CREATING CUSTOMER LOYALTY
The Business Challenge
We have a mid-size financial services client whose leaders understand the value and benefits of building customer loyalty, but despite their efforts to develop a deeper connection with their retail customers, this organization could not increase their overall share-of-wallet nor improve the customer attrition rate. While the economy was strong at that time, they were achieving minimal asset gains while having great difficulty retaining their deposit base.
To develop a deeper connection with their retail customers, they implemented a “sales questioning” process for all client-facing staff to follow, which was a list of questions about the customer’s needs linked to the organization’s products. Five things became clear when we dug a little deeper:
1) the questions being asked were closed-ended questions, often requiring only a yes/no answer which did not engage the customer beyond a transaction;
2) the same questions were asked of all customers, demonstrating no attempt to personalize the encounter nor target appropriate questions for that specific customer segment; 3) the questions probed current needs rather than anticipated needs, missing the necessary planning stage for a sale;
4) a follow-up process to include effective outreach calls was missing and therefore emerging opportunities were lost; and
5) there was no coaching and modeling involvement from supervisory and management staff, leaving the quality of the sales questioning to be quite mechanical from the outset.
The Solution
We began by collaborating with the organization’s leadership to replace the sales questioning process with a “customer engagement” conversation, and included supervisory and management staff to coach the front line. Creating great customer questions beyond the initial need conversation enables customers to tell their story and begin a brief yet genuine two-way conversation, which is absolutely key to building trust and respect with people, and leads to customer loyalty. The open-ended questions now being asked are prompted by clues of their likely near-future needs, from sources such as:
1) Their online profile occupation, product mix and balances, 2) The type of transaction they’re currently requesting; and
3) Understanding likely financial needs for their life-segment: student (17-25), borrowers/builders (25-45), wealth accumulators (45-65), retirees (65+)
The staff and management all participated in short virtual instructor-led training sessions, practice workshops, and coaching sessions. This learning and practice program was so well received at all levels of the organization, that as a phase two in their performance improvement efforts, they committed to expanding the coaching training into their commercial lending division and their wealth management business. They realized that being proactive in developing employees who feel supported and become accountable for their performance was also a strong link to building loyal customer relationships.
The Result
Loyalty and expanded customer relationships were earned through the initial conversations and the follow-up efforts. Within 6 months of the practice workshops, client attrition and share-of-wallet reversed direction, and despite a weakened economy over the next 6 months, revenue growth accelerated to new heights.
GROWING B2B SALES RESULTS
The Business Challenge
Our client was experiencing a decrease in both market share and customer share-of-wallet. The Account Managers made regular visits to existing customers in their territories and had developed solid business relationships with them. Occasionally the Sales Manager would joint-call with the Account Manager, and only rarely were they calling on a prospect customer. Meanwhile, their competitors were investing in expanding their sales team and were wedging into the customer base for a bigger share-of-wallet, and gaining overall market share.
Through a series of interviews, sales call observations and a sales process review, several problem areas were identified:
1) Account Managers put very little effort into pre-call research and preparation to understand the industry issues and potential customer needs before calling on either existing customers or on prospect customers,
2) Sales Managers and Account Managers had no objectives or questions planned for the calls,
3) Sales Managers and Account Managers did not establish their respective roles for joint calls, and
4) Sales Managers did not lead a post-call debrief of any kind, nor offered any coaching.
The Solution
Company senior management agreed on the need to build more rigor into managing existing customer relationships, new customer acquisition activities, and the role of the Sales Manager as a coach to their people. Our solution included Account Manager pre-work, and a workshop attended by Account Managers, Sales Managers and the Senior Vice President. This provided a leadership platform for the SVP, and brought alignment to the team on what they needed to do, how they would do it, how they would be supported, and how they will be rewarded for success. Real customer case scenarios were used to train the group on pre-call planning, with Sales Managers providing meaningful input on the objectives, the questioning strategy, and the plan for next steps.
Learning transfer to the job was immediate thanks to the integration of simple tools into the day to day activities of both the Account Managers and Sales Managers. Also important to the sustainment of the new routines were Sales Manager-led video conference team meetings with the Account Managers every 30 days, to ensure that the tools provided were being used effectively and thereby contributing to sales success.
The Result
Market share immediately began growing because: 1) existing customers were developing much deeper trust relationships with the Accounts Managers due to their demonstrated understanding of the client's industry and their business needs, and 2) prospect calling volume increased steadily as the team's confidence in their selling skills grew.
CLIENT ACQUISITION
The Business Challenge
We have a banking client whose small/mid business banking market share was sliding slowly but steadily over the previous 5 quarters. Leadership noticed that the Relationship Managers (RMs) were almost always at their desks, and suspected that they weren't getting out into the business community and meeting business owners and managers. We were asked to design a program and train the RM team on effective proactive selling.
The Solution
In the discovery meeting with the leadership of this bank, through our questions they discovered the many issues that could be contributing to this RM behaviour, and therefore requested that we conduct an assessment of the practices and skills in this team. We found several contributing factors to the sliding market share issue, which included the expected administrative burden, inappropriate fit of some RMs, and risk conservatism, but also uncovered a pervading discomfort in selling, a lack of coaching and joint-calling support, and most could not articulate how to build credibility and trust with a prospect client.
We consulted with the leadership team on addressing the workflow to reduce the administrative burden and to get the right people into the right roles. We also custom designed a modular sales training program where 4 hours every second Thursday afternoon for a 6 month period was set aside for highly participative workshops covering the key components of the sales process: Prospect ID and qualification; Pre-Call planning; Questioning strategy; Leading client meetings; Accessing the decision maker and Asking for the business; and Negotiating and closing the sale. While some managers were included in the training, they all had joint-calling and coaching training. And to ensure that their new knowledge and practices "stuck" following the workshops, we conducted mandatory monthly Skype progress and success story facilitated discussions with all members of the team over the following six months.
The Result
Within 4 months of the program start, this business reversed its direction on market share. Within 12 months, the business was achieving record market share growth.
HIRING SMART
The Business Challenge
We have a client who was about to invest in hiring a number of new sales representatives across the country. The costs of hiring and onboarding these sales representatives were significant, therefore it was important for them to ensure that they hired the right people into the right jobs. Furthermore, it was critical to quickly ramp up the capabilities of the new hires to produce sales results fast in order to not only maintain market share, but grow market share in locations where they were under-represented. Performance Edge Plus was asked to work with the Sales Leader to find a way to augment the existing hiring process to determine and assess a candidate's job fit and likelihood of high performance within their organization.
The Solution
Leveraging Performance Edge Plus’ authorized partnership with PXT Select a leading provider of validated and proven talent assessment tools, we were able to analyze the top sales performers and develop a specific profile of these people. This profile, became the footprint for which all candidates were then assessed to evaluate how well they naturally align to the success factors for this sales role. By adding this easy, cost effective online psychometric assessment, the client was provided with critical information to consider in the selection process.
The Result
Since implementing this assessment with every short listed candidate as part of the hiring process, the hiring manager and human resources have significantly improved the quality of interview questions and candidate reference checking. Every new sales representative hired leveraging the online assessment tool has fit well into the organization and met or exceeded performance expectations as established by the Sales Manager.
TM