How To Improve The Quality of Your Bank’s Sales Calls

Like many banks, we are trying to become better at commercial relationship building and sales. One coach that we listen to is Jack Hubbard, the Chief Experience Officer at St. Meyer & Hubbard. Jack and his team are some of the best in the banking sales and performance culture business, and we wanted to highlight a recent lesson. It started with an exchange between Jack and a very successful banker. As you can see from the conversation below, there is value that banks can impart by just learning to ask the right questions.

The Conversation 

The below conversation took place between a community bank Chief Lending Officer that also has line responsibilities and Jack Hubbard. This CLO is seasoned and focused on bringing in more relationships to the bank.  What we like about this conversation is that succinctly highlights a problem that we see at many banks which is the tendency to over-manage but under-lead.

We break out some other advantages of these questions below, but the largest reason to consider incorporating these ideas is a finding from The Sales Executive Council as detailed in the Harvard Business Review (HERE). The report finds that effective sales coaching can improve performance up to 19% for the middle 60% of your business development officers.  What bank wouldn’t want a double-digit increase in loan and deposit volume?

Here is the conversation:

Jack: When your bankers return from a prospect call or early cycle client call, what does the conversation sound like between you and them?

BANKER: I ask about what products they were able to discuss, the amount of the opportunity and when it might close.

Jack: Oh!

BANKER: How do you feel about that conversation?

Jack: My conversation would be different.

BANKER: How so?

Jack: I would ask them what went well, what could be improved, what’s next and how can I help.

BANKER: Don’t you care about them hitting their goals?

Jack: That’s the exact reason I would ask my questions. I not only want the bankers to exceed their numbers, but I also want the prospect to see the banker differently than all the other bankers that call on them. Prospects have become victims of banker goals. The real trust differentiator in all of this is the questions the banker asks. Your banking team will ask them more consistently if you reinforce them.

Questions That Are The Value Proposition

By asking the right questions of your relationship management team, managers can get a sense of the quality of the calling effort. Jack suggests that sales managers check up on their relationship managers by asking some of the following questions:

• Did the conversation and information flow naturally from both sides of the table?
• Did the prospect share something personal about themselves or their family? If so, when will you insert that into your Share of Heart (personal) data in the CRM?
• Did the prospect tell a story about the company’s history or their personal history in the industry? What was the story or what passions does the customer have?
• Did you uncover or validate the prospect’s top priorities and go forward objectives? What are they?
• Did you share a story, a best practice, data, or provide a product-neutral idea? Give me an example of how you added value.
• Did the prospect ask you questions about how the bank and the company might work together? How did you respond?
• Did the prospect indicate his/her potential desire to work with you in some way? How do you know?
• Did you discuss and obtain joint next step commitments?
• Did you obtain a firm next call date?
• Did you leave a non-bank value add? How did the prospect react?
• When will you send your Conversation Recap?
• When will connect with the prospect and others at the company on social media, particularly, LinkedIn?

Pre and Post Planning

These questions take planning even for the most experienced calling officer. Laying out your call beforehand and making sure your objectives are clear tends to be precursors to a bank’s success. Jack doesn’t suggest a script, however. That could result in being robotic. He suggests bankers pre-board some “BNG” questions in the margin of a paper pad or tablet where you take notes.

BNG stands for “Been-Now-Going” and is St. Meyer & Hubbard’s mnemonic for asking questions about the customer’s or prospect’s history, current events at the company and future plans. There is no need to write out full questions, just words, and phrases to help jog the memory. Let the conversation flow naturally and stay focused on the buyer.

On the other side of the conversation, is the post-planning.

The answers to the above questions get diarized in a bank’s customer relationship management (CRM) system and serve as the basis of a call report, or what Jack calls a Conversation Recap. The CRM, or at least the relationship manager’s process should then create tasks for follow up.

The goal is to build the “story” of your client – to understand them and their challenges. This won’t happen in one meeting, but it should methodically occur over time.

Putting This Into Action

Relationship managers understand their bank and their products. If we take the time to ask the right questions and use our authentic desire to help the customer, transactions, products, and goals will take care of themselves. When that happens, trust builds, the buyer opens up and unending opportunities to help them flow.

Coaching your staff to ensure your business development officers have an effective pre-plan, plus a post-meeting follow up routine that is centered around the customers can work magic.

As Jack says to us, “Customers have answers, bankers have questions, and sales managers help reinforce the process.”

Consider utilizing this approach for some of your sales calls and then compare the outcomes. Chances are all parties will have a more productive and enjoyable experience. 

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CenterState Bank is a $10B, publically traded community bank in Florida experimenting our way on a journey to be a $25B top performing institution. Financial information can be found HERE. CenterState has one of the largest correspondent bank networks in the banking industry and makes its data, policies, vendor analysis, products and thoughts available to any institution that wants to take the journey with us. For more information about why we share you can go HERE.