7 Habits of Highly Unproductive Salespeople (Banker Version)
Posted by Ned Miller on Mon, Jul 11, 2011 @ 01:30 PM
1. Be reactive. Wait for what walks in the door. Don’t ask your satisfied customers for referrals—they know you provide great service and will send you any leads they have.
2. Put (anything other than customers) first. Problem loan reports. Compliance issues. Operational matters. In a tough environment, nobody gets canned for failing to make their sales goals.
3. Don’t worry about preparing for calls. Experienced bankers can always wing it. Industry research--who has time for that? Developing specific questions for a first meeting with a prospect? Just ask ‘em to tell you about their business.
4. Strategize alone. Your Sales Manager (a) doesn’t know your customers/ prospects well; (b) doesn’t have time; and/ or (c) probably wouldn’t add much value if you talked about strategy.
5. Think about what you need to sell first, not what your customers and prospects need. You’ve got goals to make.
6. Don’t make time for professional development. Training is for “junior” people, not veterans like you. Heck, if you’re like most bank relationship managers, you believe that you’re in the top 20% of your peer group when it comes to business development skills. (This is known in some circles as the Lake Wobegon effect—where all the children are above average. If you’d like to assess which stage your relationship building skills are in, go to http://www.mzbierlyconsulting.com/the-evolution-of-relationship-development-skills-where-are-you-today.)
7. Keep reminding yourself that knowing how to do something (like prospecting, say) is the same thing as doing it. And, if anybody questions your current results, you can come up with any number of exculpatory excuses (“Our credit policy is too restrictive.” “We’re not even close to market pricing today.” “We need to do more advertising/ build more branches/get more creative on structuring deals, etc.”)
Sales Leaders: For your copy of the Progression of Sales Leadership Skills, go to http://www.mzbierlyconsulting.com/how-do-sales-leadership-skills-progress.
To read more articles on sales leadership topics visit our blog at http://www.mzbierlyconsulting.com/bank-sales-corner-blog/?Tag=sales+leaders.