A measure of success: a Mid-West bank paved the way toward creation of a sales culture by integrating strategy with a system of tracking and monitoring.

In late 2003, Associated Banc-Corp of Green Bay, Wisc., decided to craft an integrated sales approach for its nine regions. It called the program "Achieving Excellence," which became the internal sales brand.

The bank's efforts reveal how it is possible to bring people, process and technology together to create a unified "sales performance measurement chain."

In essence, the tale is about connectivity-linking measurement to strategy.

The approach was designed to integrate consumer banking, business banking and wealth management in a total performance culture.

Measuring everything the same way

Associated Banc-Corp is a diversified multibank holding company with $15.5 billion in assets. Its atglliate is Associated Bank. The bank has more than 200 locations across Wisconsin, Illinois and Minnesota. The president is Paul S. Beideman.

Prior to the creation of "Achieving Excellence," Associated Bank used spreadsheets and public folders to track sales. Each region measured different things in different ways. "We had nine cultures," says Beideman, "and we knew that one key way to bring us to the same page was to measure sales the same way everywhere."

Eric Andringa, sales manager and Leonard Rowe, director of e-business, sought vendors to help create this continuity. "We were looking for the ability to track activities as well as outcomes," states Andringa, "and what we found in the marketplace was much more than we needed. In addition, the learning curve was too great, the implementation process too long, and the expense was much more than our anticipated return."

Andringa and Rowe used their knowledge of Internet technology and set out to create an "Achieving Excellence" website. The first active page on the site was called "eRefer." This site allows anyone in the bank to refer an opportunity to anyone else. When a referral is made, the system generates an e-mail notification. The system begins to monitor progress from the moment the referee receives the e-mail. The system tracks the number of days it takes to dispose of the referral. This allows the manager to stay current with what is in the team's referral pipeline. The referral page allows for ongoing reinforcement and coaching as well.

Prior to the development of eRefer, the bank used paper or word of mouth for referrals. Lots of things fell through the cracks, Andringa says. With the new system, people are held accountable for acting on referrals. In fact, with eRefer, it is so easy to generate referrals that "people feel compelled to look for more opportunities," he adds.

When bankers receive a referral, they know the clock begins to tick, and they are therefore more compelled to process it one way or another. Managers find it easy to look at individual and team referral reports every week, and that creates more and better coaching conversations. Regional presidents and other senior managers hold conversations regularly about referrals--thus engaging the "top of the house."

Key performance indicators

Next, the bank developed management tools to guide employees' conversations with customers, to reach out to new customers and to profile the customers' underlying financial needs--thus helping the bank to deepen customer relationships.

Sales managers received tools to aid in-group and individual coaching. One tool allows managers to have weekly, strategic one-on-one sales conversations with associates. Managers use a "check-in log" to connect one week's conversation to the next.

To evaluate its return on investment, the bank developed a list of key performance indicators of success in all areas. Each week the bank publishes where each region is, compared to goals, on a weekly, quarterly and annual basis. This allows managers to mitigate shortfalls quickly by acting where needed most. Since all results are published, different regions can communicate with each other and share success practices. This eliminates the need for each region to "reinvent the wheel."

This year, the bank conducted "Achieving Excellence" workshops in sales training and management More than 1,000 bank employees attended these sessions. Associates are now accountable for weekly routines--activities that are monitored through scorecards and leader boards. This accountability allows sales managers to create a linkage between what is done and what is sold. That knowledge helps facilitate better coaching conversations, which now can focus on which behaviors helped the employee achieve excellence on a given week and what the employee needs to do even better going forward.

Online scorecards

Finally, Andringa and Rowe built out the remainder of the website. "We wanted to be certain that what people saw on the 'Achieving Excellence' website had continuity with what was being taught in the classroom and coached in the field," Andringa commented. The consumer-banking scorecard allows each individual banker to create a daily record of the reactive and proactive sales conversations they hold. Business bankers can do the same with their sales calls. Bankers can update or initiate client profiles. They can track the number of outbound telephone calls, and many other activities. A calendar creates future follow-up dates, which pop up for the banker when the follow-up is due.

The system also allows each consumer banker to know the exact number of incentive points he or she has achieved at any point in time. (The bank uses incentive points to calculate the employee's financial reward for a successful sale. A standard number of incentive points are given, for example, for each new checking account that is opened, regardless of the amount of money contained within the account.) This immediate feedback proves an impetus for goal-driven sales associates to strive for higher performance levels.

Not only are the scorecards resident on the website, other tools are there as well. This eliminates the need for paper or for hard-copy files. When a customer enters the branch, the personal banker can pull up the customer development plan and with no more than two minutes of preparation time, the banker can craft a questioning strategy that targets not only what the customer came in for but also helps identify any additional needs he or she may have.

Bank personnel will soon be able to post success stories on the website along with the strategy that helped win the sale. These same tactics can then be tried in other regions, thus shortening the sales cycle in these other geographic areas.

On the business side, weekly pipelines are generated through the system, saving time and avoiding duplication of effort. "If it isn't on the system, it didn't happen," states Beideman. "That is helping our reluctant or technology-challenged barkers to learn how to use the system and make it work for them, versus them working for the system. This had to begin with our regional presidents and me, and we are much more adept today."

"We made the website very intuitive," says Andringa. "When new bankers come to Associated, it takes no more than 45 minutes on a Webinar to get them comfortable and up to speed quickly."

Sales management brings it all together

"The system does not change behavior, people do," says Andringa. To that end Associated has put some disciplines into place for sales managers at all levels, beginning with Beideman. The system helps coaches shorten their preparation time as it provides every piece of information they need to conduct team huddles, weekly "check-ins," observations and coaching. Managers have learned to use the measurement system to look out the windshield versus into the rear-view mirror.

"We're a long way from where we want to be," states Beideman, "but 'Achieving Excellence' and the measurement tools we have developed for our people will shorten the curve and help to get us where we want to go, The key to everything is to create linkage. I don't want my bankers to post activities on the website without seeing some corresponding results. Our focus is to do the right things right, and our managers know that it all must connect to our corporate objectives. We see 'Achieving Excellence' and the website as major catalysts toward building a performance culture."

Jack Hubbard is chairman of St. Meyer & Hubbard, Inc. of Elgin, Illinois. He serves on the faculty of the ABA's School of Bank Marketing and Management, Commercial Lending School and Stonier School of Banking. E-mail: [e-mail]; telephone: [phone].