Cross-selling success: learn to eat your broccoli.

• Author: Stickler, Kent
• Position: Sales

If training your employees how to cross-sell produces healthy bottom-line benefits, why aren't more financial institutions today consuming their vegetables? The answer has more to do with the negative perception of sales than with the reality.

By now, you would that think cross-selling--offering additional products and services to existing customers--would be a slam dunk in today's competitive banking industry. But it isn't.

It's evident that the best way to retain customers is to offer them more services. For banks, that means encouraging your mortgage holder to get a debit card, or convincing a depositor to purchase an investment package. Seems like a no-brainer, particularly when most banks have a wealth of advanced technology systems, databases and the like at their disposal to identify the prospects. So what's the problem?

It's the word "sell" in cross-selling. Honest. I've asked thousands of bankers, "What comes to mind when you hear the word 'sales'?" The number one answer is "pushy," followed by "fast talker," "wheeler dealer," and, sad to say, "con artist."

At a time when banks are under enormous pressure to improve their bottom lines, strengthen margins and increase market share, cross-selling can be a powerful survival tool. Clearly, changing these negative perceptions of selling is vital. And that can only be accomplished through well- focused strategic training. That in itself can be a challenge, considering that of the over 9,500 banks in the United Stales with assets of more than $100 million, that only about a thousand or so have done any formal sales training. Those that have report major benefits.

Good selling boils down to three main features

The key to developing a cross-selling culture among front-line bank personnel means giving them the tools they need to sell to skeptical customers who, frankly, don't like sales people. Therefore, it's important to look at the fundamentals of selling, namely the key ingredients to making a sale:

* Communication.

* Need Identification.

* Changing behavior.

Communication requires being an effective listener. Good sales people have learned eye contact, passive listening--not talking--asking open-ended questions and paraphrasing. They know' those qualities are important ways to build relationships and overcome distrust.

Identifying customers' needs and, better yet, establishing a long-term partnership, are absolutely essential to making a sale. Customer needs vary. An elderly female...