Rantmaster Note:
Last month my rant dealt with Pipeline Reporting. We received numerous e-mails about how banking is still measuring stuff it tracked three decades ago without making connections between the numbers and how they got on the report (activities and behaviors). Also, our industry has not caught up with others as it relates to leading effective meetings. This month’s rant reviews team meetings and one best-of-breed example.
It’s Monday: Do I Get To or Have To Go to a Meeting? Rant
By Jack Hubbard,
Chief Experience Officer
It’s Monday morning and your business bankers are driving to the office in anticipation of the weekly team meeting. Are they thinking “I get to go” or “I would do anything to avoid this”?
More than 11 million meetings take place every day in American business, taking up more than 37% of employee time. Nearly 70% of participants bring other work to do during meetings and 40% report dozing off. A full 50% of meeting leaders doubt that participants leave the meeting with concrete steps to improve production but nearly 80% plan to do nothing to change the format of the meeting to make it better. When will this madness stop?
Actual Scenario
It’s 7:30 a.m. on any given Monday at a well-known regional bank. The Business Banking Sales Manager has her troops gathered. As you eavesdrop, think about how her team meeting compares to yours. She begins by reviewing the agenda that was distributed to her bankers last Thursday evening to allow everyone to prepare to be active participants.
She begins: “Good morning. I hope you all had a nice weekend and are looking forward to this great sales week. Tell me one thing in your personal life that makes you the most happy and then tell me one thing you would like to improve.” (As this banker’s coach, I am certainly curious about where this is headed.) Her bankers think for a minute and then each offers something relevant. One associate opines that the best thing in her life is that her in-laws are coming for a visit. The improvement issue had to do with when they would be leaving. That draws some relatable laughter from the group.
What happens next is one of the more brilliant transitions I have ever witnessed in a team gathering. The manager uses their personal experiences to integrate sales-related issues. “Tell me one thing in our sales process that is working well for you and what’s one improvement need you can identify.” That discussion leads to some excellent learning points. One Resource Manager (isn’t that a great title to have on a business card?) indicates he is having some issues with making telephone appointments with pre-clients. The manager hones in on that challenge and a rich, strategic conversation ensues about how to make telephone appointment calling more effective. Is that training? Could it be role-playing? Is it coaching? Yes to all. Best of all, it is so seamless no one even notices. Guaranteed though, each business banker gets some great new ideas on how to make telephone efforts more effective.
We’re 21 minutes into the meeting and we have yet to go around the room to talk about calls made last week and what’s in the pipeline. Now the manager brings out a baseball cap. She reaches in and pulls out a name. “George, it’s your turn for Hot Prospect Lottery.” George now has five minutes to talk about an “A” level prospect that he is working on that has yet to make it to his pipeline. This bank only allows priced opportunities to land on its pipelines. This affords more accurate projections and avoids pipe-flation (an economic challenge resulting from bankers’ irrational exuberance about what is really in their pipeline).
George talks about a $10million company, what it does, how he got in the door, their needs, and his strategy to win the business. Five minutes is up (the manager calls time at five minutes). Now his peers ask questions about his sales approach. In effect, they become his sales managers for five minutes. Some of the questions he has ready answers for, others he does not. The manager captures those issues on a flip chart. She uses that to have a discussion about the WHOs, HOWs, and WHYs that will help all of her salespeople get better when their feet hit the street. She also indicates she will circle back with George about some specific ideas she has to help him shorten his sales cycle. Here, she is connecting the meeting with George’s Check-Ins. This sales manager is truly horizontal in her approach.
We are 41 minutes into the meeting and we have yet to go around the room to talk about calls that were made last week and what’s in the pipeline. The manager calls on Beth, a young trainee. Beth has no portfolio and she is not making calls on her own. Her job today is to report for five minutes on the salient points from the sales book she is reading, Secrets of VITO: Think and Sell Like a CEO by Anthony Parinello. Beth discusses a particular chapter about how to get in the door to see Mr./Ms. Big. When she finishes, the manager leads a discussion that helps make linkages as to how her bankers might use Beth’s learning points to impact their daily sales conversations.
We are 56 minutes into the meeting and we have yet to go around the room to talk about calls that were made last week and what’s in the pipeline. The manager pulls out her calendar and asks “How many calls do you each have scheduled for this week and which of those will I be asked to go on with you?” The manager does this to create peer pressure for face-to-face activities.
We are 59 minutes into the meeting and we still haven’t gone around the room to talk about calls that were made last week and what’s in the pipeline. The manager suggests her “Success Tip” is for each banker to ask the following question on each of their calls this week: “What initiatives do you anticipate at your firm over the next 6 to 9 months and what can our bank do to serve as your success partner?” She explains that she will be reviewing the results of those questions with each of them at the beginning of next Monday’s team meeting. (She tells me she does the Success Tip twice a month in an attempt to foster the kind of behaviors that will give her bankers a better chance of succeeding.)
She looks at her watch and suggests, “it’s 8:30 a.m. Thanks for an enriching sales meeting. Have an amazing sales day.” We never do go around the room and talk about individual calls and pipelines. The manager believes (and so do I) that reporting on individual sales results and activities is a one-to-one conversation and better served during what the manager calls weekly Check-Ins.
How did you like attending that sales meeting? How is it similar or different than yours? Do you want to work for this manager? Lots of bankers at this organization are waiting in line to do just that. Your team meeting can be as fulfilling as this one. There are several things you can do to get that improvement process started:
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Create an agenda and send it out 48 hours before the meeting
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Consider holding your meeting on Monday and start it early so your bankers can be out before 9:00 a.m.
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Focus less on the “rear view mirror” and target “windshield” issues
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Talk tactics, strategies, and skills versus going around the room and playing “Liar’s Poker”
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Use sales books, the internet, and sales magazines to provide sales tips and tools that your associates can use to close more business
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If you have to talk about operations, HR, and procedures, put them at the end of the meeting
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Keep everyone engaged through discussions and team activities
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Hold associates accountable by creating an assignment that connects meeting over meeting
We’ll never escape the meeting conundrum. We can, however, make this time together “get to” versus “have to.”
Rantmaster Jack is now Twittering at SalesHubbs
Pipeline Meetings: The Client Point of View
By Jason Tarr
Vice President, Citizens Bank
“Pipeline meetings are often like “To Do” lists,
you make one on Monday and it’s still good on Friday.”
~ Jason Tarr
I recently had a meeting with a new branch manager of the top producing office in our Midwest region. It’s been our top producing office for the last two years. She took this branch over when the previous manager decided to pursue a different career choice. I asked her how it was going and if it was all that she expected. She responded by saying that the first thing she realized was that the previous branch manager had the business pipeline filled before the quarter even began. She then said, “I now know what it takes to be a World Class Performer: pipeline management.” I then asked what her regional manager is doing to help facilitate this, to which she did not have a reply (at least none worth putting in writing).
This is all too often the case with sales managers. I listen and observe two or three pipeline meetings a week and from what I’ve observed, I don’t think most of these leaders have a comprehensive understanding of the definition of pipeline management.
By definition, pipeline management refers to the process of managing the sales cycle. That clears it up for everybody, right? Ok, simple definition as it may be, it actually does say it all. Managing a pipeline involves walking your sales rep through all the steps in the sales cycle which St. Meyer & Hubbard correctly defines as:
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Identify and prioritize opportunities
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Gather information and prepare for contact
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Obtain appointment
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Make discovery call
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Engage internal partners when needed
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Make presentation call
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Implement solutions
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Follow up and Onboard
Starting with identifying and prioritizing opportunities, unfortunately most pipeline meetings I observe fall way short of this process and focus more on production and “what’s going to close” that week. Pipeline management is clearly about the top, middle, AND bottom of the sales funnel. Moreover, sometimes these meetings happen so the manager can check it off the week’s “To Do” list. This is a waste of time, offers no value to the colleague, and certainly does little to move the sales ball down the field strategically. The Sales Manager might say something such as “you need to get three more accounts today!” as if they’re just lying in the parking lot.
So what can be done to make these pipeline meetings more effective?
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Keep them brief: less than an hour is great
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Meet in person if possible, but if the meetings are on the telephone, be sure to keep everyone off the mute button through engagement and discussion
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Don’t get bogged down on individual deals that can take the energy out of the meeting and alienate the rest of the team
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Start by focusing on weekly success stories and key Ws and Ls (wins and learns); ask colleagues (prior to call) to share a story with the rest of the team
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Get the group active and engaged in the meeting; don’t just preach to them, get them to talk—one way to do this is by again asking them (in advance) to lead a portion of the call which will also help improve their presentation skills and give them a higher feeling of empowerment; another option is random spot call-outs to members of your team to keep them on their toes
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Focus the meeting on behaviors and activities instead of just drilling down on the outcomes
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Connect key learnings from previous meetings and training sessions to the pipeline meetings to reinforce the behaviors
The bottom line is that pipeline meetings and pipeline management focused only on outcomes will never generate the results that you are looking for from your team. That’s like an NFL football coach telling his team that they need to get 14 more points to win with no game plan. The team can see the scoreboard. They know how many points they need. What they need are the right plays, direction, and reinforcement.
Much success to you all!
Identifying and Managing Customer and Market Risks, A New White Paper
By Ron Buck,
Executive Vice President
Below is a brief excerpt of an intriguing new White Paper by Ron Buck.
This White Paper identifies effective strategies of the highest performers while reexamining traditional (fragmented, symptom-based) approaches in terms of the following four critical risks:
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The financial results and, ultimately, viability of any financial institution are driven by these four factors. We can look at these risks in terms of individual customers and prospects or we can apply the same approach to whole markets or target customer groups within a market. In either case, these risks have historically been under-emphasized and under-managed because the trends are usually hard to detect until they show up as revenue or profit losses.
To receive the entire document at no charge, visit www.thedisciplineofexecution.com and register on the Member’s Page.
Ron Buck is Twittering at RonBuckC4X
Pre-Boarding for First Class Passengers Only
By Mike Dillon,
Executive Vice President
We’ve all heard of Onboarding. It’s the process that happens after you earn a new client relationship. Onboarding is designed to make business owners or retail customers feel special about selecting you as their financial partner. Let’s take that strategy into the time machine and apply it at an earlier point in the sales process. It’s a process I call: Pre-Boarding.
If you’ve ever been lucky enough to score a first class upgrade, you know nothing makes you feel as important and “special” as when the gate agent makes this announcement: “We’ll start by pre-boarding only those passengers in our first class cabin…first class passengers only at this time.” The implied message you hear: “The rest of you have to wait to board the plane until after we’ve taken care of these very important people.”
That “special” treatment starts even before you get to the gate. There’s a special check-in line—usually the shortest one—where first class passengers get priority treatment. There’s even a special security line for first class passengers to go through—again, it’s shorter than the one for the common folk. It’s OK, you can admit it…it’s pretty cool walking in front of all the other passengers as you feel their envious stares. Then, you get on the plane, take your cushy first class seat, order your drink, give the attendant your coat to hang up, stretch out, and ponder the question of chicken or beef for your in-flight meal. Aaaaaah. What a great life.
Given the choice, would you rather be treated like a first class passenger or like someone in coach? We all know the answer to that. First class passengers get treated differently because they have earned that right by purchasing the most expensive ticket the airline has to offer or by being a “frequent flyer” or frequent purchaser. In other words, there’s more revenue potential in a first class ticket, so the airline can afford to repay the loyalty with greater value.
Now put this in the context of your organization. You would agree that it’s OK to provide above and beyond service to those customers that represent the most profitable revenue stream. Higher potential “pre-clients” also deserve more attention and earn more investment of the business banker’s time and energy. You want those high-potential prospects to get that same “special” feeling that we described in the pre-boarding scenario above. It’s nice to feel special and to think that you are getting out-of-the-ordinary treatment. Special treatment results in loyalty—as long as that conduct continues when they become clients. How do pre-clients reward you for being pre-boarded like first class passengers? They select you for their next financial-related initiative, that’s how. They do business with you because they like getting the first class treatment they deserve.
Time clearly doesn’t allow us to seat all pre-clients in the first class cabin. That’s why it is so critical to prioritize your prospecting opportunities based on a variety of criteria such as: the potential revenue, profitability, referral potential, and cultural fit of a company. Remember, not everyone deserves first class treatment, but if you have identified your top 25 pre-clients and set your criteria, you can then craft a Pre-Boarding Strategy around providing them first class service before they board your organization. Here’s an example of what pre-boarding a pre-client might look like:
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Provide a value-added article on their industry with a brief “thought you might find this valuable” note attached
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Scan industry alerts and current trends and forward via e-mail as appropriate
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Forward an economic outlook or newsletter
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Send something that’s related to “share-of-heart,” not “share-of-wallet” (for example: hobby, special interest, or family-related information)
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Generate a referral for the pre-client by matching them up with client companies that are in the same business the pre-client “buys from” or “sells to”
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Place a phone call where you create curiosity, provide value, and always ask: “Is there anything coming up in the next 60 to 90 days that you’re going to need to talk to a financial services professional about?”
Every value-added touch you make, every unique connection you provide, every compelling voicemail message you leave or e-mail you send creates mind traction with pre-clients. You have given them value over time and shown that you are trustworthy. More important, you are congruent—you do what you say and say what you do. Keep the process alive, make it about them, not you and you will likely earn an at-bat—if not now, certainly in the future.
It takes anywhere from 10 to 12 “sales-y” phone calls to secure a first appointment from a pre-client. It takes 5 to 6 “sales-y” appointments with a pre-client to secure a new relationship. Adding value and consistency to the equation cuts the sales cycle down significantly. We’ve seen it cut in half by SM&H clients that use the process. Try it with your top 25 pre-clients and we’ll see you in that first class cabin.
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