The ‘Big Fat Pipeline’ Syndrome Is Killing Your Sales By Ron Buck When it comes to closing pipeline opportunities, less is more. The Big Fat Pipeline is a sales pipeline that is overflowing with opportunities in each stage that creates a false sense of security around monthly, quarterly or annual targets. It continues to… Read More
20% Branch Growth Just By Changing One ‘Critical’ Conversation By Ron Buck Branch conversations between a personal banker and customers have changed forever. In fact, over 80% of customer conversations are now service-related. Branches have become the service-hub of all delivery channels (mobile, Internet, ATM, call center and other interactive (or self-service) teller machines). With… Read More
Sales Execution Trends Briefing for Business, Commercial, Treasury, Wealth and Private Bankers 2016 Trends Executive Summary Over the past year, we have surveyed thousands of Sales Metrics That Matter newsletter readers – executives and sales leaders from small business lending, commercial, treasury, wealth and private banking. We have created a comprehensive and ongoing study… Read More
How Strong is Your Sales Culture? A few months ago I was interviewed by Forbes Magazine. Forbes is doing some research and writing an article about sales cultures. Although they were looking at a number of industries, they wanted my perspective on the banking industry. In my client work, I have observed a handful of… Read More
By Ron Buck Excel spreadsheets are ubiquitous and one of the most common tools used in banking. However, there are hidden costs associated with manual reporting with Excel spreadsheets. The hidden costs are associated with the valuable resources manually developing and distributing the spreadsheets, the inaccurate nature of spreadsheets and the poor utilization of spreadsheet… Read More
By Ron Buck Today, every bank and credit union is in some stage of branch transformation. They are re-designing branches, re-staffing branches, re-sizing branches, re-purposing branches and introducing new technology to provide more services in support of the digital channels. These initiatives constantly require the balance of cost (expense) reduction and sales performance improvement (revenue… Read More
Many industry researchers, agree that 90% of spreadsheets contain so much inaccurate self-reported data that they are unusable for sales management and coaching. Only 34% of Business Bankers feel their pipeline is accurate. Wasted time invested each week on inaccurate forecasts is a critical issue that should concern sales leadership. Most sales forecasts are done… Read More
from the desk of Ron Buck Commercial Lending Case Study Many of our clients are involved in a SWOT analysis as part of their 2016 strategic planning. A SWOT analysis is a structured planning method that can be used to evaluate the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats involved in any part of banking. A SWOT… Read More