The squeeze: selling in tough times: you can sell your bank out of current hard times as long as you move proactively and have a focused game plan. Here are 10 steps to help you achieve this goal.

• Author: Schneider, Jim
• Position: Sales Management - Cover story

During the last year, the market dynamics have changed, and banks need to modify their sales and marketing strategies accordingly. In this new environment of uncertainty and of mistrust of even the highest-performing companies, branding, advertising, pricing and other passive marketing strategies aren't likely to yield the same high returns on investment that they've yielded in the past.

Consumers and businesses are looking first for trusted advisers who will proactively contact them and guide them through troubled waters. For most banks this is also a time of considerable market opportunity:

* Brokerage firms, insurance companies, mortgage brokers and national banks are vulnerable to customer defection and paralyzed by changes in regulation.

* The playing field for small- and mid-size financial institutions has been leveled because of the increases in the limits on deposit insurance.

* Most consumers and businesses are re-evaluating their financial relationships.

With headline stories eroding the market value of some of the formerly strongest financial institutions, there is unprecedented opportunity to win market share from weakened competitors. Financial buyers are also more open than ever to talking with someone new, in order to get ideas for reducing their risk, cutting their expenses, preserving their capital or anticipating and coping with changes in the new business climate.

The only companies that will have the resources to capitalize on these growth opportunities are those that proactively:

* Contact and counsel their high-value customers to retain them.

* Manage their selling and coaching efforts to upgrade more customers, products, markets and salespeople to higher levels of profit--and to reduce their profit risk.

Those organizations that continue to sell passively without focus, or who don't sell at all, will continue to experience defections among high-valu customers and salespeople. These same companies will continue to deplete their reserves by selling the wrong things to the wrong customers, including high-risk borrowers, thus making more of their customers unprofitable.

Sell your way out of the financial crunch

One upside of an economic downswing is that it provides growth opportunities for banks with proactive sales organizations. It also creates a "burning bridge" rationale and political cover to pursue a big mission and to orchestrate large-scale change. If you have a clear game plan and you sell proactively during tough times, your employees will be better motivated. Their morale will be kept higher because your approach will give them some sense of control over their destiny.

Here are ten steps that your organization can take now to sell your way out of the current financial downturn:

1. Narrow your focus. Reallocate existing budget dollars to develop the customers, products, markets and salespeople that provide the best return on investment, and drop quickly those that yield poor returns.

2. Get back to basics with good sales process. Redefine your preferred sales, coaching and pipeline-management processes in light of current staffing and market realities, and then closely manage their...