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!

Using a Pre-Hire Sales Assessment is a Must

For consistent success, you must evaluate all candidates using a sales candidate pre-hire screen before the interview. Many companies pick and choose which candidates to evaluate. Sometimes, if the candidate has come highly recommended or has a great sales pedigree, or if a placement firm has recommended them, the company may choose not to evaluate. This is a mistake. Evaluating candidates before you interview has several benefits:

1. The sales evaluation we recommend is by Objective Management Group and tells you if the candidate is hirable or not (with 95% predictive validity). If they are not hirable, then there is no need for an interview.

2. Evaluating prior to interviewing helps you pinpoint your interview questions based on information that you won't find in the resume. This allows you to conduct a better, more informative interview.

How the Sales Interview Process Begins

As you begin your phone screening process, consider how much time your salespeople normally spend on the phone for either prospecting or selling. It’s important to have a clear idea of how important phone skills are to their success. If effective phone skills are critical, then evaluating a candidate’s ability on the phone must be part of your screening process.

When a candidate’s resume is received, the recruiting coordinator should contact the potential candidate, let them know that the first step is a phone interview, and schedule it. Keep this same process even if you meet a potential candidate in person. Give their information to the recruiting coordinator and let them follow the same, consistent process.

Conducting the Initial Phone Interview

Consider the challenges your salespeople regularly face when making phone calls. Recreate this same environment for your candidate. If your salespeople must get past gatekeepers to reach decision-makers, then make candidates do the same.

The best way to implement this is to email candidates after interviews are scheduled. Instruct them to contact you as if they are making a prospecting call. Their goal is to get past your gatekeeper and reach you. Instruct your gatekeeper to make this somewhat difficult but to eventually let them through if they are persistent. After each interview, ask how the candidate approached your gatekeeper.

Once you begin the phone interview, treat the candidate as if they are a typical salesperson trying to sell you something. Be brief. Be abrupt. Ask questions. Challenge each candidate. Make them sell you on why they should be considered for a face-to-face interview.

There are three factors that determine whether the candidate will progress to a face-to-face interview. Ask yourself if the candidate:

1. Attempted to control the interview

2. Asked questions

3. “Closed” for the face-to-face interview

Did the candidate take control of the interview by slowing it down and establishing rapport? Did they get flustered when answering your questions or intimidated by your demeanor? Look for a salesperson who can handle pressure and have a conversation—not one who simply answers questions.

Did the candidate ask good questions to uncover what you are looking for, what it takes to be successful, and what’s needed to move to the next step? Don’t get too hung up on the exact questions asked. This interview reflects how they will perform on actual sales calls.

As you finish the interview, instruct the candidate about the next step and let them know that, if they qualify, someone will follow up. This mirrors the common “think-it-over” response from a prospect. If the candidate doesn’t try to close you at this point, they probably won’t try to close a prospect either.

Conclusion

In this series on hiring and retaining top sales talent, we’ve looked at three steps that are key to building an exceptional sales force that will help drive consistent sales growth:

1. Prepare: Establish the right candidate profile for your specific situation. Use this standard to compare. Challenge candidates to meet your expectations.

2. Pipeline: Build a pipeline of potential candidates by using time-tested sales prospecting techniques instead of relying solely on internet job boards.

3. Screen: Use a properly constructed telephone pre-interview to identify the most qualified candidates for a face-to-face interview and improve your sales interview process.

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

After you have established a profile, the next step is to build a sales candidate pipeline. Let’s first talk about online job boards. It’s fair to say that in today's environment, most of our communications are done online. At first glance, when it comes to recruiting, the Web seems to be a simple and relatively painless solution for finding new employees. Post a job profile on a myriad of available job search engines, and responses come flooding in:

• Monster

• Indeed

• Jobs - whatever city

• Ladder

• Snagajob

• LinkedIn

While this approach may work for some positions, I am unconvinced that it is wildly effective when attempting to hire good salespeople. In my experience, the best method for recruiting quality sales candidates is by introduction—the same method that works for the salespeople when prospecting for new business.

Finding sales talent candidates by introduction can be time-consuming and painful. However, it forces YOU to own the process, and that is the key. The mistake that many financial firms make is relying solely on the names and resumes they receive from recruiting services and online job posts. Finding new talent for your organization should not be left entirely up to the recruiters. They have a vested interest in placing people in positions and not necessarily in the success of the salesperson you hire. Remember: recruiters get paid when they place someone. That individual may not be (and often is not) the best fit for your organization.

Recently, I read that 75% of replacement hires are as bad as or worse than the employees that were replaced! If you have an open position for someone who is making $50,000 a year, you need to find the best $50,000-a-year person in your industry/marketplace to fill it. Don’t settle for a B or C player just because that’s what you had before.

So, what does taking ownership during the process of building a candidate pipeline look like? Here’s what needs to happen:

• Create your hiring profile (as discussed in Step 1)

• Create a process of getting introductions

• Build your team of candidate prospectors

• Identify candidate sourcing activities

• Identify monthly goals for the activities

• Build an inspection process – and consider using “huddles” to have prompt, productive, and painless meetings as you conduct that process (See Verne Harnish)

• Hold people accountable for reaching candidate sourcing goals

• Throughout the process – reward success, discipline failure

Once you start this process, you will begin to fill your candidate pipeline just like your salespeople fill their prospect pipelines! When you take ownership of this effort and you have a pipeline of potential hires that are better than your current underperformers, you will be more likely to:

• Replace under-performers

• Not be “held hostage” by prima donna salespeople

• Not settle for mediocrity

• See improvements in your current sales team

Finally, keep in mind that driving sales growth isn't always about more disciplined accountability, sales force automation, or sales training. Those things will help only if you have the talent on hand that will respond to these investments. Start with good talent, create an environment where people can succeed, and see what happens next.

Stay tuned for Part 3 of Hiring & Retaining Top Sales Talent!

Some of the factors that are limiting success in hiring & retaining top sales talent for many financial firms include:

• You are reactive in your recruiting – you only recruit when you need someone

• You transfer the entire responsibility of finding candidates to a search firm

• You don’t have a candidate pipeline

• You aren’t getting enough of the right candidates to interview

• The candidates that you interview and fall in love with fail to pass your evaluation process

• You interview quality candidates, but cannot attract them to join your company

• Candidates use you to improve their current position after you make an offer

• Your evaluation process is inconsistent

• You don't have a way to compare one hirable candidate against another

• You don’t have multiple candidates to choose from

• You pay “A” compensation to “B” hires

• Your new hires are failing to succeed quickly enough due to weak onboarding

There are three key steps to ensure that your bank or insurance firm recruits quality candidates that will maximize your organization’s revenue potential. Step 1 focuses on preparation. Step 2 will focus on building a candidate pipeline, and Step 3 will conclude with recommendations for screening those candidates.

Step 1: Define Your Sales Candidate Profile & Hiring Standard

The first step in your sales force recruiting process is to establish a profile of the ideal candidate for your specific position. Do not settle for a candidate who fails the criteria. And when you are evaluating resumes, pre-hire evaluations, and your interview notes, ensure that you are consistently comparing potential candidates to the hiring profile that you have established. This is the first step to help your organization refrain from hiring your next “average” salesperson.

Here are some questions to consider to avoid settling for average in the hiring process:

• Do you describe the job… or do you detail what it takes to be extraordinary in the sales role?

• Do you describe what your candidates will be selling… or do you detail what kind of competition they must be successful against?

• Do you make it clear that your organization puts high pressure on someone to perform? And do you find out if your candidate can survive in that kind of environment?

• Do you create the same environment when interviewing candidates that they will encounter when they are in the field? For example, do you challenge candidates by being difficult on the phone? Do you make them establish rapport with you in the initial interview? Do you make them try to close you in order to reach the next step of your hiring process?

Here is a sample outline for establishing your ideal hiring profile. Customize this to your objectives:

If you are committed to hiring & retaining top sales talent, your first step is to define your sales candidate profile & hiring standard by:

• establishing the right candidate profile for your specific situation,

• making sure that your screening process is consistent with identifying the right candidate profile, and

• preparing to challenge your prospects to meet exceptional standards rather than settling on “adequate.”

Stay tuned for Part 2 and 3 of Hiring & Retaining Top Sales Talent!

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.”