The Experience – Are Your Clients Satisfied or Engaged in the Customer Experience in Banking?

Many companies have a team of people that are held accountable for measuring and ensuring a positive client experience. For example, have you talked to a service company recently that didn’t ask you to take a 3-question survey at the end of the call? In the past, the focus was on gauging customer satisfaction. But in recent years, in light of direct and non-bank competitors, the focus has evolved to discovering clients’ engagement levels as a score for the customer experience in banking.

In fact, a recent Gallup survey discovered that:

• 48% of consumers who were satisfied with their banking relationship also said they would consider their institution for their next product or service.

• When they said they were both “satisfied and fully engaged,” the ratio rose to 83%.

Engagement can occur across all the various channels in banking: online, chat, customer service, in-branch, and social media. At times, these impersonal, multi-step digital avenues can work against the bank as well. So how does a bank turn a satisfied banking client into a more engaged client?

Meaningful Engagement Involves People-Powered Conversations

Equipping and training your customer-facing people is the silver bullet to creating and increasing customer engagement in banking. Consumers and business managers alike have been emailed, texted, pinged, and surveyed to the point of apathy. But when a need arises or a financial goal must be attained, there is no greater opportunity to drive engagement than when the phone rings or the customer walks into the bank.

When that happens, are your people prepared to ask enough of the right questions to truly understand and consult with the client? Are they capable of creating a conversation so impactful that the client is not only satisfied but wowed — ready to tell their family and friends about the experience and looking forward to the next one? That’s engagement. And when clients are that engaged, they have no interest in talking to other financial providers because their needs have been met and exceeded. Only adept, people-powered conversations can achieve that.

Helping Your Team Have More Powerful Conversations

Our sales evaluation partner, Objective Management Group (OMG), has identified 21 Core Sales Competencies that are critical for success in sales, business development, and relationship building. These competencies fall into three categories:

1. Tactical Competencies

2. Mindset Competencies (Sales DNA)

3. Grit Competencies (Will to Sell)

Want to improve conversations? Evaluating your bankers’ competencies is fundamental to predicting a team’s overall success. In fact, bankers with high competency scores on the 21 Core skills are 50% more likely to be top performers. Bankers and sellers with higher competency scores perform better on win rate, new opportunity finding, and relationship building. By identifying and training the right competencies, bank leaders can give their teams the tools and training they need to succeed in their specific roles and to drive more engaged and enduring relationships.

Steve Jobs was a masterful storyteller. Just go back and watch any of his presentations where Apple was releasing a new product. Storytelling in sales is a trait great salespeople have mastered. Peter Guber said this in his book Tell to Win: “stories provide emotional transportation.” The key takeaway from that quote is that stories are capable of moving people. Stories are capable of inspiring people. If you are good at storytelling, you can move people from where they are today (presumably dealing with a problem or a villain) to where they might be in the future after they have overcome that problem or villain. And when that happens, your prospect becomes their own hero.

The Power of Emotion in Storytelling in Sales

The key to storytelling in sales is to harness the power of emotion. At Anthony Cole Training Group, we have known for quite some time that people buy emotionally and justify with logic. I completely agree that your technical skills need to be excellent and that you need to be a subject matter expert. But that is not what moves people to the point of taking action to solve their problems. What makes that happen is when emotion enters the equation and your prospect self-discovers that they must act. Fear, disappointment, and frustration are examples of just a few of the more powerful emotions that your prospect might be facing.

Probably the most powerful emotion in life (after the emotion of love) is the emotion of hate. And to be clear, there is too much hate in the world. For my money, I believe there are only three things that are okay to hate:

1. Cancer

2. Racism

3. Alzheimer’s

These are villains that everyone is against and for good reasons. Steve Jobs was a believer that the best storytellers always give their prospect a villain to root against or a problem to hate so much that the prospect feels compelled to fight for a better future.

Stop talking about things your prospects don’t care about. Give them a villain to conquer. Some prospects are just waiting to become a hero. They just need something to root against. That is a conversation worth having.

Why Building a Sales Culture Matters

1. Assess Your Current Sales Team

First, top-performing banks assess the skillsets of their existing lenders and relationship managers. They do this because it’s really hard to change what you cannot see. There are 21 Core Sales Competencies that drive success in selling, and CEOs across the country are using this information to improve the skills of their current teams as well as hire new high-performing lenders and relationship managers. Only by understanding the specific consultative and relationship-building skills of each team member can a bank leader coach, train, and build a successful sales culture.

2. Use Sales-Specific Hiring Assessments

Secondly, top-performing banks don’t make the mistake of hiring new lenders without using a sales-specific, predictively valid skills assessment. There are plenty of assessments out there, but the vast majority are personality-based and do not uncover whether a salesperson can and will sell for your bank. When choosing a sales skills assessment, make sure it has a proven success record and includes a recommendation to hire or not hire. Remember, top producers drive 10x as much revenue as bottom producers. Having the right tools in place from the start is key to hiring effectively and building a successful sales culture.

3. Implement a Stage-Based Sales Process

Third, top-performing banks build out a sales process that is both stage-based and milestone-centric. Then, they hold their lenders and relationship managers accountable for following that process. On average, this step alone generates a 15% increase in loan production. The stages in the sales process help leaders and coaches identify where a lender may need support and targeted coaching. In fact, elite salespeople—those in the top 7%—follow a consistent sales process. Most banks are already using CRMs to track their pipeline, so these stages should be built into the selling system. In today’s competitive environment, the banks that win more relationships are those that train their salespeople to be consultative and ask questions that go far beyond which banking products a prospect may need. Having an established sales process supports building a better sales culture.

4. Train Sales Leaders First

Fourth and finally, top-performing banks invest in sales leader and sales management training before they begin training their salespeople. They equip leaders with skills in standards and accountability, coaching, and motivation. These are the four key areas sales managers should focus 85% of their time on. Since most sales managers are promoted from within their specialty area in banking, assessments consistently show they often lack the skills needed to drive consistent sales growth. We also know that sales managers with strong coaching skills lead teams that generate 38% more revenue. Developing your sales leadership team is essential to building a stronger, more successful sales culture at any bank.

Analyze your bankers with a free evaluation of the 21 Core Sales Competencies!

Learn How to STOP Hiring Mistakes at our 30-Min Webinar on June 16th!

Active Listening in Client Centered Selling

There are usually two problems:

• Salespeople don’t spend enough time listening during their sales conversations.

• When they do decide to listen, many salespeople don’t do a good job of listening.

Many salespeople think that listening means not talking, but that is not the whole truth. Being an active listener means you are listening to understand and not waiting for the opportunity to bring up your next point. Stephen Covey once said, “Seek first to understand before being understood.”

Active listening means you pick your spots to ask the other person to clarify what they just said. Be willing to tell your prospect if you see an issue differently. Ask them if it would be OK to talk about that different perspective. After an upcoming sales call, reflect on how much time you spent listening vs. talking.

Client Centered Selling Requires Asking Insightful Questions

The worst thing you can do on a sales call is try to convince or persuade. The best thing you can do on a sales call is to walk your prospect through a process we call the art of gradual self-discovery. This process is centered on asking great questions that allow the prospect to self-reflect and contemplate the problems they are having either as a consumer or as a business owner.

The best salespeople in the world don’t really sell anything. They create an environment where prospects make the decision to solve problems. They create an environment where prospects simply buy.

Think about using these insightful questions in your next sales conversation:

• Tell me more about that.

• How long has this been going on?

• What have you done to address the problem?

• When you spoke to your current provider, what did they recommend?

• What happens if you don’t fix it?

• How much will it cost you?

• Is that a problem?

• Do you have to fix it?

Tailoring Your Sales Process in Client Centered Selling

All elite salespeople follow a stage-based sales process, but what makes them great is their ability to tailor it to their clients. That’s what adding value in the sales process is all about.

Borrowing from the wonderful book Go-Givers Sell More by Bob Burg and John David Mann, they identify The Five Laws of Stratospheric Success:

1. The Law of Value

2. The Law of Compensation

3. The Law of Influence

4. The Law of Authenticity

5. The Law of Receptivity

Let’s look at the Law of Value first. Here’s what they say:
Your true worth is determined by how much more you give in value than you take in payment.

In addition, we know from our sales data source, Objective Management Group, that there are specific traits that skilled salespeople demonstrate when they build value for a prospect or client:

• Focused on value over price

• Know & believe in their value

• Comfortable discussing money

• Learn why prospects will buy

• Ask enough & great questions

• Avoid making assumptions

• Not compelled to provide a proposal

As a salesperson, how skilled are you at tailoring your approach by doing your research in advance, asking enough of the right great questions, and adding value to every conversation? Do you make sure not to assume anything? Selling your value is something you need to focus on and develop in your sales toolkit.

Let’s look at one more of Bob and John David’s Five Laws – The Law of Influence, which they describe as:
Your influence is determined by how abundantly you place other people’s interests first.

All salespeople recognize that the days of showing up with your box of products are over, in large part because the buying process is now in the hands of the prospect. So, if everything can be found online, how do you differentiate yourself?

Consultative sellers put other people’s interests first. In other words, they tailor their approach with their core selling skills and behaviors.

Think about how your skills at listening, asking insightful questions, and tailoring your sales process contribute to your client centered selling. Remember, according to Bob and John David,
“Selling is not at its core a business transaction; it is first and foremost the forging of a human connection.”

There is zero doubt that being professionally and appropriately funny as can help your cause with prospects. Most prospects (like most people) have enough serious things going on in their life. They could use a smile or chuckle in their day. Of course, your use of humor must come at the right time and be received in the right way.

I see three key takeaways from comedians:

1. Preparation – We know that pre-call planning is important, which I define as you knowing the questions you will ask the prospect (and how they will likely respond), and also you knowing the questions the prospect will likely ask you (and how you will respond). If you watch a good comedian, you will see hours of preparation that went into their act. They would never get up on stage and wing it. Everything is planned. Just like a Navy SEAL, they plan their dive, and they dive their plan.
   
   
2. Storytelling – Any good joke is a story that builds to the delivery of the punchline. The story that tells the joke is building to that moment. The best jokes allow you to put yourself into the story and experience all the emotions that are typically present in a good joke. Great salespeople do the same thing. They present a story that allows the prospect to see themselves in the story… living with the same problems… finding and implementing solutions that solve those problems.
   
   
3. Embrace Failure – Most comedians started off not being as funny as they would eventually become… they had more than a few nights when they were met with a lukewarm reaction from a tough crowd. Perhaps they were even booed off a stage along the way. But they did not quit… they just kept going as they learned from their mistakes, and they chased improvement. When I am asked about the most important attribute that great sales performers possess, my answer is always relentless effort. They just keep showing up. They just keep making dials. They just keep going out to see people. It is hard to keep someone down when they keep showing up to work.

So, there you go… the next time you watch a comedian, ask yourself what you can copy into “your act.” After all, your sales success in 2025 is no laughing matter!