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Reposition Your Team From Salespeople to Business Consultants
by Advantage Associate Nick Miller
When First Union National Bank decided to “Bring Wall Street to Main Street,” it did so using one of the most effective strategic repositioning approaches we’ve seen.
First Union is the country’s sixth-largest bank with $137 billion in assets. Based in Charlotte, N.C., it is a rapidly-growing market leader. Three years ago, First Union’s CEO posited that Wall Street had become leading banks’ most formidable competition. He saw significant opportunities to sell capital markets products and corporate finance services to the bank’s commercial, middle market, and large corporate customers, increasing revenue as well as deepening account relationships. Accordingly, the bank created “Bring Wall Street to Main Street” as the organization-wide call to action.
The bank created a significant capital markets and corporate finance capability, hiring experts from Wall Street. It re-engineered the commercial, middle market and corporate banking delivery system, creating the roles of relationship manager, underwriter, and portfolio manager so that relationship managers could spend much more time managing relationships and developing new business. The critical link was training. First Union sought a comprehensive initiative focused on its new call to action and tailored to its specific needs.
 Becoming Financial Consultants
The bank understood that two strategic sales changes had to occur before it could successfully compete in the new market. First, relationship managers needed to develop more targeted relationship management skills. Second, they needed to become “financial consultants” rather than simply sales people who pushed product. The bank wanted relationship managers to become more knowledgeable about the business issues faced by their customers and become true advisors who could foster broad, deep, and lasting customer relationships. Only that way could relationship managers penetrate accounts more deeply and, at the same time, uncover needs for investment banking, trust, and other services.
Advantage’s contribution was Financial Consulting training, an integrated initiative that combined a business simulation, self-study, and classroom sessions led by university professors.
The initiative kicked off with Celemi’s Decision Base simulation, renamed “The CEO/CFO Experience,” to draw participant attention to the business issues and concerns of the senior corporate officers who typically buy investment banking services. “The CEO/CFO Experience” was a two-day business simulation in which participant teams managed competing companies, taking on the roles of different senior executives in order to develop their points of view.
New Insights and Expertise
The experience was powerful at several levels. First, most participants (who had never managed a business) developed a sharp appreciation of how difficult it is to focus, synchronize, and manage the major business functions—sales, operations, and finance. Second, participants increased their ability to engage senior corporate managers at a strategic level and “connect the dots” between strategies, operating plans, and likely implementation issues. Third, in their roles as corporate officers, participants got a strong taste of their customers’ perceptions of themselves and the bank as a supplier—“Now I know why they see us as the enemy, and why we’re usually so low on their priority list,” one participant said—and the expertise and value they would need to bring in order to serve a customer and perform as a financial consultant.
The expertise and value were developed through customized self-study and classroom modules. Advantage partnered with Brown Performance Group to develop modules on managing interest rate risk, capital investment or corporate valuation, funding decisions, and operating efficiency.
The decision to augment the sessions with the expertise of graduate business school professors was based on the fact that many First Union managers had earned MBAs. The bank wanted to send the message that its sales team deserved the best, and that it was willing to bring in academic experts to help them succeed.
Financial Consulting was rolled out across the entire First Union organization. Over 1,000 relationship managers, portfolio managers, and underwriters in the commercial, middle market, and corporate segments completed the program.
Participants said that the initiative was among the best training they had ever experienced. They felt that it helped them create senior-level conversations that uncovered needs for capital and corporate finance solutions and helped them leverage accounts’ revenue potential.
One manager reported that, as she began asking more strategic questions while preparing for a sales call, she discovered that the company was about to do an initial public offering. This created several opportunities for the bank. She told us, “I never would have thought to ask those questions before ‘The CEO/CFO Experience!’”
The training initiative was one of the first projects coordinated by the newly-formed First University, and its popularity helped create buy-in for the University concept. The bank’s follow-up surveys show that the initiative continues to be hugely successful. And because of First Union’s strategic repositioning approach, “bringing Wall Street to Main Street” has become a reality.
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Decision Base® helps salespeople experience how their customers think. |
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