Measurable Results Delivered

After completing the program, bankers will be able to:

• Effectively use the five-step Customer Interaction Model to manage customer conversations and build enduring, profitable relationships with customers
• Use Probing Guides and the Customer Profile worksheet to profile customers and prioritize their needs for managing money, investing money, and borrowing money
• Use the Handling Obstacles model to address and resolve customer concerns

Who Should Be Trained

Establishing Customer Relationships is targeted at front-line retail bankers. It is also appropriate for customer service representatives, consumer lenders, and others who build and maintain relationships with retail customers.

Prerequisites

None. However, Establishing Customer Relationships is most effective when implemented after branch manager training, such as Omega Performance’s Building the Winning Sales Team.

Sales & Service Solutions
Establishing Customer Relationships

Business Issue

Front-line bankers and retail salespeople are key figures in banks’ efforts to increase retail sales and build relationships. Too often, however, bankers are “order-takers” rather than proactive cross-sellers and relationship builders.

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Omega Performance’s Solution

Establishing Customer Relationships provides bankers with the sales and service skills they need to build profitable, long-term customer relationships.

When branch staff truly meet customer needs, customers remain loyal, bring more of their business to the bank, and tell others about the value provided by their bank. This is the kind of enduring customer relationship that helps the bank achieve and exceed its sales, service, customer-retention, and market-share goals.

The program focuses on a five-step customer interaction process: establishing rapport, exploring needs, recommending action, obtaining agreement, and determining next steps and showing appreciation. The three-day program features video modeling and feedback, a learning technology that Omega Performance has found to be unparalleled in changing participants’ behavior in the shortest time.

What Is Included

To build customer relationships, bankers need to know what customers expect from their bank, as well as how to perform to those expectations.

The foundation of Establishing Customer Relationships is based on Omega Performance’s Customer Interaction Model. This five-step process teaches bankers how to establish customer rapport, explore needs with the customer, recommend action, obtain agreement and handle obstacles, and determine next steps and show appreciation to the customer. The workshop also helps bankers develop a plan for following up and enhancing the customer relationship over time.

In prework, participants complete a short reading on interacting with customers and meet with their manager to set goals for the course.

The following topics are covered in the three-day workshop:

Meeting Customer Needs introduces the topics covered in the workshop. It explains why banks need to build profitable and long-term customer relationships in order to achieve competitive business goals.

Interacting with Customers focuses on managing the dialogue with customers to build enduring, profitable relationships with them.

Exploring Needs with Customers teaches the importance of questioning, asking open-ended questions, and listening. Participants practice using probing guides to explore customer needs in three key areas: investing, borrowing, and money management. Participants are then paired, divided into two small groups, and videotaped simultaneously (in two rooms) as they practice customer interactions. Videotape review is always accompanied by balanced feedback from the instructor and from peers.

Recommend Actions to Meet Needs teaches participants to examine the next step in the Customer Interaction Model— how to make powerful recommendations to meet the customer’s needs.

Obtaining Agreement shows participants how to ask for the business and handle obstacles if they arise, then practice their new skills.

Completing the Customer Interaction examines the importance of confirming the relationship with the customer at the end of the interaction and creating a follow-up plan. Participant pairs then play the parts of customer and banker in the second videotaped skill practice, this time practicing all the steps in the Customer Interaction Model.

Delivery Options

The program incorporates prework and is available in a two-day or three-day workshop. The two-day workshop includes several rounds of intensive skill practice, but the practices are not videotaped. Omega Performance consultants are prepared to conduct Establishing Customer Relationships, or leader training can be conducted to prepare internal bank facilitators to lead the session.