Sales Development Solutions for Banks

For most banks, sales development has evolved from maximizing growth to maximizing the profit contribution of sales.

With diverse markets and diverse selling roles, maximizing the profit contribution of sales requires integration of sales efforts across business lines and across selling roles and improving focus and accountability.

As a result, our solutions for sales culture transformation are customized to the goals and sales process of each business unit and to organizations ranging in size from community banks to money center banks.

I. Sales Management

Sales Practices and Profitability Assessment

We provide the industry’s most comprehensive and objective assessment of your current sales practices and your best opportunities for profit enhancement.

Through our unique process of employee surveys, on-site interviews and observations, assessment of sales supervisors, and off-site review of sales practices, sales effectiveness and profitability, we help you craft an integrated sales plan that will substantially increase your net income per FTE.

II. Sales Consulting

Sales Process

We help you improve your focus and accountability for sales by defining your Preferred Way of Selling® for each business unit; creating systematic processes for sales planning, selling, pipeline management and coaching; and designing performance scorecards and cost-effective reward programs.

Field Coaching and Sales Plan Reviews

To help your front-line sales supervisors, regional managers, and business unit sales managers reinforce your preferred sales process, we conduct on-site field visits with sales supervisors after training to model and coach effective use of best coaching practices.

Following our visits, we conduct sales plan reviews with your senior managers to provide feedback and personalized coaching and to recommend corrective action as needed.

III. Sales and Service Training

Sales Training

To create consistent selling practices across your organization and to get new employees to full sales production fast, we provide the banking industry’s broadest sales training curriculum.

Courses are designed differently for virtually every selling and supervisory role in retail banking, business banking, call centers, mortgage and wealth management from teller to lender and feature practical, “how to” content developed specifically for banks.

The curriculum includes the industry-best Optimum Performance Selling course, which is designed for experienced bankers in high producing sales roles such as commercial lending, wealth management and mortgage origination, and is customized to each participant. These courses are supplemented by custom workshops and the industry’s best trainer training and leader guides.

Core Curriculum:

• Retail Selling
• Strategic Selling
• Optimum Performance Selling
• Referral Selling
• Support Department Service Quality
• Contact Center Selling
• Sales Management Practices
• Franchise Management
• Profiling and Relationship Management
• Branch Teleconsulting
• Front-line Coaching
• Performance Management
• Prospecting
• Behavioral Interviewing for Sales

Service Delivery

To support high performance selling, we provide internal service quality metrics, service standards, inter-department service agreements, and service quality and coaching courses for support department staff. We also provide direction on customer satisfaction and customer loyalty metrics for sales and service personnel and consulting on contact center sales and service delivery.

SaleSkill Mastery® Certification

To provide learning, field application and accountability for mastery of selling skills and to force your supervisors to provide specific sales coaching to their employees, we provide two levels of sales skills certification with on-line testing and administration. SaleSkill Mastery® is the banking industry’s only sales skill certification process for sales professionals.

SaleSkill Certification provides:

• Accountability for mastery and use of core selling competencies
• Reinforcement of sales training and preferred selling practices
• Motivation to learn, to increase sales and to reach new levels of career accomplishment
• Recognition of achievement, selling competence and use of the industry’s best sales practices
• Recruitment and retention of achievement-oriented salespeople
• Coaching follow-up by sales supervisors

SaleSkill Mastery® is easy to administer and results in demonstrated improvement in sales skills. Key features include:

• Online delivery and administration
• Eight self-study modules for sales and service employees for each of two levels of certification
• Built around sales-related work assignments and skill application in real selling situations
• Successful completion requires passing exams for each module, plus a final certification exam and measured increases in actual sales productivity

IV. Sales Hiring Assessment Tests

Recruiting and Selection of Sales and Service Personnel

To help you hire bankers who can sell and to fit existing personnel to the job roles that best optimize their performance, we provide the banking industry’s best validated hiring assessments, the Optimum Performance Profile® and the Service Readiness Profile®.

In addition to scoring individuals on their likelihood of success in key sales, service and supervisory roles, our on-line assessment provides detailed recommendations on how to train and coach each candidate and provides interviewers with a customized interview guide for conducting effective behavioral interviews.

In addition to hiring assessments, we provide consulting on recruiting and on development of hiring scorecards, and we provide training on behavioral interviewing.