Tellers refer...which is quite different from selling the actually product. One wouldn't expect a teller's referrals to result in 100% sales, so we shouldn't expect them to be 100% commission. They do have their teller job to do as well.

Competition is stiff for "those great sales jobs" so I'd guess the word has gotten out. You may not see it at your bank, but you're obviously not paying folks to be sales oriented. At the shops where it is a habit, and pay is equal to their efforts (yes commission) competition is very stiff for a great sales job. Word gets around and it's always clear who's paying the big bucks in the market.

I feel like I'm on one of the talk shows where nothing gets settled, but thanks for the intersecting dialogue.

All the talk on sales by operations staff using a pitch at the teller window is a real superficial shotgun approach.

I don't see any mention of doing some research of the information the bank has about a customer and targeting specific customers for specific products or services. This is a great tool for backroom people that don't have the same face time with customers as teller do

I.E.What about developing a profile of customers that use a specific product. Find out what user commonalities are and target other customers who appear to have the same characteristics. Operations staff are in a position to observe habit patterns that can open opportunities to sell.

Just handing the latest sales pitch out and expecting staff to sell it is not efficient. Someone has to do some prep work and present the staff with information that will allow them to succeed.

Banks pay out the incentives but does anybody ever go back and check 90 days later to measure how many of the sales made and are still active accounts and are generating the income for which the incentive was paid?

Don:
You possibly already know that customer profiling is done at the cutting edge banks with software used that pulls up a specific product to sell/mention to the customer based on the profile. And that's the point, without the "planning" the result is a shotgun approach and few banks are willing to incorporate the tools necessary to assist tellers, and others, to narrow the product offering to something that is viable at the customer level. Of course, there are always a few staffers that do well regardless of the lack of planning, but those people are few, at best.

For that repeated question Yes some are. While I was with a large bank they had campaigns specific to the back room. Many sales were generated, but never with the level of success of external staff campaigns. I don't believe they've done one for a few years now (from gossip with friends who are still there...the silly fools)

Cowboy -

Our bank's motto for selling is "behavior that gets rewarded gets repeated."

Although we do not have any requirements for our ops staff to sell, we do offer incentives to all bank employees. We call it a bonus account. Each employee gets a monthly statement of their bonus account. Every item we have has an incentive tied to it like $1 for a check card referral and $20 for a mortgage referral. They get the proceeds of their bonus account shortly before xmas. We also do "pats on the back" at our monthly all-employee sales meeting. For some people, recognition is equally or more important than money.

Almost all of our operations staff has some money in their bonus account. I think ops staff should definitely be included in promotions and the selling effort. They just may surprise you!

Training, planning and adequate compensation are all part of the sales culture package in banking. Sales in our environment is possible, if you understand it is providing customer service. I completely agree with D. I've been in both scenarios, the agressive sales focus and the traditional non-sales company in transition to becoming more retail oriented.

If you do not increase relationships with customers how do you grow your bank?? If you are not generating deposits, how are you funding loans? Are you content letting the "big boys" have market share? Do you think an ad in the local paper with this weeks CD rates is enough to see results? Only if you want habitual shoppers.

If tellers are not looking for at least the minimum sales of ATM cards, online banking, credit cards, checking acounts for savings only customers on a daily basis, who else will? How hard is it to ask "Have you taken advantage of the great loan rates yet?" That is pretty easy to do in the drive thru. Everyone knows the more relationships a customer has with you, the harder it will be for them to leave, right?

In any financial institution a teller has the most contact with the customer. Who better to look for opportunity? Who better to pay for the efforts?