Selling Skills Aren’t the Only Soft Skills Your People Need
Schneider Sales Management most often works with clients in the context of a comprehensive sales and service culture change effort. We’ve written often as to why these initiatives succeed or fail—the sales training effort, the effectiveness of coaching and feedback, the organization’s sales process, and the level of employee focus and accountability. We’ve also had numerous opportunities to observe as our client’s tackle major technology conversions, wholesale product line changes and mergers/acquisitions, and can attribute the success and failure of these efforts as well. The degree of success is often determined not by the core elements of the change initiative, but rather by how equipped the organization’s managers and employees are from a soft skills and project management standpoint. (more…)
We would like to thank you for the continued support and positive feedback we have received for The Schneider Report since its inception in March of 2009. Since our first issue, we have grown our subscription from a little over 1,000 to currently reaching more than 16,000 financial service professionals and industry leaders. We sincerely appreciate your interest in our articles and value your readership. Please visit our visit our website www.schneidersales.com if you would like to view past Schneider Reports articles. (more…)
We have had an extremely positive response to our March 31st Schneider Report article, “Coaching to Increase Sales,” written by Steve Wallace. What seems to emerge in the feedback we have received is that so many institutions see coaching as both a low cost and rapid way to positively impact sales. Everyone realizes that a complete sales culture transformation takes time to implement and perhaps a few months to begin to see the payback in actual performance improvements. (more…)
People do what they do because of what happens to them when they do it. This applies to your sales force, as it does to anyone, anywhere within your organization. The challenge becomes reinforcing the positive results you want to see and minimizing those activities that are not contributing to your bottom line. A defined, consistent coaching routine is the best way to get the most from your people, and deliver the best results for your firm. (more…)
Investments in technology routinely rank high on the priority list for most financial service providers, having dominated the industry’s agenda for the past 15 years. Enhanced MCIF systems, data warehouses, platform automation, call center systems, contact management applications, intranets, or interactive web sites are found on the current project list or shopping list of almost every financial institution. (more…)
This Schneider Report article is written by Tom Bresnan, CEO of Schneider Sales Management. Mr. Bresnan joined Schneider Sales Management in October, 2008 as an equity investor, board member and CEO. Prior to joining our firm, Mr. Bresnan was President and CEO of New Horizons Worldwide Inc., and Capitol American Financial, Inc. (more…)
I wanted to pass a long an article written by Jim Schneider, our Founder and Vice Chairman. This article is the cover story in the current July/August issue of ABA Bank Marketing and features 10 pragmatic ways to sell your way out of the current financial crisis.
The Squeeze: Selling in Tough Times
During the last year, the market dynamics have changed, and banks need to modify their sales and marketing strategies accordingly. In this new environment of uncertainty and of mistrust of even the highest-performing companies, branding, advertising, pricing and other passive marketing strategies aren’t likely to yield the same high returns on investment that they’ve yielded in the past. (more…)
By this point in the current financial crisis most banks and credit unions have come to realize that “hope is not a strategy.” Doing nothing to increase sales until the economy rebounds is a strategy that almost certainly increases profit risk, the concentration of income within a small number of customers, products, markets and salespeople. (more…)
