Rory Rowland :: Blog

"Man who waits for roast duck to fly into mouth must wait very, very long time."

Chinese Proverb

You have established an audacious and ambitious goal of creating a service sales culture for your credit union. The next best question is, "Now what?" Two keys to success: first, define it, and then take action. Do not wait for a cooked roasted duck.

First, you must define a service sales culture. Here is my stab at it.

`A credit union service sales culture is simply the way it does things, treats people, answers phone calls and rewards or punishes behavior. Each culture has its own set of stories; parables, tents or principles by which all employees from top to bottom live by. It gives the roadmap as well as etiquette by which they answer almost all situations thrown at them.’

The meaning of service sales culture is very clear. It is crisp in its focus, detailed in its approach and everyone knows where he or she fit into the corporate structure. Its motto could simply be, "Service First, Sales Second." 

 As my father would say  "If it is foggy in the pulpit it is cloudy in the pews." Make sure you define the culture you want to create in your credit union. If you don't have a clear picture of what you want, wait and get that first.  

In working with credit unions during the last 15 years, and being a president of two credit unions goal setting is a challenge.But the keys to a successful sales culture are making sure that you set clear and precise goals.  If there is anything I hear from management teams and staff is that “it is difficult to set goals.” 

There are a variety of reasons why it's difficult to set goals. 

1) Many of us don't know how.

2) If we set the goal that we will be set to a higher level of expectation.

3) What if we don't get the goal? Will it give us a sense of failure?

4) Any excuse under the sun will work for not setting goals. My recommendation - set some goals, and lean in towards your success.

No better time than now to take action toward achieving your vision of creating a service selling culture. 

Here are some basic tips for setting your service selling goals. 

1) Set short-term goals

2) Post them on the wallfor all employees to see (keep them out of members view)

3) Have weekly sales meetings to discuss the goals

4) Trend and track your progress

5) Adjust your goals over time if they appear to be unrealistic

6) Make the process fun - get everyone involved

7) Make sure you measure what you want to see 

From my experience by watching top 100 credit unions, some of the best credit unions in the country use the power of goal setting to achieve the vision.  Go out set some goals, focus on those goals, have team meetings, and consistently ask how do we reach the results. If you do those things it will help your credit union move to creating a successful service selling culture.     

Okay you have decided to create a sales culture. Now what?

One of the most important questions is how comfortable will your staff be with providing a sales culture?  And, how comfortable will members be with your creating a sales culture environment in our credit union?

To give you an example of this let me tell you about a recent credit card experience.  Yes you guessed it, the credit card company called me in the middle of dinner.  Was I pleased?  Absolutely not!  Did I cancel the card?  No, but I don't carry their card with such high regard as before. Of course, not.

We've all received sales calls.  Many times you have had the joy of being interrupted at dinner by a sales call.  Companies that call you during dinner are very comfortable with pushing their products at any time and anywhere.  They recognize that in order to increase sales they have to increase contacts.  They are not afraid to do it with outbound calling and interrupting your dinner. 

However, this is the most extreme aggressiveness that we see in America, slightly below that of a used car salesman.

On the other extreme of the continuum of comfort are organizations filled with order takers, those folks who never pressure anyone for a sale.  For example, if you’re in a department store browsing and a sales person ask, "May I help you with anything?."  And you say, "No, I'm just looking."  Then they turn and leave you alone.

That is one of the most conservative examples on the conservative side of the continuum of comfort.  Order takers are on one side of the continuum of comfort scale and used car salespeople are on the most aggressive side of the scale.  One of the most important questions your Credit Union has to answer is, “Where do you want to be as an organization on the continuum of comfort?”  You may decide to be just a little more aggressive than order takers and far less aggressive than a used car salesman in a plaid jacket.

It is important that your leadership team have this discussion in your Credit Union.  Without a clear sense of direction on the continuum of comfort you will have a challenge of sharing your vision with your employees.  You may face a challenge of the comfort of members with regards to a service selling culture.  The last thing you want to do is alienate your employees and alienate your members.

So, I highly encourage you to establish a clear vision of where you want your Credit Union to be on the continuum of comfort.  Where you land on that scale is an important strategic decision that every credit union who installs a service selling culture must make.

So you have established an audacious and ambitious goal of creating a sales culture for your credit union.

The next best question is “now what!”

First, you must define a sales culture. Here is my stab at it. 

A credit unions sales culture is simply the way it does things, treat people, answer phone calls and rewards (or punish) behavior. Each culture has its own set of stories, parables, tents or principles by which all employees from top to bottom live by. It gives the roadmap as well as etiquette by which they answer almost all situations thrown at them.

The meaning of sales culture is very clear. It’s crisp in its focus, detailed in its approach and everyone knows where they fit into the corporate structure. Its motto could simply be: 'service first, sales second.”

While it sounds old-fashion, we can't underestimate the value of such culture. It has made great companies out of start-ups and many today rely on its core principles to survive and strive. It is often said that if you're going to start a company, a shop or a franchise, you should focus on developing a sales culture if you want to succeed.  Apple, under Steve Jobs, has a culture of making cool things people want to use. With the gigantic success of IPod they have lived up to that goal.

Now how can we accomplish this incredibly audacious goal of creating a service selling culture?

Well one of the first steps in to make sure that everybody's onboard.

Yes, everyone.  You must have all the key stakeholders in the sales culture camp. Not just some of the board.  Not just some of the management team.  Not just some of the middle managers.

You must have everyone on board.  And I mean everyone.  A world class rowing team does not allow a team member to keep their paddle in the water while holding back the entire team from accomplishing their goal.  A world class rowing team would throw a non-performing team member into the water and keep going.  I am not suggesting that you throw team members in the lake.  But I am suggesting that you don't have a middle-of-the-road attitude towards creating a sales culture. Your mindset must be firmly entrenched towards the sea success of this process.

First recognize it is a process that takes time.  It cannot be accomplished overnight; you must recognize it will take between 18 to 24 months to get this process where you start to see momentum.  At first it will seem arduous and slow, but keep your eye on the goal.

I have seen teams that allowed members to be great salespeople.  But they were selling the wrong thing!  They were great salespeople for the dark side, but they still collected their paycheck from the credit union. These people stood around the water cooler and sold negativity, disagreement and chaos.  Yes, they were better salespeople then the management team.  So once you have everyone on board must make sure you police the attitudes of every one in the office. We want everyone to sell the attitude that we can fix it, that we will accomplish this goal, and we will be a great service/selling organization.  Everyone must be on board and every one must he selling the idea that we can accomplish this goal.

The board senior managers and the key managers must be willing to support a sales culture.

If some are selling negativity you need to get them back on board.

Meaningful change is a constant dilemma. The change you are about to embark on, in changing your culture to a service selling culture is gigantic. You have to focus your team on the results the leaders want to accomplish.

However, recognize at first you will fall short, it will take you time to accomplish the goals you want to achieve. Not everyone will jump on board right away. It will take time for folks to learn their role and fine tune their service selling skills. 

A service selling culture will happen overtime with reinforcement, and recognition, you must continue to focus on your dream and vision of one day having a culture where everyone understands “service first, sales second.”

In upcoming additions we will talk about these important items

Continuum of comfort

Coaching – the keys to reinforcing the service selling culture

Incentive plans – do they help or hurt your cause, or do they make a difference at all

Hiring the right folks for sales culture; how some of the best credit unions with a sales culture hire the best.

Tracking success – the keys to goals setting, and making sure everyone is on the same hymnal same page.

What is your definition of service?

What is your definition of success with this endeavor?

Love the member more than you love the product

Agendas for your weekly meetings – Hero’s, Stories and Demos

Should you create a sales culture?

Before you start creating a sales culture I think it's incredibly important that you ask yourself some very significant questions. First you’ve got to ask yourself what do you want to accomplish by creating a sales culture? 
What is your overall goal?
Do you want membership growth?
Do you want asset growth?
 
And there are dozens of other reasons of why you may want to consider creating a sales culture.

However, I think you need to look at some statistics I've
come across lately. If you've not thought about creating
a sales culture after you hear these statistics, you may change your mind.

Over the last few months I've been doing research on the Top 100 credit union’s membership growth in the upper mid-west. Yes, you heard me right—the upper mid-west—those credit unions in states where population growth lags far behind the red-hot markets of Florida, Texas, Arizona or California. In those red-hot states, many credit unions report growth just by opening their doors.  But being a consultant I suspect you want a strategy with a little more sophistication than "hey just open your doors and you will grow." You're also sophisticated enough to know that that strategy alone just won't work.

So I surveyed 100 of the fastest growing credit unions on membership growth in the upper Midwest.

The survey questions included the following:

· Have you had a significant merger the last five years?
· What is your basic field of membership makeup?
· Have you expanded your FOM?
· Do you use any special marketing or sales training?
· Do you have a community charter?
· What have been the keys to your growth success?

We sent the letter to the top 100 CEOs of the fastest growing membership credit unions in the upper Midwest from June 2002 to June 2007.  Twenty out of 100 responded so it is not a statistically valid study because you need a larger sample size in order to make statistical valid arguments. But I think the small study highlights some of the key factors that lead to membership growth success.

Here are the results.

· 90% of the credit unions that responded have community charters.
· 10% are SEG based (select employee groups)
· 60% have had a significant merger in the last five years.
· 75% said they had installed a sales culture.
· 60% used some type of relationship pricing strategy.

From these statistics, what can we learn about upper mid-west growth?  I think we should look at those 75% of credit unions who had installed a sales culture. 

Certainly expanded field of membership, becoming a community charter and having a relationship pricing strategy were all factors that led to their membership growth success. 

But we have to remember that three out of four of them had installed a sales culture.  A successful sales culture can be the foundation for your successful growth future.  Of all the reasons to start a sales culture, the future growth argument I think is by far the best. 

Therefore, if you don't have a sales culture—get one. Your credit you should consider installing a sales culture to help you continue to grow. With membership growth for credit unions all over the United States being about 1.9% over the last five years, we must consider a sales culture in order to keep growing members. And over the next few weeks I will give you the keys to installing a successful sales culture.  But if the credit unions in the upper mid-west grew by creating a sales culture you too can grow by creating a sales culture in your credit union. The competitive pressures in the financial marketplace are heating up to super red-hot scenarios.  In order to compete in the future you've got, let me repeat, you've got, to create a sales culture so you can compete in this highly competitive marketplace. If you don't install a sales culture and your credit union you might be missing one of most important ingredients that helped the Top 100 fastest upper mid-west credit unions grow.