Benchmarking for success: a technique known as 'sales benchmarking' helps you to identify which sales approaches are working with individual salespeople so that you can expand their use to the entire sales team.

• Author: Rendel, Jeff
• Position: Sales

Can your bank answer the following questions with precision?

* What next year's retail sales will be?

* Whether it's on target to meet this year's sales quotas?

* What the influential indicators of sales success are from your principal sales leaders?

* What contributions and activities are necessary to drive sales to the fore?

Is the answer "Yes"?

If so, congratulations, your bank is a champion in sales benchmarking and sales management. No or not certain? Your bank may want to contemplate making use of sales benchmarking.

Marketing 101 teaches us with the life cycle of a product or service, from the "introductory" to "decline" stage. Sales attitudes, principles, and values are relevant along the length of the same continuum. Where does your bank's sales management program position itself on the life cycle?

In today's environment, the banks that continue selling as if they were constantly in the introduction and growth stage will triumph. Sales benchmarking helps to maintain your bank, continuously in this stage.

Benchmarking, much like any technique to enrich your bank's results, must be designed--by your bank--in a manner that corresponds to how your bank operates.

Attend a conference or review a selection of sales benchmarking books and you will hear and read of:

* Leads per sales representative.

* Pipeline management.

* Closing rate.

* Net income per representative.

* Turnover rate.

* Ramp time and, many other high-quality strategic sales metrics.

All are top quality metrics, but many community banks may pronounce, "That doesn't sound like our workplace or style."

Sales

In fact, several years ago, before I took the stage to present an address for a bank marketing conference, a bank vice president inquired of me, "You're not going to tell us to be more like Google, Southwest Airlines or Starbucks, are you?" Her concern was that, in a world of big ideas and "wow factor" anecdotes, her bank did not possess the resources, infrastructure, or talent pool to try to be like those companies.

Benchmarking is, and should be, as unique as your bank. One size will not fit all.

Benchmarking works and--simply put--it is about knowing and upgrading practices, allowing your bank to close the space between your existing level of functioning and an enhanced level. To create a successful benchmarking program, a community bank will have to do the following things:

* Determine the reliability of your sales function.

* Research and devise a program that works for your unique bank.

* Identify, measure, compare and improve your sales metrics.

Your bank's sales function

Before launching any sales benchmarking program, banks need to truthfully settle on the reliability level of the existing sales function. In general, there are four levels:

1. Chaotic, if existent. "We made a cross-sell!" is often a cause for celebration. While banks at this level understand the need for sales, a formal, consistent program does not exist. At times, sales can seem like the Wild West of bank sales. Anything...