Sterling Miller

If you need more sales in any product category, the best place to look for those sales is within your existing customer base, a virtual goldmine for building better relationships and making more sales. For example, most banks and credit unions are looking for more core relationships, checking accounts. How many customers can you identify that have products other than checking accounts? Create a simple marketing plan with a sweet offer, and target that group. Chances are you’ll have better results with your own customers. Why? Because they already know you and have accounts with you - half the battle is already won. How about Home Equity Lines? How many customer/homeowners are in your database? I’m not

If you’re ready to make a difference in your sales numbers, you must train your sales team to understand that everything they do and say to facilate a sale must focus on helping customers make their lives easier, better, and more convenient, and delivering knock-your-socks-off customer service at the same time.

Most banks and credit unions offer a myriad of free services that are designed to make doing  business easier, cheaper, and more convenient for the customer, but the customer never buys the product, they buy what the product delivers in terms of benefits, and they respond to the way in which they are treated by the employees - the level of customer service they experience.

Today I spent a very enjoyable morning at a branch with two experienced tellers, leading an updated sales training session. They were struggling a bit with making referrals, so I was called in to see if we could work it out. I usually begin sessions by asking if the tellers are comfortable with selling, and if they like to sell. Not surprisingly, the answer is usually “no.” However, when asked if they feel good when they help a customer by recommending a beneficial product, they always respond “yes”. So, the “feeling good” part is what we focused on.

Selling banking products shouldn’t feel like “selling”

Getting bank and credit union tellers to sell has always been a challenge, even if they’ve had all the sales training money can buy. Yesterday during a coaching session at one of my client’s branches, a new teller admitted that the reason he didn’t make referrals for products is because he 1)  doesn’t like rejection, and 2) is afraid of looking foolish since he doesn’t know enough to answer questions. I couldn’t argue! No one likes rejection, or willingly opens themselves up to looking like a fool.

We spent the rest of the session talking about his “script”, and why he was being rejected so often. He had fallen into the selling-the-product-and-not-the-benefits trap that so many of us fall into. And, he assumed that everyone he spoke to knew what the products were, a big mistake, because most don’t.

The solution was