Large regional bank needed to build a sales culture and upgrade the skills of its employees to sell and service clients. The down economy required that they needed to save costs.
Business Issue
This Midwest based bank wanted to build a needs-based selling culture throughout the entire bank. The bank had grown through a series of acquisitions, and the employees from the various acquired branches varied tremendously in their ability and desire to sell.
Sales Training Needs Assessment
The training manager wanted to use internal staff, primarily branch managers, to teach over 500 employees. Due to some upcoming marketing initiatives, there was urgency to implement the first phase of this project. Peak Selling consulted with the training manager and learned that this first phase of training would be a series of 1-day workshops to all the tellers and personal bankers. The bank intended to do a second phase of training later in the year with advanced training for the personal bankers. As such, Peak Selling and the training manager identified the key skills in a needs based sales process, and prioritized the skill sets into phase 1 and phase 2 categories.
Sales Training Solution
Peak Selling designed a customized sales training program for phase 1 with Needs Based Selling Skills and concepts that were suitable for tellers and personal bankers. Key topics included how to build rapport, questioning and listening skills, and how to cross sell more effectively. Because the workshop was going to be taught by several branch managers, the exercises and lecture were modified to make it easier for a non-trainer to teach.
The bank saved more than 70% of the original budgeted estimate by working with Peak Selling in three ways. First, we customized a sales training workshop that was shorter in duration than other training vendors yet provided all the essential skills to follow a needs based sales process. Second, they decided to use internal managers as the instructors, for whom Peak Selling taught train-the-trainer skills. Third, they licensed the masters for the training materials, and produced over 500 workbooks themselves. This latter step alone saved them tens of thousands of dollars.
In addition to the customized workshops and trainer training, Peak Selling provided the client with access to online training for their future training needs. The client’s trainers were advised on how they could personally tutor new employees using the online training to get them up to speed on the same concepts. This combination of traditional in-person training and sales coaching, along with online instruction provided a very efficient and effective learning system.