The Learning & Development (L&D) team provides value to ESL Federal Credit Union through an array of traditional, blended, and online offerings, including a comprehensive sales training curriculum for new hires on the front line. ESL’s Discovering and Satisfying Member Needs (DSMN) workshop has proven particularly valuable to the organization in developing effective sales skills in new tellers and tele-bankers, preparing them for advancement opportunities and achieving sales production goals.
Program Details
After completing their initial two weeks of instructor-led teller training, participants continue their learning experience with two weeks of on-the-job mentoring alongside an experienced, successful colleague on their Branch or Contact Center team. Then they augment their product knowledge and operational skills in the blended Banking Boot Camp program. After completing these elements, new hires complete the four-part DSMN workshop.
- Part 1 is a pre-work activity in which each participant and a classmate research one component of the five-phase ESL Sales Process and present their findings in Part 2.
- Part 2—a one-day classroom workshop—enables participants to present their findings about their assigned phase in a teach-back format to educate fellow classmates. Classmates and the L&D instructor ask questions to help participants gain mastery on all five phases of the sales process.
- In Part 3, participants apply all they have learned over the last several months in a series of one-to-one skill practices that emulate the real world. Each member of the L&D team poses as a customer with a series of transactions and questions in an environment that simulates their actual workspace. Each teller and tele-banker must not only exhibit his or her product and operational/transactional knowledge, he or she also must demonstrate the skills associated with the five phases of the ESL Sales Process. The L&D team then provides on-the-spot feedback to each participant following his or her skill practice.
- Finally, in Part 4, participants are paired with a classmate who serves as an accountability partner, sharing challenges, successes, and best practices.
Results
L&D evaluates the impact of the DSMN workshop using various Kirkpatrick Level 3 and Level 4 measures. For example:
- Managers use Behavior Grids to objectively assess their direct reports’ level of performance/behavior change each week using a set of criteria for specific behaviors tied to the five phases in the ESL Sales Process. After one DSMN workshop last year, the Behavior Grids (a mix of Level 3 and Level 4 data) revealed the total number of sales for these individuals increased 48.76 percent.
- The knowledge and skills developed and practiced in DSMN also contribute to three key measures on ESL’s Corporate Scorecard: its 20.4 percent Primary Financial Institution (PFI) Market Share (rolling four quarters, the highest PFI in ESL’s market) and 33.4 percent Share of Wallet for loans and 56 percent for deposits year to date in 2017. Moreover, the organization’s revenue grew by 10 percent year over year.
