Reducing complexity in sales

Sales in banks and savings banks has changed considerably over the past few years and decades.

The following should be mentioned as examples, but not conclusively:

• The number of goals and target dimensions that must be (ob)served have increased significantly. There are some goals that contradict each other or at least partially (e.g. margin expansion in lending business with simultaneous equity protection or reduction)
• In addition, the variety of products – and by that I mean both the number of different products and the possible product variants – has increased considerably
• The administrative requirements at the sales workplaces, which are not directly (indirectly, of course!) related to the processing of sold products, have also increased enormously, often packaged in the „killer argument“ that these are regulatory requirements ( including AML, KYC).

In many cases, the consultants (or relationship managers) have the impression that they are more or less left alone with this balancing act. Each of us knows slogans such as “Do one thing without leaving the other!” The increased overall complexity of the organization is reflected more or less unfiltered on the workplaces in sales – at the same time, expectations and pressure increased with regard to quantitative target achievement.

(The addition of a guiding principle that sees the employee as an independent entrepreneur in the company does not really contribute to clarity and orientation for the individual employees in this context.)

Under such framework conditions, managers should not complain that they are not having any effect, because they often do not provide the employees with any directional impulses but merely pose an additional requirement or task in their perception, which further increases the bouquet of complexity.

It is this complexity that means that the company – the bank or savings bank – turns around slowly like an oil tanker.

An important contribution to counteracting this lies in a sales management-team.

This unit is also part of sales and has the particular task of further developing the sales strategy (together with sales) and then, above all, of operationalizing this strategy.

In this way, the goals and activities are prioritized, attention is focused on the next necessary steps and the necessary topics are focused and consolidated via the sales management concept. In this way, sales management makes an essential and critical contribution to controlling sales.

However, sales management as a whole is a control instrument and leaves responsibility where it originally belongs. However, the sales management also uses its own controlling impulses and tools where the agreed rules of the game – or the agreed framework – threaten to be abandoned.

If the sales management is set up correctly, then the complexity of the organization stays where it belongs – and conversely, this means less complexity in the sales workplaces, and thus more clout and more active sales time.