2011 Best Practices Award. Sales & Service Management

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1 2011 Best Practices Award ENTRY FOR Sales & Service Management Credit Union Background Travis Credit Union (TCU) was founded in Today, as one of the leading financial institutions in California, TCU s strength lies in its faithful commitment to service, its solid, secure history, and its long standing track record for steady growth. With current assets totaling more than $1.87 billion, TCU serves more than 175,000 members and has a branch network of 22 branches in a 12 county service region. 2

2 Creating, cultivating, and sustaining a successful sales culture TCU has always valued the importance of serving its members well, which in turn means identifying and presenting products and services that will improve the members financial lives. While sales incentives for cross selling efforts date back to the mid 1990s, TCU became serious about developing a meaningful sales and service culture in 2003 when they selected a sales champion at the senior management level to lead the charge. As the vice president of sales and service was introduced, TCU solicited the services of Michael Neill and Associates out of Atlanta. The next several years were spent training, coaching and developing the TCU sales culture. Key elements were designed to support this new culture including a set of service standards entitled the Travis Credit Union Service Promises. Each of these promises is prominently posted for both members and employees to see. Above: A photo of the TCU Service Promises sign in a branch. 3

3 One of TCU s recent endeavors to enhance the sales and service culture was the development of Retail Sales Managers (RSMs) within each region of the credit union. These RSMs work in partnership with the regional operations managers to ensure the branch managers are being held accountable to the sales standards that are put in place. The RSMs work closely in the coaching process as well. To give an example of our proactive stance regarding sales and service management, most recently, Travis has partnered with CUNA Mutual and adopted their Lender Development Program (LDP) into our sales process. Pre CUNA LDP, Travis payment protection (life/disability/unemployment) which we named MVP hovered in the 17% range on eligible funded loans. With a 30% protection goals set organizationally, we knew we had our work cut out for us. Since training, coaching and developing our teams, we were able to increase that penetration 139%, protecting over 43% (in June 2011) of all eligible loans funded! Above: A graph of our payment protection from October, 2010 June, TCU is proud to have developed some of the very best sales training programs in the industry. All employees participate in several formalized programs including an initial eight hour classroom style sales champion program, which is followed up with sales to the next level courses, online training courses developed in house by a media designer, and many road shows where staff travels throughout the branch network with mini bites of sales training and reinforcement. 4

4 Above: A snapshot of a scene from an in house developed sales training video. 5

5 Integrated sales tools designed to assist staff with selling In late 2009, TCU s amazing information technology partners launched Travis Intelligence enterprise wide. It has been an overwhelming success. Employees now have a tool that enables them to assimilate organizational information and have a more holistic view of TCU s performance, as well as member portfolios, to better understand how they can provide excellent service. Breaking down the barriers between those systems and bringing the data together allows employees to spend more time analyzing versus gathering the data. Travis Intelligence gives them a tool to analyze those efforts at a very granular level and starting from a top organizational level, really drill down by region, branch, employee, or product to see where efforts are successful. A lot of time was spent internally prior to this technology in gathering that data, applying business rules somewhat inconsistently and not having a lockeddown version of the TCU environment. With the adoption of Travis Intelligence, employees now have a single version of the truth. Above: Several samples reports from Travis Intelligence 6

6 Sales coaching and incentive programs Coaching, coaching and more coaching are the essential elements of any sales and service culture and TCU takes this process very seriously. Employees at all levels deserve to know what is expected of them and leaders are expected to provide ongoing coaching on a regular basis. Retail leadership teams are required to develop coaching plans for all of their employees. These plans must be developed quarterly and submitted to the sales and operations divisions. As you can see below, expectations are detailed with goals in place for each category. Above: A snapshot of the online coaching form. TCU understands that a formalized sales and service incentive program that first reflects the goals of the organization, and second pays for itself through the results of the team, are essential. Incentive plans are very fluid in nature and change quarterly based on the changing needs of the organization. The sales incentives have both an individual and team factor included so employees not only strive to achieve individual goals, but branch goals as well. Accountability standards require that employees achieve their minimum standards each month to be successful within their positions. 7

7 Above: Examples of typical teller and financial services representative standards. Uniquely Travis Credit Union An attribute TCU believes to be critical to the success of any well defined sales and service culture is the importance of accountability standards. If employees are not accountable for their actions (or non actions), most will not see the importance in what has been developed. TCU was one of the pioneer credit unions to implement accountability standards. In some cases, this has led to employees either self identifying that they are not meant to be in a salesoriented position, or assisted leaders in managing those employees through the counseling/corrective action process. This might sound heavy handed, but TCU provides ample training, coaching, tools and time to create a fair balance. 8

8 Clear, measurable, specific goals that determine success Not only does TCU have a well defined sales incentive program in place for its retail employees, it also has a success sharing plan in which every employee participates. TCU has a philosophy within the organization: If you re not serving a member, you re serving someone who is. As you can see by the thermometers below, goals are declared organizationally and progress is tracked and posted throughout the year. Loan growth, deposits, percentage of active checking accounts, Quality Loop scores and more, are measured. TCU s success in these categories directly correlates to how the team from tellers to the CEO is financially rewarded at the end of the year. Above: A snapshot of the Intranet thermometers measuring progress against goals.. 9

9 Retail managers are also rewarded based on goals that drive the overall organization s objectives. It all has to make sense (and we think it does!) Above: An example of a branch manager s sales payout structure. The data speaks Even with the best systems and the best coaches in place, a sales culture cannot be defined as successful, if the data doesn t support your endeavors. As we continue to challenge our teams, they continue to rise to the occasion. In many of the areas that we have focused on we have not only attained our goals but have exceeded them or are trending to do so. Some to include: New Direct Members: As an organization, we have set a Year To Date goal of 5,285 New Direct Members. To date, we have opened 5,632 brand new memberships. Thanks to every employee looking for every opportunity and asking for the business, we have been able to reach 107% of our New Membership goal, to date. 10

10 Household Active Checking: We are very aware of the fact that we not only need to grow our number of new memberships but also the value of growing organically by gaining more wallet share of our existing members, we have set a corporate goal of 49% of Households with Active checking accounts. We have seen this grow from 46.66% to 48.64% over the last six months. Based on our current rate of growth, we are trending to exceed our goal by the end of the year and reach 50.62%. Summary There are so many ways to interpret the success of a sales and service culture. TCU sees itself in an evolutionary process where employees continue to stretch themselves to new heights and look for better ways to help our members improve their financial lives. Many individuals and 11

11 departments have been instrumental throughout this process and I would be remised if I did not give credit where credit is due! As you can see, Travis Credit Union is a leader in the area of Sales and Service Management and we are all very proud of our achievements over the past several years. We thank the selection committee for its consideration of our nomination and hope you ve enjoyed reading it! 12