers know that you are not just satisfied but THRILLED to have their business and eager to make their lives easier and better, why on Earth would they keep it to themselves? Your name will end up in a thousand sentences beginning with “Oh my gosh, you won’t believe…” as they share their good fortune with everyone they know. Be of extraordinary service to your customers, especially in the first blushing weeks of your relationship, and you won’t be able to STOP the buzzing even if you tried.

And who’d even want to try?

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RISK.

Risk is the dark underbelly of every opportunity, our mother’s voice warning us that there’s no free lunch, P. T. Barnum chuckling about a sucker born every minute. Suddenly the salesperson is the snake in the Garden, hissing “How ’bout them apples?”—and Eve is sliding her checkbook back into her purse and looking for the exit.

The best thing any business can do to earn the trust of a potential customer is reversing the risk. All agreements entail some degree of risk. If you, as a business, can make it clear that all of the risks will be assumed by you, not by the customer, you’ve removed the last real roadblock to the relationship.

If you can really demonstrate that there’s nothing to lose and much to gain, signing on that line goes from a sweaty-palmed, “I do,” to a simple agreement to dance for a while and see how it goes.

So how do businesses remove the risk roadblock? It depends on the business. Parents who agree to sign their kids up for karate lessons at a reasonable ten bucks a pop get walloped at the first lesson with the oh-by-the-way cost of the karate uniform. Once again, Eve’s looking around for the exit. What if little Cain and Abel decide they don’t LIKE karate, and we’re stuck with two skimpy bathrobes?

A smart businessperson will recognize that moment of risk paralysis and create the antidote before it can even set in. “The uniform is absolutely free for the first thirty days. If you decide not to continue, there’s no charge.” Voilà! The risk is assumed by the business, and Eve signs on the dotted line.

“But I can’t be giving away free uniforms!” says the shortsighted dojo owner. Fine. Try your way for a month. Count the customers walking out the door when they hit that roadblock. Then try risk reversal for a month. Sure, you’ll get a few customers who fizzle out before thirty days have passed. Still, you’ll also have a slew of customers with happy kids hooked on your product, parents who signed on for the sweet and lucrative package deal—customers who would have bounced off that roadblock if you hadn’t so wisely removed it.

So, you’re not selling karate lessons. But what are the roadblocks that get YOUR customers’ palms sweating—and how can you reverse that risk and dry those palms?

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