Advancing Customer Connections

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Business Issue - One of the great challenges facing financial organizations is customer retention and profitability. How can you earn a larger share of wallet, more products per household, and customer loyalty for a significant number of years? Loyalty and expanded customer relationships are earned through the follow-up efforts of your branch staff. It is critical that sales and service associates and their managers are highly skilled at more than the "initial sale." They must be proactive in "advancing" connections with customers by following up on initial conversations to explore additional needs and to gain a picture of the customer’s overall financial situation. The BAI has reported that your best opportunity to make additional sales and solidify a relationship with a customer is within 90 days after they open an account. (2003, BAI Research Brief, "The Ninety-Day Window of Opportunity")

Omega Performance’s Solution - Advancing Customer Connections is a one-day, facilitator-led sales and service skills workshop that enables participants to follow-up with customers they already know and expand those relationships. The focus is on calling customers to follow-up on needs customers mentioned before but did not have time to discuss. Participants will learn how to confirm a follow-up meeting in that phone call. They will also practice how to conduct a robust and highly customer-centric follow-up meeting with the customer to deepen the connection, explore current and future needs, explore other financial relationships, and propose appropriate solutions. Participants also learn how to respectfully handle customer objections to follow-up meetings.

What Is Included

The one-day Advancing Customer Connections workshop features authentic activity-based learning in which participants engage in videotaped skill development. The videotaped skill development includes all of the steps in Omega's CON²ECT Customer Experience Model plus an advanced questioning strategy to explore a customer's overall financial picture. Participants first practice how to make phone calls to customers they know to confirm follow-up meetings. Then they practice the follow-up meeting, itself.

Upon completing Advancing Customer Connections, participants are able to:

Define "customer connections" and demonstrate the behaviors that deepen connections with existing customers.
Prepare for and demonstrate a confirmation call to arrange for a follow-up customer meeting to discuss changing financial needs and options.
Use planning tools to prepare to call the customer and to prepare for the follow-up meeting.
Apply Omega's Handling Objections Model when faced with customer resistance to a follow-up meeting.
Prepare for and practice a confirmation call and a follow-up customer meeting in small groups led by certified skill practice coaches. The practice session is videotaped with the skill practice coaches playing typical customers. Participants receive balanced and robust feedback about what they do well and could improve on in their follow-up customer conversations. To assist them in building their customer follow-up skills, they will use Omega's CON²ECT Customer Experience Model, and the Expanded CON²ECT Conversation Guide.
Develop an action plan for on-the-job skill application and growth.

The facilitator will require access to an LCD projector. In addition, video equipment is required.

Results You Can Expect

Advancing Customer Connections helps your staff:

Expand customer relationships that inoculate you against competitive encroachment
Increase customer satisfaction, retention, loyalty, and profitability
Improve sales results, on the individual level and the team level
Increase products per household, cross-sell ratios, and sales growth

Who Should Be Trained

Advancing Customer Connections is for your organization's sales and service associates and their managers.

Prerequisites

The prerequisite for Advancing Customer Connections is Building Customer Connections. Building Customer Connections provides the foundational skills necessary for the advanced skills covered in Advancing Customer Connections. It is advised that Advancing Customer Connections be taken no sooner than 90-180 days after Building Customer Connections.

Delivery Options

Advancing Customer Connections is a one-day workshop conducted by Omega Performance consultants. Maximum attendance is 12 participants. Leader training is also available.

Sustainment Skill Development

Advancing Customer Connections is followed in 30 to 45 days by a Skill Builder on Handling Objections. This Skill Builder includes an interactive DVD, brief exercise materials, and instructions for a manager to run the Skill Builder session, with minimal preparation for his or her sales and service associates in the field. This Skill Builder assists associates with one of their greatest challenges, handling typical customer objections to sales recommendations and to expanding the relationship.

Participants will review the Omega Performance Handling Objections Model, then identify typical customer objections they have encountered. They will practice applying the steps of the model to the objections they have identified to turn them into rapport-building opportunities. Participants will practice these skills in a recorded skill practice activity where they will share balanced feedback and ideas with each other.