Get Horizontal | Sales Transformation Blog

There are so many fine sales training firms out there; Omega Performance, Cohen Brown, Clarity Advantage, Huthwaite and many others. After investing more than four decades in this business I?ve come to the conclusion that it?s less about the vendor you use and more about connectivity. Said another way, successful financial services firms trying to sustain performance management cultures tie each sales and sales management routine together, creating a strong chain of non-negotiables. Most, however, continue to hold their folks accountable for disparate and disconnected events. In the past month I?ve had the privilege of addressing bankers in 16 states. Most are still thinking and acting vertically. Help me understand; why can?t our industry get horizontal??

Each of the aforementioned training companies teach financial services professionals to hold quality sales conversations and to conduct specific sales management routines. The challenge with it all is that our industry continues to view these processes as tick marks. Example: One community bank I talked with in Palm Springs holds its sales managers accountable to lead short huddles and longer skill builders X times monthly, to conduct one-on-ones with each associate, to observe and coach in the branch and on joint calls and to review gap to goal strategies. The bank seems to be holding sales managers accountable to do these activities but there is no linkage from one routine to the next. They are all vertical activities.

Branch Managers are pulling topics of team meetings out of the air instead of selecting subjects based on observations of what their people need from a skills perspective. The one-on-ones are completed so their Regional Manager can check them off his or her ?things completed? list.? You would think that every manager would have a binder where they keep notes and 90-day Action Plans. No such luck. With no linkage to week over week strategies and goals where is the accountability? Where are the results? And who gets blamed: the training company.

On the sales side, this bank?s branch managers are being asked to make outside calls. In talking with them, however, it is clear that they see sourcing, planning, calling and follow up as individually isolated events instead of connecting on a horizontal plane. The fact is that every time you decide to call on clients, pre-clients or Centers of Influence, a new continuum begins that virtually extends to sales infinity.

From a retail perspective, lots of organizations are conducting new customer Onboarding programs and most of them never work. One reason for the failure is that each step along the way is seen as an isolated task instead of an ongoing process. So next time you do your 22261, 12347 or whatever formula you attach, consider how each step is connected to the next.

Go back to your Clarity Advantage manual, the Cohen video or whatever job aids you were given by that training company and begin to look at the synapsing that needs to occur to connect one routine over another. Getting vertical is great for mountain climbing. In sales it?s horizontal that generates results.

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Source: http://www.stmeyerandhubbard.com/blog/get-horizontal/

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