Maximizing Call Power–Financial Partner

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Business Issue - Increased competition and customer expectations require relationship managers to differentiate themselves and their banks more skillfully to grow market share or build share of wallet.

Successful financial institutions will establish and maintain competitive advantage by equipping their commercial salespeople to:

Position themselves and the institution as financial partners to their most important clients by focusing on customer needs

Cut cycle time in the sales process by assuring that every sales minute is leveraged to its full potential

Capture the results of sales calls and coordinate deliberate action steps to close business

Omega Performance’s Solution - Maximizing Call Power teaches experienced commercial relationship managers, commercial product specialists, and other members of commercial sales teams the skills and best practices necessary to develop and cross-sell profitable community, middle-market, and large corporate business. The focus is on building proficiency in three high-impact areas: leveraging call power (relationship planning), focusing call power (a five-phase call process), and capturing call power.

What Is Included

Maximizing Call Power is a highly participative, interactive workshop that spotlights the best sales practices of high-performing relationship managers and sales professionals outside the banking industry.

The program focuses on three main areas:

Leveraging Call Power demonstrates the value of relationship planning and teaches participants to establish call objectives that will advance the relationship as well as the bank’s unit goals. Participants learn the three high-impact calling skills: decision center mapping, personal information profiling, and needs-oriented questioning.

Focusing Call Power teaches a five-phase call process and the high-impact skills necessary to execute the process successfully. It provides for practice and feedback on each high-impact skill: needs-oriented questioning, communicating benefits, and resolving objections (especially by converting objections to needs the bank can meet). In addition, the workshop includes two videotaped skill practices in which participants apply these high-impact skills to conducting a complete sales call. The 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. Videotape review is always accompanied by balanced feedback from the instructor and from peers.

Capturing Call Power emphasizes the benefits of documenting call results, especially needs identified, objections uncovered and how they were or might in the future be resolved, and next steps established. Techniques are covered for communicating and coordinating with resources in the bank to fulfill customer commitments and advance the sale.

The key themes of the course are visualized in models that help participants remember and use them: Aiming for Financial Partnership, Leveraging Call Power, Focusing Call Power, and Maximizing Call Power. Supporting the course content and transfer of the skills and processes to the job are practical job aids and worksheets:

Resolving Objections
Decision Center Map
Personal Information Profile
Relationship Plan
Call Plan
Call Report
Needs-Oriented Questioning Guide
Needs-Oriented Questioning Worksheet
Skill Development Action Plan

Delivery Options

Maximizing Call Power is a two- or three-day workshop for which there is a small amount (three hours) of participant prework, plus prescribed postwork consisting of applying the skills and process to at least four actual customers or prospects and discussing the activities with one’s manager. The two-day workshop is designed for up to 10 participants, and the three-day workshop is designed for up to 12 participants.

Results You Can Expect

Maximizing Call Power helps your relationship managers and other sales team members:

Use calling time to effectively accomplish relationship objectives and line-of-business priorities
Increase success ratios by identifying decision makers and maintaining personal information profiles
Examine customers’ business strategies to uncover unmet needs for financial services
Resolve objections smoothly and, when possible, convert them to needs the bank can meet
Propose targeted solutions to meet customers’ high priority needs and close sales more successfully
Optimize the use of bank resources to search out and capture profitable business

Who Should Be Trained

Maximizing Call Power is designed for experienced commercial relationship managers, commercial product specialists, sales team members, team leaders, and senior commercial bankers who manage commercial relationships or need to demonstrate and coach strong business development and cross-selling skills.

Prerequisites

The recommended prerequisite for Maximizing Call Power is Omega Performance’s Selling to Achieve Results or an equivalent basic selling skills program. Participants should have a solid knowledge of the bank’s fee-based products, which can be provided by Omega Performance’s Building Fee Income or equivalent training.