Articles
Their Business Strategy with Their Sales Practices by Jim Schneider
A new study of 54 financial service organizations by BAI Research Services
has confirmed what industry observers have long believed. Banks will never
become high performing sales organizations until they integrate their
sales practices with their business strategies.
There's not much new in these findings, but the facts hit like a sledge
hammer to the forehead. Access to sales technology and customer data is
up, and so are expectations and accountability for sales and sales coaching
behavior resulting in expanded use of incentives and of sales and sales
management routines. Conversely, there is widespread doubt among bankers
that this expanded use of sales process is reinforcing CRM strategy or
improving relationship loyalty and profitability.
All of this suggests a lack of leadership within banking organizations
in defining a preferred way of selling, a clearly defined way of selling
and managing sales that is consistent with each organization's business
strategy. As the BAI report puts it, banks "have yet to 'operationalize'
sales and marketing in a way that is teachable, repeatable and deployable
across the enterprise."
If the new preferred way of selling for most banks is consultative or
advisory selling, why is the sales force hired, organized, measured and
rewarded based on transactional selling? If an organization's strategy
relies on profitability based CRM, why is success measured on the basis
of deposit and loan volume? These are only a few of the troubling questions
raised by the BAI research.
Key findings of the BAI research include these other examples of conflicted
priorities:
- After a decade of needs based sales training, 87% of front-line employees feel pressure to sell beyond customer needs.
- On-the-job coaching has replaced sales training as the primary skill improvement strategy, but managers don't know how to coach, and senior managers aren't effective role models for coaching.
- Despite a shift in strategy industry-wide to a value based sales mission, most sales metrics and sales activities remain volume based, and few banks make profitability information, or even a full view of the customer relationship, available to their front-line sales force.
The BAI report concludes that the real problem in financial
selling is a leadership gap in connecting people, process and information
to strategy in a unified way. This conclusion is valid, but it stops short
of pinpointing the underlying cause for poor sales leadership and execution.
Banks simply havenÕt invested the time to define a preferred way of selling
for each line of business that supports their strategy, and without a
credible process, leaders wonÕt lead.
The key to integrated sales development is defining how each component
of sales management supports your business strategy and preferred way
of selling as shown in the sales development diagram below.
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By integrating your preferred way of selling with each component of sales
management you provide your sales force with FOCUS and ACCOUNTABILITY,
the twin cornerstones of effective sales management. The best practices
of the world's best sales organizations outside of banking have proven
that it's good PROCESS that enables sales leaders to make effective use
of their people, technology and information in ways that support their
business strategies.
In the absence of an integrated process to support their business strategy,
it's virtually impossible for executives to lead the charge for sales
with the required passion and task clarity. Who should you recruit and
hire? Which clients and prospects should you identify as the best use
of your time? Which behaviors should you train and coach? Which aspects
of performance should you measure and reward?
Any executive will lack confidence and conviction if he or she leads a
sales process that sends conflicting messages at every employee touch
point. You can't lead a calvary charge if you think you look funny sitting
on a horse.
For information on how well your organization has integrated your sales
practices with your business strategy, complete the PREFERRED
SALES PRACTICES PROFILE.
About the Author
Jim Schneider, president and CEO of Schneider Sales Management, Inc.,
Englewood, Colorado, is one of the pioneers of sales management and sales
training for the financial services industries. Author of The Feel of
Success in Selling by Prentice-Hall, Schneider either created or popularized
many of the sales practices that are now an every day part of bank sales
culture, including cross-sale ratios and profitability based performance
measures, personal banker and client portfolio management, sales cycle
mapping, objective-based coaching, balanced scorecard compensation, sales
skill certification, and competency based salesperson selection testing.
Schneider Sales Management, Inc. is currently conducting a national research
project with the University of Colorado Business School on the traits
of top performing salespeople in banking. For more information, call Schneider
Sales Management, Inc. direct at (303) 221-4511.
Schneider Sales Management Inc.
5340 S Quebec Street, Suite 265N
Greenwood Village, Colorado 80111
Phone: (303)221-4511
Fax: (303)221-4650
Email: info@schneidersales.com
Copyright 2006, Schneider Sales Management,
Inc.
All Rights Reserved
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