My top 4 bank sales myths in Ghana
The following myths have been identified through several years of working with partners in the banking industry, my experiences as a bank customer and a sales expert.
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Bank sales myth #1: Winning the Ghana Banking Awards Customer Service Bank of the Year is a successful strategy for customer acquisition and results in higher profitability
Research and analysis shows that this is not the case.
Truth: One of the great misnomers of sales is the combination of sales & service in banking. While it is true to say that Sales & Service should go hand-in-hand, it is not true to say that good service will generate sales.
Customers must understand that YOU, the bank: have a real desire to do business; have the products and services to meet their needs; and want their business. Three facts that you need to communicate in customer interactions, through your actions and every time you meet a customer.
In reality, the position you are trying to achieve is a balance between: a positive approach to the identification of, and selling to meet customer needs, and the delivery of high quality service which adds value to the relationship.
By doing an analytical comparison between Ghana Banking Awards results of 2013 and the PwC Ghana Banking Survey 2014, the evidence is that, the winner and first runner-up in Customer Care category had an inverse correlation to profitability (profit before tax margin).
Bank sales myth #2:
Tellers don’t have a sales responsibility
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Truth: In my view, more than 90 per cent of customers who walk into a bank branch on a daily basis interact with a teller and that’s a tremendous leads generation and referral source.
So who is best placed, apart from ‘serving’ customers in line, to proactively spot sales opportunities for the bank than tellers?
This role of a teller has become the more important given that banks are under increasing pressure to grow organically by retaining what I call the “unfair” share of their customer’s wallet.
Therefore how should bank tellers ‘sell’ things? Simple. They should be able to create interest, identify potential needs while talking to customers and refer the sales lead.
Apart from the usual cash handling skills, this change in mind-set will require cross-selling and referral skills. Regrettably, some banks are missing the tremendous opportunities to get their tellers involved in the sales process.
Let me give you a personal experience to illustrate my point. A few years ago, I walked into a Quartile 3 Bank to transact business.
The teller ‘served’ nine customers before my turn. During these nine customer interactions, the teller didn't demonstrate any verbal communication with any of the customers.
No ‘opening salutation', no ‘thank you’, no enthusiasm, and no smile. The only appreciation for customers’ business came from the chattering of money counting machine “thank you for your business.”
Ironically, the only time the teller spoke to anyone was when a food-vendor, gate-crushed the line to take her food order. My thoughts were what a waste of opportunity to engage customers.
Bank sales myth #3:
Cross-selling is product pushing.
Cross-selling could be perceived as synonymous with product pushing in the way some customer-facing employees in banks implement it. When does cross-selling become “pushing products?”
It becomes “pushing products” when the particular product or service does not meet the ‘matched’ needs of the customer and is “forced” to meet the staff’s ‘product focus’ sales target for a period. Obviously, this is unprofessional and unethical.
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Truth: However, cross-selling based on needs-based selling is not product pushing. This happens when customer-facing employees genuinely focus on wanting to help customers with their financial needs, and then having an honest, caring and respectful conversation with them, leading to a win-win relationship where expectations are met and exceeded. Without question, this is appropriate and ethical cross-selling.
Bank sales myths #4:
Hire someone with industry experience and product knowledge
I’ve made it a habit to read vacancies for all sorts of sales positions including sales-related bank jobs. It is obvious that banks believe that recruiting candidates who have both industry experience and bank product knowledge is a smart move.
Truth: As a matter of fact, from my experience as a salesperson, sales manager and now a consultant, I can emphatically say that industry experience and product knowledge, albeit important, has little to do with a salesperson’s ability to close a sale. To overemphasise the recruitment of candidates with industry experience will result in a team of “order takers” instead of “order-getting” sales professionals.
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Two years ago, as part of broadening my professional scope in selling, I took a nine-month sabbatical to work with an international wealth management company specialising in assets management, savings & investments, education fee and retirement planning, as well as offshore banking aimed at high net-worth individuals.
The Financial Consultants (Salespeople) on the team didn't have any industry experience nor knew anything about wealth management. These were guys with HR, Accounting, Auditing and Technical industry backgrounds who knew how to sell.
Knowing how to sell in addition to an established sales system gave the company great success in signing on several clients.
So banks should recruit job candidates who can sell. Forget about whether they know anything about the banking industry or your products or services.
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Don’t overrate industry experience and product knowledge in your recruitment process at the expense of selling skills. Suitable candidates, who know how to sell, will quickly learn what they need to know about what it is you sell.
To conclude, given the current competitive environment, banks have no alternative than to adopt a proactive “order-getting” sales culture to be able to grow “organically.” Busting some of the long-held myths about sales is critical for success. — GB