I’ve written before about the need for financial institutions to train their sales reps.
The reason is this: most banks and credit unions have never had to worry about selling anything. They opened a branch and people just walked in and opened an account.
But as we all know, those days are over.
Today, even people who have bank accounts are starting to use PayPal or Google Wallet to make their purchases and commercial accounts are finding alternate forms of financing.
I’m now getting letters every week from Chase and Bank of America offering me “promotional rate checks” to use anyway I want. I can buy anything I want and pay 0% interest for 12 months. The only cost is a 2% transaction fee.
That’s cheap money – and I don’t even have to leave my office to talk to a salesperson at a bank or credit union!
In order for banks and credit unions to grow, they will have to hire or develop a sales force. And they’ll have to train them because most financial sales folks have never had to make a cold call.
They’ll need to find a good business development expert, like Rick Wemmers at Bank Marketing Pros, or find sales training materials online. I recently came across a very good and inexpensive sales training course at: http://training.sales-getters.com.
The author, Louie Bernstein, used lessons that he personally learned while making millions of dollars in sales. His materials teach you how to prospect and how to turn cold calls into warm calls. He’ll even give you the exact written words to use for every objection.
There are no excuses for not having a trained sales staff. It’s time to get going before your competition does!
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Neal Reynolds has worked with hundreds of banks and credit unions around the country helping them to grow core deposits and market share without growing their marketing budgets. Contact him at [email protected].
