Redefining success in a credit union sales culture

Credit Unions everywhere are looking to instill a sales culture while protecting the member service excellence that differentiates us as an industry. For credit unions looking for increased sales, I suggest developing comprehensive metrics that measure the successes of your front line employees to ensure they are providing superior member service through offering your organization’s full suite of products.

Over the last six months, we have transitioned to a new way of measuring the success of our member-facing employees. With 32 branches and almost 300 front line employees, change can be difficult.  However, I can see behaviors transforming, leading to greater service to our members and increasing share of wallet. In February of this year we launched the Circle of Excellence (COE) program which is a recognition program for our branch employees. The project started out with a simple survey to employees asking, “How do you want to be rewarded?” and “What metrics do you want to be measured by?”. From that point, began the process of building comprehensive ranking systems measuring several products and services for which each type of employee is responsible for presenting. The purpose of the system is to identify and recognize top performers, most improved, and top rookies in the branch network while also identifying employees who require more training or motivation.

Each job title has its own ranking system in which the employee’s individual performance is measured to all other employees in the same role. For example, in addition to superior member service, tellers have responsibilities for both accuracy and cross-sells. Their weighted ranking system is balanced to ensure they are focused on both. A couple of metrics used in their comprehensive weighted ranking is outages and cross-sells per transaction. This is an example of the balance the ranking system provides to measure behaviors and numbers. A Loan Officer or Financial Services Officer has metrics such as loan volume and loan accuracy striking a balance between sales with compliance. In all, each job role has 10-15 metrics in which they are measured. All are weighted differently depending on the importance to the membership and organization. The Branch Manager’s ranking system is a compilation of all employees that report to them.

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