Conversation Signposts - December 2006

You Have Questions, We’ll Try Some Answers

By Jack Hubbard
Chief Experience Officer

Our 2006 national tour is history. We’ve had the honor of speaking to nearly twenty RMA Chapters. We’ve served on the faculty of five state and national banking schools and spoken for nearly a dozen state and national banking conferences. We sponsored two sold out public sales management workshops. This year we made several presentations at bank sales rallies and we’ve even spoken at conferences where bank customers were invited to learn more about 21st century sales conversations and how to optimize the customer experience. By our count we’ve been in front of almost 10,000 bankers this year—what an amazing privilege. We appreciate the trade associations, clients, and others that placed their trust in us to lead these programs on their behalf.

Like all speakers, we get questions—from the audience and after the program via e-mail. We selected three that might be of interest to our readers this month.

What is the greatest performance culture challenge facing our industry in 2007?

With more than $4 billion spent in classroom sales training and e-learning in 2005, training is clearly not the issue. Banking is providing its people with numerous educational experiences. It’s after-training where the process is challenged. Two words to answer this great question: execution and customer.

Recent data from The Sales Board indicates:

62% of salespeople fail to seek commitment at the conclusion of a conversation
82% don’t know how to differentiate themselves from the competition
86% ask the wrong questions and leave millions of dollars on the table
92% of voicemail messages are not returned

Were these the people that didn’t “get it” during training or were they just not held accountable to execute what they learned?

Our own recent research in business banking bears this out. We found:

Less than 30% of bankers follow their organization’s articulated sales process
More than 50% of sales managers fail to integrate the process into their daily routines
93% of bankers indicate they have call planning templates available, but less than 69% use them
Less than 10% of banks execute an organized Onboarding process to orient new clients to the bank (even though this is one of the top issues banks have been addressing in training)

There continues to be disconnect between what senior management believes is occurring in the field and what is actually going on. Julie Ruffolo, our Director of Retail Banking, has been conducting surveys and accumulating data that will soon be published for our 2007 Retail Banking White Paper. Julie found that while every organization had some type of Internet tactic, call center approach, and certainly retail branch strategy, only 15% of banks have driven an integrated delivery channel approach down to the troops. Also, 68% of banks have an organized Onboarding process for new customers, but only 29% track the process from start to finish and a paltry 10.4% track results of Onboarding.

We pine for the day when the yield curve was not inverted. We read article after article about margin squeezes and many other factors we don’t control. We meet to plan, whiteboard the plan, write the plan, approve the plan, and then… Our industry is not lacking for ideas, new product innovation, or capital spending for bricks, clicks, and technology. Our problem lies in our failure to truly hold associates accountable.

We sit in meetings and wring out hands about whether loans or deposits are what we want on the balance sheet this quarter. We wonder how we can increase fees to offset loss of interest income. We foolishly cut support staff to save money. When we begin to congruently focus on the customer and stop staring at the scoreboard, the rest will take care of itself. When we provide intrinsic value time after time instead of trying to run campaign after campaign, customers will bring us their money in bushel baskets.

The Chicago Cubs pontificate annually to their fans about how they plan to win next year. For 98 consecutive years they have failed to fulfill the promise. The challenge seems to be that somewhere between the front office and the field, something very wrong happens and 2007 likely won’t be much different. Unlike the loveable losers, if we don’t step up to the plate and hit some home runs, our customers won’t go through our turnstiles very long.

Too often, when all is said and done, more is said than done. If your bank ever expects to experience a break-out year, execution is the key and the customer must be the focal point.

My boss asked me to select a banking school to attend in 2007. Which one should I pick?

First, the fact that your boss is focused on your personal growth and education should be met with a standing ovation. Too often supervisors don’t see the need for their associates to be off at banking school for a week or longer. Next, what is your position now and where do you want to be five years from now? That answer will help guide your decision. Overall, however, for my money, one school that should receive your serious consideration is ABA’s Stonier Graduate School of Banking.

With more 70 years of tradition and with more over 17,000 graduates, this American Bankers Association education experience is head and shoulders above the rest. Over the years the school has been housed at Rutgers, Georgetown, and in 2007 it will move to larger quarters at the University of Pennsylvania. This has been done to accommodate the amazing increase in enrollment over the past several years.

The mission of Stonier is to prepare mid- and senior-level managers to rise in the ranks of their organizations. Bankers receive a broad and varied curriculum. In my class, an elective that targets Performance Culture development in business banking, I’ve had regulators, business bankers, marketing professionals, and even CEOs. Bankers attend three one-week sessions over a three-year period (one week per year). If you have an MBA you can apply for accelerated status and complete the school in two years. Sure there is some work to do between sessions, but the mentoring students receive from banker and educator advisors is worth the price of admission alone.

In 2007, ABA has added some new coursework in Six Sigma, Negotiation Skills, Capital Planning, and Strategies for Increasing Non-Interest Income. If you have five years experience in banking and want to move your career to the next level, Stonier is the answer. If you need more information about Stonier Graduate School of Banking, reach out to Ann Friedman at afriedma@aba.com.

There are so many things going on in sales these days. What near-term trend should we be aware of?

Technology enables us to change the way we hold sales conversations. New products abound and if your bank does not have strategies around Remote Capture and HSAs, it better get at that—starting today! Compensation continues to be a moving target. So there isn’t just one thing (Curley), but if we had to be held to one it would be Team Selling.

With so much emphasis on deposits and fee income these days and with the product proliferation our industry is experiencing, it is near to impossible for everyone in every department to know enough about everything to serve every customer need.

One large bank we know has done such a good job with their team selling efforts that more cash management representatives had to be hired or promoted to handle the large volume of quality referrals generated by the team approach. Another bank has adopted a Key Account Teams (KAT) approach.

In the KAT situation, a lender, treasury management rep, wealth management associate, mortgage banker, branch manager, and a senior manager meet twice monthly for one hour to discuss a few top clients of each banker. The focus is on needs, not products, and tactics, not theory. Discussions are succinct. A client name is put on the table by one of the KAT team members. The banker who “owns” the relationship briefly discusses the relationship to date, the industry the client is in, and some issues the client is facing. Other team members ask questions about personal and business needs and after some brief number of minutes an action plan is designed with dates and next step accountabilities for appropriate KAT members. This process continues around the table until all top opportunities are discussed.

Several team selling points:

Keep the number of clients analyzed per meeting to a minimum— three to five is enough
Make certain they are top tier clients
Focus on needs not products
Whoever’s turn it is to lead that portion of the meeting must facilitate, not pontificate
These meetings must move crisply and they do not replace skill builders within each division
Bankers that lead their portion of the meetings should be given tools and skills to be able to facilitate their parts effectively and efficiently
Action plans with specific “to dos” are vital—this is not a reporting meeting
Post-meeting communication and reinforcement are critical—the senior manager present must relay information from the meeting to senior managers in other departments to allow for ongoing follow-up
KAT-like approaches must be viewed as a reward, not a punishment, and everyone must be looking for leads for each other
It all begins at the top where Executive Managers see this approach as a long-term commitment

TAPS–Trusted Advisor Prospecting System
How One Bank Created an Integrated Prospecting Approach (part one of three)

When we conducted our recent Business Banking Survey, one of the top 2007 issues was how to prospect in a more systematic manner. Acquisition strategies proliferate in books and articles and there is clearly no one best way to skin this cat. Below is how one bank is attempting to touch pre-clients methodically.

Meet Janice (not her real name). She had previously been a senior executive at a large financial services firm where she led the bank’s business banking effort. Like many bankers at large organizations these days, Janice took advantage of an opportunity to move to a community bank to develop a new business banking effort. From a prospecting perspective, she was somewhat surprised. The bank does business in a combination of urban and suburban markets where the economy is solid and where $2-15 million companies continue to grow.

The first thing she did was to hire away three very talented sales managers from her former bank. These bankers were steeped in coaching and holding people accountable for activities that caused business to come through the door without micro-managing the process. “I’ve always been a big proponent of regular sales and sales management routines, but I won’t force my people make ‘tick marks’ so some bogus numbers could go on some report,” she indicates.

As she began to roll up her sleeves she was somewhat surprised that her 20 bankers’ proactive sales efforts were virtually non-existent. Her bankers were really portfolio managers who had never been trained or held accountable to get their feet on the street in a consistent, organized fashion.

To be sure, the bankers were booking deals, but they were generated solely from Centers of Influence and bankers literally waited by the phone for the next opportunity. Some referrals were coming from the branches too, but since the bank had not done any formal training in those offices about small business, associates didn’t know how to start a conversation about business, let alone create a solid stream of leads. Bankers had no formal way of sourcing leads and no lists were purchased.

“My people were order-takers with little network beyond commercial realtors who sent every deal to us and to our competition. I had to break our lender-only mindset as well as try to get bankers that had never prospected to get into a systematic rhythm,” she stated.

“I’ve been through a situation like this before and I knew that throwing people onto the street to prospect without having a sales management process in place would be a disaster. We needed to develop a professional team of Relationship Bankers, but we knew we needed to create the infrastructure first.”

Creating the Infrastructure

Janice used available technology to create a pipeline report and two prospecting reports—one for proactive prospecting efforts and one for other ways pre-clients entered her system, such as through referrals. This allowed her sales managers to coach and reinforce their people based on the two broad categories of pre-clients. The bank now has a four-pronged approach to prospecting: TAPS, COI referrals (which includes leads provided by current clients), branch referrals, and networking.

She worked with her five sales managers (two were already in place when she joined the bank) to craft an accountability-based sales management structure. Team meetings were no longer “rear view” reporting get-togethers. They became strategy and learning sessions where best practices were discussed and skill drills took place. Managers were held accountable to conduct weekly “Check-Ins” where they discussed sales activities and pipeline issues with bankers on a one-to-one basis. Coaching and joint calling became more rigorous.

“I let everyone know right away that we would be doing no cold calling or sales blitzes. These are complete wastes of time and they don’t serve to put a banker in very good stead with pre-clients either. I also informed everyone that while this was a marathon, everyone had to begin to run faster and that their manager would help them,” she states. “The young bankers were excited and the veterans took a wait-and-see-attitude. No one left, but some were very skeptical.”

Janice helped her team understand the kind of business the bank wanted in customer, not product, terms. The portfolio was heavily skewed toward commercial real estate and bankers were reacting to whatever crossed their desks. In addition to targeting key industries, she also created a tiered approach to help Relationship Bankers understand how and where to spend their finite sales time. Remember, these bankers, like most of yours, are responsible for things other than prospecting. They have portfolios, do their own underwriting and renewals, etc.

“Our industry makes such a mistake by asking associates to get loans for a while and then switching the focus to deposits. That is a short-term, inside-out mentality. I wanted my bankers to see what niche industries would be best for us, given what type of business was in our various markets and what expertise we have to serve those firms. This new focus also allowed us to target our calls with COIs, letting referral sources know what companies we wanted to bank. Targeting and segmentation reduces confusion and saves everyone a lot of time.”

Janice provided some targeted industry lists for her bankers to begin to evaluate, such as manufacturers directories and Chamber of Commerce guides (more on this next month). She also contacted www.idexec.com. This company takes lead lists to a new level. Finally, she purchased a subscription to First Research as a means for her bankers to add value throughout the prospecting process.

Janice had put the following into the environment:

She created a sales management infrastructure and began to make her five Team Leaders accountable for weekly routines
She developed a tracking approach that was easy to implement and that linked prospecting into pipeline reporting
She isolated some key industries she wanted her 20 Relationship Bankers to focus on
She created a tiering process to allow her bankers to invest their time wisely
She provided some tools such as First Research and targeted lists to lay the groundwork for long-term success

It took Janice slightly more than six months to get ready to launch her formal prospecting system. She acknowledges she wanted to get her people into training right away, but that without an infrastructure, it would have been a complete disaster. “Too often senior managers feel pressured for results from their bosses and there is a strong temptation to slap training and incentive band-aids into the mix. That is the last thing that needs to be done. Training events and the promise of money do not change behavior over the long-term.”

Now she was ready and she chose to implement an integrated process that involved weekly value-focused communication to targeted pre-clients. This “under the radar” approach was named TAPS by one of her managers. The Trusted Advisor Prospecting System is now in place and it is working.

“I have no intention of outspending big banks. I need to out-hustle them. I took what I learned from my experience at a big bank and began to better leverage our community-ness. I wanted to create an easy-to-use, yet structured approach that focuses on the customer and not products. This is not a flavor of the month. TAPS is now part of our DNA. Let’s be clear: not everyone likes TAPS, but if you are a part of my team, it shall be done, it shall be inspected, and it shall be coached.”

Next month, you will be introduced to TAPS and learn how bankers have changed the way they source business.

Chris Murray with idEXEC can be reached at 914.697.5858
For further information about First Research, Inc., contact Darren Pierce at 919.861.0868

Register for Conversation Signposts

2007 has begun. Bankers tell us the articles and ideas in Conversation Signposts make a difference in their sales mojo. If someone else at your bank could benefit from Conversation Signposts, forward this edition to them and have them click on the hyperlink below to register: it’s FREE.

http://www.stmeyerandhubbard.com/signup.html

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newsletter@stmeyerandhubbard.com

		You Have Questions, We’ll Try Some Answers By Jack Hubbard Chief Experience Officer Our 2006 national tour is history. We’ve had the honor of speaking to nearly twenty RMA Chapters. We’ve served on the faculty of five state and national banking schools and spoken for nearly a dozen state and national banking conferences. We sponsored two sold out public sales management workshops. This year we made several presentations at bank sales rallies and we’ve even spoken at conferences where bank customers were invited to learn more about 21st century sales conversations and how to optimize the customer experience. By our count we’ve been in front of almost 10,000 bankers this year—what an amazing privilege. We appreciate the trade associations, clients, and others that placed their trust in us to lead these programs on their behalf. Like all speakers, we get questions—from the audience and after the program via e-mail. We selected three that might be of interest to our readers this month. *What is the greatest performance culture challenge facing our industry in 2007?* With more than $4 billion spent in classroom sales training and e-learning in 2005, training is clearly not the issue. Banking is providing its people with numerous educational experiences. It’s after-training where the process is challenged. Two words to answer this great question: execution and customer. Recent data from The Sales Board indicates: 62% of salespeople fail to seek commitment at the conclusion of a conversation 82% don’t know how to differentiate themselves from the competition 86% ask the wrong questions and leave millions of dollars on the table 92% of voicemail messages are not returned Were these the people that didn’t “get it” during training or were they just not held accountable to execute what they learned? Our own recent research in business banking bears this out. We found: Less than 30% of bankers follow their organization’s articulated sales process More than 50% of sales managers fail to integrate the process into their daily routines 93% of bankers indicate they have call planning templates available, but less than 69% use them Less than 10% of banks execute an organized Onboarding process to orient new clients to the bank (even though this is one of the top issues banks have been addressing in training) There continues to be disconnect between what senior management believes is occurring in the field and what is actually going on. Julie Ruffolo, our Director of Retail Banking, has been conducting surveys and accumulating data that will soon be published for our 2007 Retail Banking White Paper. Julie found that while every organization had some type of Internet tactic, call center approach, and certainly retail branch strategy, only 15% of banks have driven an integrated delivery channel approach down to the troops. Also, 68% of banks have an organized Onboarding process for new customers, but only 29% track the process from start to finish and a paltry 10.4% track results of Onboarding. We pine for the day when the yield curve was not inverted. We read article after article about margin squeezes and many other factors we don’t control. We meet to plan, whiteboard the plan, write the plan, approve the plan, and then… Our industry is not lacking for ideas, new product innovation, or capital spending for bricks, clicks, and technology. Our problem lies in our failure to truly hold associates accountable. We sit in meetings and wring out hands about whether loans or deposits are what we want on the balance sheet this quarter. We wonder how we can increase fees to offset loss of interest income. We foolishly cut support staff to save money. When we begin to congruently focus on the customer and stop staring at the scoreboard, the rest will take care of itself. When we provide intrinsic value time after time instead of trying to run campaign after campaign, customers will bring us their money in bushel baskets. The Chicago Cubs pontificate annually to their fans about how they plan to win next year. For 98 consecutive years they have failed to fulfill the promise. The challenge seems to be that somewhere between the front office and the field, something very wrong happens and 2007 likely won’t be much different. Unlike the loveable losers, if we don’t step up to the plate and hit some home runs, our customers won’t go through our turnstiles very long. Too often, when all is said and done, more is said than done. If your bank ever expects to experience a break-out year, execution is the key and the customer must be the focal point. *My boss asked me to select a banking school to attend in 2007. Which one should I pick?* First, the fact that your boss is focused on your personal growth and education should be met with a standing ovation. Too often supervisors don’t see the need for their associates to be off at banking school for a week or longer. Next, what is your position now and where do you want to be five years from now? That answer will help guide your decision. Overall, however, for my money, one school that should receive your serious consideration is ABA’s Stonier Graduate School of Banking. With more 70 years of tradition and with more over 17,000 graduates, this American Bankers Association education experience is head and shoulders above the rest. Over the years the school has been housed at Rutgers, Georgetown, and in 2007 it will move to larger quarters at the University of Pennsylvania. This has been done to accommodate the amazing increase in enrollment over the past several years. The mission of Stonier is to prepare mid- and senior-level managers to rise in the ranks of their organizations. Bankers receive a broad and varied curriculum. In my class, an elective that targets Performance Culture development in business banking, I’ve had regulators, business bankers, marketing professionals, and even CEOs. Bankers attend three one-week sessions over a three-year period (one week per year). If you have an MBA you can apply for accelerated status and complete the school in two years. Sure there is some work to do between sessions, but the mentoring students receive from banker and educator advisors is worth the price of admission alone. In 2007, ABA has added some new coursework in Six Sigma, Negotiation Skills, Capital Planning, and Strategies for Increasing Non-Interest Income. If you have five years experience in banking and want to move your career to the next level, Stonier is the answer. If you need more information about Stonier Graduate School of Banking, reach out to Ann Friedman at afriedma@aba.com. *There are so many things going on in sales these days. What near-term trend should we be aware of?* Technology enables us to change the way we hold sales conversations. New products abound and if your bank does not have strategies around Remote Capture and HSAs, it better get at that—starting today! Compensation continues to be a moving target. So there isn’t just one thing (Curley), but if we had to be held to one it would be Team Selling. With so much emphasis on deposits and fee income these days and with the product proliferation our industry is experiencing, it is near to impossible for everyone in every department to know enough about everything to serve every customer need. One large bank we know has done such a good job with their team selling efforts that more cash management representatives had to be hired or promoted to handle the large volume of quality referrals generated by the team approach. Another bank has adopted a Key Account Teams (KAT) approach. In the KAT situation, a lender, treasury management rep, wealth management associate, mortgage banker, branch manager, and a senior manager meet twice monthly for one hour to discuss a few top clients of each banker. The focus is on needs, not products, and tactics, not theory. Discussions are succinct. A client name is put on the table by one of the KAT team members. The banker who “owns” the relationship briefly discusses the relationship to date, the industry the client is in, and some issues the client is facing. Other team members ask questions about personal and business needs and after some brief number of minutes an action plan is designed with dates and next step accountabilities for appropriate KAT members. This process continues around the table until all top opportunities are discussed. Several team selling points: Keep the number of clients analyzed per meeting to a minimum— three to five is enough Make certain they are top tier clients Focus on needs not products Whoever’s turn it is to lead that portion of the meeting must facilitate, not pontificate These meetings must move crisply and they do not replace skill builders within each division Bankers that lead their portion of the meetings should be given tools and skills to be able to facilitate their parts effectively and efficiently Action plans with specific “to dos” are vital—this is not a reporting meeting Post-meeting communication and reinforcement are critical—the senior manager present must relay information from the meeting to senior managers in other departments to allow for ongoing follow-up KAT-like approaches must be viewed as a reward, not a punishment, and everyone must be looking for leads for each other It all begins at the top where Executive Managers see this approach as a long-term commitment




		TAPS–Trusted Advisor Prospecting System How One Bank Created an Integrated Prospecting Approach (part one of three) When we conducted our recent Business Banking Survey, one of the top 2007 issues was how to prospect in a more systematic manner. Acquisition strategies proliferate in books and articles and there is clearly no one best way to skin this cat. Below is how one bank is attempting to touch pre-clients methodically. Meet Janice (not her real name). She had previously been a senior executive at a large financial services firm where she led the bank’s business banking effort. Like many bankers at large organizations these days, Janice took advantage of an opportunity to move to a community bank to develop a new business banking effort. From a prospecting perspective, she was somewhat surprised. The bank does business in a combination of urban and suburban markets where the economy is solid and where $2-15 million companies continue to grow. The first thing she did was to hire away three very talented sales managers from her former bank. These bankers were steeped in coaching and holding people accountable for activities that caused business to come through the door without micro-managing the process. “I’ve always been a big proponent of regular sales and sales management routines, but I won’t force my people make ‘tick marks’ so some bogus numbers could go on some report,” she indicates. As she began to roll up her sleeves she was somewhat surprised that her 20 bankers’ proactive sales efforts were virtually non-existent. Her bankers were really portfolio managers who had never been trained or held accountable to get their feet on the street in a consistent, organized fashion. To be sure, the bankers were booking deals, but they were generated solely from Centers of Influence and bankers literally waited by the phone for the next opportunity. Some referrals were coming from the branches too, but since the bank had not done any formal training in those offices about small business, associates didn’t know how to start a conversation about business, let alone create a solid stream of leads. Bankers had no formal way of sourcing leads and no lists were purchased. “My people were order-takers with little network beyond commercial realtors who sent every deal to us and to our competition. I had to break our lender-only mindset as well as try to get bankers that had never prospected to get into a systematic rhythm,” she stated. “I’ve been through a situation like this before and I knew that throwing people onto the street to prospect without having a sales management process in place would be a disaster. We needed to develop a professional team of Relationship Bankers, but we knew we needed to create the infrastructure first.” Creating the Infrastructure Janice used available technology to create a pipeline report and two prospecting reports—one for proactive prospecting efforts and one for other ways pre-clients entered her system, such as through referrals. This allowed her sales managers to coach and reinforce their people based on the two broad categories of pre-clients. The bank now has a four-pronged approach to prospecting: TAPS, COI referrals (which includes leads provided by current clients), branch referrals, and networking. She worked with her five sales managers (two were already in place when she joined the bank) to craft an accountability-based sales management structure. Team meetings were no longer “rear view” reporting get-togethers. They became strategy and learning sessions where best practices were discussed and skill drills took place. Managers were held accountable to conduct weekly “Check-Ins” where they discussed sales activities and pipeline issues with bankers on a one-to-one basis. Coaching and joint calling became more rigorous. “I let everyone know right away that we would be doing no cold calling or sales blitzes. These are complete wastes of time and they don’t serve to put a banker in very good stead with pre-clients either. I also informed everyone that while this was a marathon, everyone had to begin to run faster and that their manager would help them,” she states. “The young bankers were excited and the veterans took a wait-and-see-attitude. No one left, but some were very skeptical.” Janice helped her team understand the kind of business the bank wanted in customer, not product, terms. The portfolio was heavily skewed toward commercial real estate and bankers were reacting to whatever crossed their desks. In addition to targeting key industries, she also created a tiered approach to help Relationship Bankers understand how and where to spend their finite sales time. Remember, these bankers, like most of yours, are responsible for things other than prospecting. They have portfolios, do their own underwriting and renewals, etc. “Our industry makes such a mistake by asking associates to get loans for a while and then switching the focus to deposits. That is a short-term, inside-out mentality. I wanted my bankers to see what niche industries would be best for us, given what type of business was in our various markets and what expertise we have to serve those firms. This new focus also allowed us to target our calls with COIs, letting referral sources know what companies we wanted to bank. Targeting and segmentation reduces confusion and saves everyone a lot of time.” Janice provided some targeted industry lists for her bankers to begin to evaluate, such as manufacturers directories and Chamber of Commerce guides (more on this next month). She also contacted www.idexec.com. This company takes lead lists to a new level. Finally, she purchased a subscription to First Research as a means for her bankers to add value throughout the prospecting process. Janice had put the following into the environment: She created a sales management infrastructure and began to make her five Team Leaders accountable for weekly routines She developed a tracking approach that was easy to implement and that linked prospecting into pipeline reporting She isolated some key industries she wanted her 20 Relationship Bankers to focus on She created a tiering process to allow her bankers to invest their time wisely She provided some tools such as First Research and targeted lists to lay the groundwork for long-term success It took Janice slightly more than six months to get ready to launch her formal prospecting system. She acknowledges she wanted to get her people into training right away, but that without an infrastructure, it would have been a complete disaster. “Too often senior managers feel pressured for results from their bosses and there is a strong temptation to slap training and incentive band-aids into the mix. That is the last thing that needs to be done. Training events and the promise of money do not change behavior over the long-term.” Now she was ready and she chose to implement an integrated process that involved weekly value-focused communication to targeted pre-clients. This “under the radar” approach was named TAPS by one of her managers. The Trusted Advisor Prospecting System is now in place and it is working. “I have no intention of outspending big banks. I need to out-hustle them. I took what I learned from my experience at a big bank and began to better leverage our community-ness. I wanted to create an easy-to-use, yet structured approach that focuses on the customer and not products. This is not a flavor of the month. TAPS is now part of our DNA. Let’s be clear: not everyone likes TAPS, but if you are a part of my team, it shall be done, it shall be inspected, and it shall be coached.” Next month, you will be introduced to TAPS and learn how bankers have changed the way they source business. Chris Murray with idEXEC can be reached at 914.697.5858 For further information about First Research, Inc., contact Darren Pierce at 919.861.0868

		Register for Conversation Signposts 2007 has begun. Bankers tell us the articles and ideas in Conversation Signposts make a difference in their sales mojo. If someone else at your bank could benefit from Conversation Signposts, forward this edition to them and have them click on the hyperlink below to register: it’s FREE. http://www.stmeyerandhubbard.com/signup.html Allowing us to be an Approved Sender In today’s security-conscious environment, many times our newsletter ends up in the wrong e-mail bucket. To make sure you receive every issue, why not put us in your “approved sender” list or address book? newsletter@stmeyerandhubbard.com