Integration of the NON Sales Culture

What You Say

Sales: Educate and advise customers and members on institution product and services to cultivate a win-win relationship … benefiting the consumer and growing the bank or credit union.

What They Hear

Sales: Push products and services on customers that they probably don't need because my boss said to.  I may get a couple extra bucks for my efforts, but ultimately it’s all about growing the institution.

Odds are that if you polled your staff, very few want to be in “sales.”  The term has grown to have a bleak connotation.  Seriously, go to Google Images right now and search “salesperson” … go ahead, I’ll wait …

Do you really want to be most of the bottom-feeders that show up in that search?  Well, neither does your staff.

Yet, so many places focus on and preach about a "Sales Culture."  You hire consultants and trainers and go to seminars and webinars … all in search of the secret weapon that will make your people "sell."

Here’s some free advice … It doesn't exist!

So, while none of your staff want to be greasy haired, panel jacket wearin’, slime balls – they do want to HELP people.

Most financial institutions focus far too much on the wrong things.  Think about the last 12 months.  What percentage of your staff training was on operational issues and transactional business?  Is that where you grow your business?  No, it’s grown by the relationship opportunities.  The face-to-face, meaningful, “they came here to do something important” stuff.  This is NOT the time to "sell," but the time to build rapport and trust.

There are 5 simple steps to the NON Sales Culture:

   1. Get the customer talking

   2. Listen for cues on financial need

   3. Translate those needs into products and services

   4. Describe how your products and services can fulfill the need

   5. Ask if they want to open the helpful account while they are here

Facilitate Meaningful Conversation

The most important step is to get the customer to talk and to learn to REALLY listen.  To get them talking, you simply need to ask the right questions, then shut up and know what to listen for.  Here’s are a few starter ideas using checking as an example:

The Basics:

• Where do you have your checking account today?
• What do you like about it?
• What would you change?
• How do you use your account?
• What other important accounts do you have at other institutions?

The REAL Helpful Stuff:

• Learn about their family.
• Learn about their job.
• What d they do for fun?
• What life milestones are happening in their life?

This is a helpful front line tool that you can implement today
to help your staff ask the right questions EVERY time.

You don't need Zig Ziglar to fly in and train your team on this stuff.  By discussing the power of Meaningful Conversation to your entire staff: tellers, new accounts, lending, investments, call center, collections – you’ll have an integrated relationship building machine that will help your customers and grow the business!

We bring these marketing philosophies to credit unions and community banks nationwide, and would love to bring them to your institution too. Contact us to see how.

Nearing 240,000 visits worldwide, we hope that you enjoy this blog.  If you find it helpful, please share it with your colleagues. Also, check out our YouTube Channel for short video blogs about financial marketing.  

MarketMatch is also a nationally and internationally requested speaker. Contact us to bring our marketing ideas to your next conference.

Here are the conferences where you can find MarketMatch.

See our story here. (click)

Chat with me LIVE! (click)

Or email me directly (click)

937-426-9848

Follow me on Twitter @egagliano

USAA ... The Disney of Banking?

As a life rule, many people ask, "What would Jesus do?"  As a marketer, I typically ask myself, "What would Walt do?"  As bankers, we should all ask, "What would USAA do?"

In 2006 I left a Marketing role at a credit union and came to MarketMatch. Still, 7 years later, I'm a fiercely loyal CU member. They have my mortgage, home equity, 2 auto loans, checking, savings, credit card and some investments. But when I decide to leave, I'm going taking my accounts to USAA.

I have USAA home and auto insurance and, to me, they are the Disney of banking. Maybe that's why, in a 2011 Forrester report, USAA was found to lead our industry with 3.5 products per member, with Navy Federal Credit Union close behind with 3.1.

How can you see these kind of results?

Focus on Service, but Don't Forget Sales

USAA averages 3.5 products per member while Wells Fargo, a sales machine, "only" has 2.6 products per customer. What's up with that? In my opinion it's a slight deviation of focus.

I've shopped many a Wells Fargo for clients all over the country and they have an outstanding sales model.  USAA, on the other hand, has an outstanding SERVICE model.

I've been a USAA member for 19 years and in that time, I've NEVER met a single employee face-to-face. Yet, I still consider them the greatest service company that I do business with.

The USAA Way: Like Disney, the primary driver is the member experience. Focus every single member interaction on service first! Service leads to trust and trust leads to sales. Then ask simple questions at every interaction and suggest products related to individual responses. It's that simple. The unspoken steps here are: 1) Listen and 2) Care!

Bundle Products
Customers often walk in the door or come to your web site inquiring about a product.  The successful institutions don't focus on one product at a time, they focus on clusters.

Here are some examples:
Debit cards, online banking and e-statements are not "cross sells" to a checking account, they are access points and should be as assumed as ordering checks.

As soon as your customer closes on that mortgage and moves in, they're going to start filling their new house with ... new stuff!  Help them by bundling a credit card with every mortgage. If they're good for $100,000+, they're also good for a couple extra grand on a credit card. And it should go without saying that your mortgage customers should have an automatic referral to any insurance offerings.

Every single commercial account has a decision maker with a personal account. Do you have them both?  How can you package the two to give you an advantage?


Blowup the Silos

I have a client who, when talking about referrals from the mortgage department to retail, is concerned about getting the customer's "permission" to call. What I sometimes need to remind them is that customers don't bank with a department, they bank with an institution.

Rarely does someone bank with XYZ Mortgage, or ABC Insurance ... they are going to XYZ Credit Union or ABC Bank.

What USAA does REALLY well is communicate internally. My auto insurance contacts may not have all the answers about retail checking, but they're certainly not shy about asking me if I'm interested.

Many of you offer a lot of products. I'm not saying that every employee has to be an expert on every product, but they should know everything that you have to offer and know how to get someone to the right contact within one transfer.

When you want to focus on improving what you do, spend some time at USAA.com.  Look at their Life Stages or their Advice Center.  Notice, though they likely offer a lot more services than you do, how simple their website is to navigate.


Think about it.  USAA has 3.5 products per member among more than 9 million members ... and no branches! They are killing us and they only have the computer and phone to build a relationship. Imaging what we could do with our world-class, face-to-face interactions if we took a few pages from USAA's playbook. We could become the most magical banking place on earth.

Read More

• Lessons From 100 Branch Experiences
• Disney Service in your Branches
• $#*! Bankers Say

We bring these marketing philosophies to credit unions and community banks nationwide, and would love to bring them to your institution too.  Contact us to see how.

With nearly 195,000 visits worldwide, we hope that you enjoy this blog.  If you find it helpful, please share it with your colleagues.  Also, check out our YouTube Channel for short video blogs about financial marketing.  

MarketMatch is also a nationally and internationally requested speaker.  Contact us to bring our marketing ideas to your next conference.

Here are the conferences where you can find MarketMatch.

See our story here. (click)

Chat with me LIVE! (click)

Or email me directly (click)

937-426-9848

Take Referrals Personally

For just a minute, think about the last time you referred a company or service provider.

Did you tell your BFF about the salon or the stylist?

Did you tell your buddy about the mechanic or the shop?

Now the million dollar question ... Did you refer because of a $10 or $20 incentive?

Heck no!  You probably made the referral to help your friend out ... because you had a positive experience and wanted your friend to have the same.  Because good service is darn hard to find nowadays and you feel it should be rewarded.

We believe referrals are an emotional decision and that a person refers a “person” more than a “place.”  Your institution has thousands of personal interactions with customers every year … that's thousands of opportunities to EARN a referral.  Rather than a “would you like fries with that” approach that commoditizes the referral “ask”, we recommend a personal referral strategy.  This approach makes the referral a highly valued process from “one person of trust” to another and ties the emotion of satisfaction and expertise into the “ask.”

10 Tenets of an Effective Referral Program:

• Don't focus on new customers who don't know how great you are yet, focus on seasoned customers who have been "wow"ed.
• Take advantage of EVERY "wow moment": account openings, loan closings, after you've solved a problem.
• You should REWARD for positive behavior, not use an incentive as a carrot to refer.
• To simply hand out a flyer or coupon and hope for a referral is passive ...  To use a referral program to generate leads for your staff to actively follow-up on is effective.
• Make the referral as easy as possible - Consider an electronic or web-based driver to collect leads.
• Don't ask for too much information from the referee.  
• Consider your story ... WHY should people refer your institution.  Make sure your customers know the story and why to refer.
• Ask for the referral multiple times ... at point of sale, a few days later a week later.
• Build your referral strategy around a measurable metric ... then track and tweak where necessary.
• Assign accountabilities for referral follow-up and track close ratios ... incent where appropriate.

From an ROI standpoint, referrals should be one of your best producing strategies.  If you've been taking a "set it and forget it" approach to referrals, it may be time to relook at your plan.

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With nearly 170,000 visits worldwide, we hope that you enjoy this blog.  If you find it helpful, please share it with your colleagues.  Also, check out our YouTube Channel for short video blogs about financial marketing.  

We bring these marketing philosophies to community banks and credit unions nationwide, and would love to bring them to your institution too.  Contact us to see how.

MarketMatch is also a nationally and internationally requested speaker.  Contact us to bring our marketing ideas to your next conference.

Here are the conferences where you can find MarketMatch.

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MarketMatch is a marketing firm, dedicated to the credit union and community banking community.  We utilize knowledge-based strategies to help you FOCUS on the right story that will generate the greatest  MOMENTUM and prove the best RESULTS with our written ROI Guarantee.

See our story here. (click)

Chat with me LIVE! (click)

Or email me directly (click)

937-426-9848

Focus ... Momentum ... RESULTS (Part 3)

Focus … Momentum … Results 

It’s not just our tag line … it’s our business model.

This week, we take the ultimate look behind the MarketMatch curtain.  A glimpse into our innermost workings.  The drivers behind everything that we do for your credit union or community bank.

This is part 3 of a 3 part series this week that will outline the simplest of strategic processes and the true value to how we partner with financial institutions to drive bottom line success.

Focus ... Momentum ... Results

RESULTS

Because of our ROI Guarantee and because it’s the right thing to do, we measure everything.  The challenge is knowing what to measure and when.

At it's base, ROI is:

Incremental Profit - Marketing Investment

Marketing Investment

But there's so much more to the equation:

• Would the community name you in the top 3 in an unaided awareness survey? Would they name you first?  How does that compare against a pre-campaign baseline? (This begins to measure that MOMENTUM that we talked about yesterday)
• Was there a sales lift over the months prior to a campaign?  How about the same months of the previous year?
• Did you hit your required sales lift?
• What might the results have been with a different offer?  What about no offer?
• What was the difference between increased applications and increased new accounts?
• Did growth come from existing customers or new?  Which did you want?
• Is your attrition decreasing? What accounts are experiencing the highest and lowest attrition?
• What branches or markets are growing the fastest/slowest?  Why?
• If your marketing is working, how can you make it better?  If it's not working, why?

Once you understand your objectives-driven FOCUS you'll know what to measure.

With constant monitoring and tweaking, you can more effectively build MOMENTUM. 

If you can benefit from some Focus ... Momentum ... Results, click here.

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With nearly than 160,000 visits worldwide, we hope that you enjoy this blog.  If you find it helpful, please share it with your colleagues.  Also, check out our YouTube Channel for short video blogs about financial marketing.  

We bring these marketing philosophies to community banks and credit unions nationwide, and would love to bring them to your institution too.  Contact us to see how.

MarketMatch is also a nationally and internationally requested speaker.  Contact us to bring our marketing ideas to your next conference.

Here are the conferences where you can find MarketMatch.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

MarketMatch is a marketing firm, dedicated to the credit union and community banking community.  We utilize knowledge-based strategies to help you FOCUS on the right story that will generate the greatest  MOMENTUM and prove the best RESULTS with our written ROI Guarantee.

See our story here. (click)

Chat with me LIVE! (click)

Or email me directly (click)

937-426-9848

What Lies Within Us

"What lies behind us and what lies before us are 

tiny matters compared to what lies WITHIN us" 

- Oliver Wendell Holmes

As we dot the "i"s and cross the "t"s on our 2013 marketing plans, we've spent weeks analyzing our successes and failures from 2012, prioritizing our objectives for 2013, and determining the most impactful strategies and tactics to achieve those objectives next year.

This week's blog is a plea, dear marketers ... please don't forget your brand!

It's what lies WITHIN us that counts!

• What share-of-mind do you hold locally?
• What is the instant thought of your institution in the community?
• Is that perception different from customers/members and potential customers?
• Can your entire staff easily define what makes you different and better than the competition?
• Can your customers?!?!
• Heck, can your management and Board?!?!
• What processes do you have in place to assure a "wow" experience at EVERY touchpoint?
• What new processes will you implement next year?
• Is your front line staff focused on Meaningful Conversation or "sales?"
• Is there consistency of message and design in everything you do?
• Do your messages stand out in the crowd?
• Do you offer a product, or packaging/bundling, or knowledge/expertise, or simply an experience that would motivate me to make a change?
• Will I be treated like a guest in your home, or a customer?
• Are your branches warm and welcoming?
• What about your team?

This is an exciting time of year.  It's a reflective time of year.  It's a great time to look within your organization and soul search.

If you can't answer the questions above - or 

are unhappy with the answers, click here.

For a blog about our customer experience process and more tips, click here.

Click here for last week's blog: $#*! Bankers Say.

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With more than 157,000 visits worldwide, we hope that you enjoy this blog.  If you find it helpful, please share it with your colleagues.  Also, check out our YouTube Channel for short video blogs about financial marketing.  

We bring these marketing philosophies to community banks and credit unions nationwide, and would love to bring them to your institution too.  Contact us to see how.

MarketMatch is also a nationally and internationally requested speaker.  Contact us to bring our marketing ideas to your next conference.

Here are the conferences where you can find MarketMatch.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

MarketMatch is a marketing firm, dedicated to the credit union and community banking community.  We utilize knowledge-based strategies to help you FOCUS on the right story that will generate the greatest  MOMENTUM and prove the best RESULTS with our written ROI Guarantee.

See our story here. (click)

Chat with me LIVE! (click)

Or email me directly (click)

937-426-9848