Don't sell your bank short; creating an effective sales supervisory system allows your institution not only to increase revenue and profit, but also to differentiate itself from the competition.

• Author: Powell, Alan
• Position: Fundamentals: sales management

A sales management system either works, or it doesn't. There are no quick fixes when your bank stumbles in connection with challenges like increasing sales, growing revenues and profits, cross-selling, retaining customers and transforming reactive customer service to proactive selling.

Five key management practices have to be in place before a system can deliver results successfully. Let's look at these practices--and ways you can make them work for you and your financial institution--in greater detail.

Practice No. 1:

Analyze the Situation and Set the Direction

Effective sales managers analyze the market, develop business plans and set sales and service objectives for their teams. As your team's leader, it's essential for you to:

Have a vision. What do you want your organization and individual business unit to be? What will they offer your stakeholders (customers, shareholders, employees and strategic partners)? Where will they be in the future? Your vision can be either short- or long-term just as long as you have one. Without it, you'll never know if you have gotten to where you want to be.

Form a strategy. A vision on its own is just a dream. You need to put a business strategy in place that clearly addresses how you and your people will achieve the elements that make up your vision. What results do you expect each member of your team to achieve? How will they get there? How will you support their efforts? Who will be held accountable for performance achievement or lack thereof?

There should be no secrets about your objectives, All of the details associated with your vision and strategy must be openly communicated so that everyone involved understands roles, responsibilities and expectations.

Practice No. 2:

Build the Team

With your sales vision and strategy in place, you should take an active role in developing your team. This step is critical. Your people must have the essential skills and knowledge, and exhibit the right behaviors to successfully execute your strategy and make your vision come alive. There are three steps you can take to build a strong team:

Hire the right people and then provide sales training. Sales staff must learn the new skills, behaviors and attitudes that your bank wants exhibited on a daily basis. The training initiative you implement should align directly with the business objectives you want to attain.

Demonstrate the desired sales skills and behaviors. It's your commitment and leadership that motivate...