Accenture, the global consultancy firm, recently published a research paper entitled 'How Transforming Banking Sales Behavior Can Spur High Performance', or more accurately 'Smiles Don't Mean Sales'. The paper's main theme is that superior customer performance alone will not translate into higher financial performance. What they found is that there is no correlation between the integral role of customer service and sales performance. Clearly, rude bankers won't get much business, but it takes specific sales initiatives to generate financial rewards.
One example they give is that a fast-growing US bank has taken to recruiting new branch staff from auto dealers and retail clothing stores. They believe that it is easier to teach salespeople about financial products, than it is to teach bankers how to sell! This point of view is a bit extreme, but what the Accenture paper highlights is that it is possible to teach old bankers new tricks.
In one European bank where sales specific initiatives were introduced, cross-selling increased by 70%, new customers increased by 5%, and customer loyalty increased by 25%! A targeted marketing initiative, properly managed, can deliver revenue increases of 20% - 40% within a single quarter. A transformation programme guarantees the sustainability of the improvement. Three of the specific actions that they recommend for salesforce transformation are:
- Keep marketing campaigns simple and easy for the salesforce to execute
- Coach salespeople daily in order to change behaviour
- Make it clear that management takes performance seriously and is tracking it
Of course, Winning Teams has always advocated clearly articulating product knowledge in sales literature, coaching for superior performance, and measuring performance improvement. By implementing a similar method, one major European bank has discovered that a concerted effort to improve salesforce performance can deliver impressive financial results in the short term, and help maintain that high performance in the long term.
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