Non-shock therapy: how one community bank successfully realigned its employees' attitude toward sales through a technique that sidestepped sudden, jolting changes.

• Author: Michaud, Robert G.
• Position: Sales Culture openion

For years, community banks have been struggling with the issue of building "sales culture." For some, it has been a frustrating experience, with multiple failures and limited successes. But, the creation of a sales culture does not have to be such a difficult and uncertain proposition. If you take the right approach, if you implement the cultural change with a carrot rather than a stick, the process can be relatively smooth and problem-free.

At my institution, Irwin Bank & Trust, Irwin, Pa., (assets: $675 million; 11 retail locations) we avoided making any overnight, revolutionary changes. Instead, we chose a gradual, evolutionary transition consisting of a series of small steps. The result was the development of a "sales culture with legs"--one that holds promise of being both lasting and far-reaching.

Before explaining how we implemented our changes, I will take a moment to review the reasons that most bank cultural makeovers fail to take hold. On a list of root causes, here are the top three:

1. Inadequate management commitment. First, the existing management culture in banks historically comes from operations and lending. Since the traditional banking viewpoint has been that lending makes the money and operations keeps the bank working, senior managers at community banks often have little understanding of what sales and marketing are all about. The transition from an operations/lending culture to a sales culture is nothing less than a complete change of philosophy. Such a change requires a "top-down" commitment from the ivory tower down to the miler window.

2. Overwhelming challenges. Community banks often feel that the necessary human resource development program required for such a major cultural change is beyond their capability. A complete understanding of the complex process of how to teach, coach, motivate and get the entire organization to "buy in and believe" is often too complex a challenge for the smaller institution to undertake on its own. Consultants offer a useful alternative, but small banks (including ours) often have trouble justifying the cost.

3. Misleading terminology. The use of the phrase "building a sales culture" may in itself create misunderstanding. At our bank, we described the process as "developing a relationship culture." Our philosophy was this: By teaching frontline staff more about customer relationships, the sales results will follow naturally. By doing this, we believed that we could avoid most of the anxiety and morale problems that a major strategic change can cause; and, best of all, we could improve the bank's image in the...