The high level of competition in today’s banking industry has made it essential to build long-term customer relationships in order to survive and to thrive. Today’s banking customer may not understand the opportunities and products available to them, and so it is important for bank sales representatives to ask the right questions to gain an understanding of each customer’s particular situation in order to provide suitable guidance.
While many banks struggle with the idea of building a sales organization, the goal should be to train bankers not to be salespeople, but to be true financial advisors. Employees that are unable to determine a customer’s needs and risk profile are likely to miss out on profitable opportunities. They may even end up offering loans that carry a high risk of delinquency, thus putting the bank at risk.
Five Tips to Improve Your Bank Sales Performance
Below are five tips for any bank that is looking to improve the performance of their sales team:
Hire Good Salespeople
The success of your sales team starts with the quality of its members. Banks should hire people who bring sales experience, rather than just banking experience. Look for people who have excelled in previous sales roles and bring the right demeanor to the job.
Set Realistic Goals
Setting achievable sales goals is critical. Identify specific goals that both benefits your bank and can reasonably be met by your sales team in order to drive the growth of your organization while inspiriting your sales team.
Provide Regular Sales Training
Build a structured training program to provide your staff with tools they need to sell. Bankers must be well educated on the bank’s offerings in order to more effectively sell those products to customers based on those customers’ financial goals and needs.
Ask the Right Questions
Regardless of the industry, effective selling requires that you gain an understanding of the customer in order to determine which product(s) will be the best fit for them. For bankers, knowing the right questions to ask can help the salesperson get to know the customer and learn their financial goals and needs.
Use Role Playing for Practice
To improve communication and sales skills, your team should practice conversations, role playing different situations with customers and prospects. Frequent role playing will prepare your reps to guide the most common sales situations to a desirable outcome.
Creating a Methodical Sales Plan is Vital
Recognizing the need to provide sales training is one of the things that sets a high-performing bank aside from the competition. Effective training boosts staff confidence and enables the adoption of a well-organized sales process. This will lead to increased customer acquisition and drive higher value of the organization.
Your bank must seek to understand each customer’s journey in order to better serve them along the way. It is a good idea to develop a checklist or a formal road map to ensure that every step in the process is met and properly handled by the rep to improve your chances of success and help ensure customer satisfaction.
eLearning for Bank Sales Training
As online technologies continue to evolve, eLearning has emerged as a cornerstone in many employee training programs, including bank sales training.
Some of the benefits your bank can expect from the implementation of an eLearning program for bank sales training can include:
Cost-Effectiveness
Online training through the use of eLearning portals is far less expensive that classroom-based, in-person training programs. With eLearning, you reduce or eliminate such expenses as travel, venue fees, instructor costs, catering, and the printing of materials for distribution.
Convenience
eLearning allows your employees to conduct their training activities at any time and any place that is convenient for them. All that is required is an Internet connection (and many eLearning modules can even be accomplished offline). And with eLearning, there is no need to pull your sales team away form their job roles as they can accomplish their training after hours.
Measurement
Many eLearning platforms provide powerful data collection and analysis tools to help you monitor and assess the effectiveness of your training programs. The ongoing review of this data can be extremely valuable as you work to revise and improve your sales training program over time.
LMS Portal for Bank Sales Training
LMS Portals provides a powerful cloud-based platform for online bank sales training. Our system allows you to build your own eLearning portal, branded for you bank, to support all of your sales training activities.
Contact us to schedule a demonstration of the LMS Portals technology
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