Looking for a hero at your credit union? Look no further than your front line

Developing a sales culture in any organization can be a challenge, and it seems especially difficult for credit unions. The reasons are many and varied.  But with some simple reframing, your credit union can take the stigma out of selling and embrace a culture that makes your employees feel like heroes.

Sales cultures are – naturally – about selling. For any organization, the basic purpose of selling something is to acquire income. This just doesn’t feel right to most credit union employees. But what’s the big hairy audacious goal (BHAG) of a sales culture? Traditionally, it is to provide the right solution to the appropriate consumer at the best time.

What if it were stated differently? Reframed, the BHAG of a sales culture at a credit union should be simply “Save the member.”

Your credit union, without a doubt, offers the best products along with superior service when compared to large financial institutions. So why do members have a relationship someplace else? In most cases it’s because they have no idea they can be “saved” from that relationship. And the best way to tell them is to show them how much they would “save” (financially speaking) if they switched from a competitor’s product to the credit union.

Saving members is a heroic move. To help your staff morph into heroes, you’ll need to give them more than a cape. You will need to give them special powers –  or tools  –  to help them “save” members.

These tools look something like this:

1. X-ray vision.

How do your Member Service Reps know who needs to be saved? Provide them with a guide to help them identify members who are the best candidates for a deeper CU relationship. This guide should include information on how to quickly evaluate the member’s product and service use, credit score, payment history and the like.

2. Savings wand.

How much can you save the member? That is up to you. Provide a tool that allows the MSR to enter small bit of information (rate, term, balance) in order to calculate how much the member will save if they switch to your product and services. Include a way to calculate this over the entire life of the loan or checking account.

3. Secret switching dust.

This is where the magic of your process comes into play. How easy can you make it for your staff to help the member switch loans and checking accounts? Hopefully they can transfer products on the spot, or be given enough information to start the process with member and finish before the end of the day.

4. Council of heroes.

Give your MSRs a forum to learn and share best practices. Make the savings stories part of your weekly sales calls or meetings. Encourage staff to help other staff trouble shoot, learn effective ways to save the member more, avoid kryptonite, etc.

5. Savings mission.

Give your heroes a goal to achieve. Rather than framing this goal in terms of how much they can sell, frame it in terms of how much they can save members. Identifying measurable goals in terms of savings will help your MSR shoot for the stars.

MSRs love to help their members. Having a sales culture is not inherently at odds with the helping culture of your credit union, even though it might seem that way on the surface. Getting the right product to the appropriate member at the best time helps members save money and also saves them from other, less healthy financial relationships.

When you frame member engagement in terms of “saving” rather than “selling,” your MSRs can see themselves for what they really are: heroes. And that can make a big difference in the overall success of your credit union.