A community bank had previously taught sales training to their tellers and other banking personnel but the sales training program was perceived as a pushy approach and did not succeed. The bank still needed to upgrade the sales capabilities of the entire organization, but had to overcome the apprehension and resistance that the sales training workshop had created with the employees.
Sales Training Needs Assessment
Peak Selling consulted with the training department and the SVP for Sales, during which they described the issues created by the pushy sales training program. In addition, they said that they wanted to teach the sales training program themselves to make the participants more comfortable with the instructor. Finally, they said that they were interested in ways to teach the concepts to new employees who joined the bank after the initial training was finished.
Sales Training Solution
Peak Selling designed a customized Needs Based Selling Workshop for the tellers and bank personnel, and then prepared an extensive train-the-trainer workshop for the bank’s instructors, none of whom had taught this type of program before. The trainer training taught them how to teach the sales training program, and also provided them ample opportunities to provide many bank-relevant examples. We taught the initial train-the-trainer sessions, which were divided into three 1-day events, and then consulted 1-on-1 with each instructor when that particular instructor was about to teach the sales training workshop for the first time.
The results of the initial Needs Based Selling Workshop were outstanding. The trainers received the highest possible workshop evaluation scores from 94% of the attendees. From a business standpoint, the referral rate increased by 50% and the amount of new core deposit accounts opened increased by 20%.