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Cien’s Growth Essentials Series: Improving Commercial Banking Team Performance

By Joanna Ridgway, SVP Global Sales, Cien.ai

“As a former banking executive with two decades of corporate and commercial banking experience, I know how critical data-driven coaching is to align sales teams and meet objectives.”

– Joanna Ridgway, SVP Global Sales

How do you Coach and Manage Successful Commercial Banking Team?

While the nomenclature and some of the challenges are unique to the financial services industry, many other common problems remain the same for Commercial Banking Team, compared to other sales organizations. This article outlines how we are thinking about those challenges and potential solutions.

Common Challenges for Commercial Banking Teams

A sustained high-interest rate environment and fierce competition for credit worthy clients with attractive ancillary profiles have driven further pressure on Bank margins.  Commercial banking teams must win new clients and increase share of wallet in an increasingly competitive market. While many leading banks have sophisticated sales enablement executives and teams analyzing RM, Team and cross-sell performance, a consistent challenge remains – messy CRM data and lack of resources to adequately gain useful insights from that data.  As a former banking executive with two decades of corporate and commercial banking experience, I know how critical data-driven coaching is to align sales teams and meet objectives.  

Driving Consultative Selling Behaviors

Banks that consistently meet growth objectives are training and guiding bankers and product partners on effective consultative selling behaviors, segmenting market and sales teams for success, and quickly identifying the companies and segments where their products and approach resonate (often using AI-driven propensity models).  In a competitive banking environment, clients are always price sensitive, so a comprehensive analysis of pricing and cross-sell potential is also critical during annual Treasury Exception Pricing exercises. 

What Does Success Look Like?

Well, for companies Cien.ai supports, the answer is easy: A clear view of the sales motion is only possible with a clean and standardized data set. Once you have that, the next steps are:

  • GTM friction points have been identified and an action plan to address them has been put in place.
  • A new combined GTM plan has been formulated that considers overlap and cross-selling.
  • Teams and leadership have been evaluated for strengths and weaknesses.
  • A new team structure and hiring plan that acknowledges the new strategy has been developed.

About the Cien.ai Growth Essentials Series

This article is part of our Growth Essentials Series, inspired by our work with B2B business leaders, growth consultants, and PE operating partners. These articles focus on the non-technical aspects of improving GTM performance. If you want to dig in on the technical details of how to measure the concepts we use here, please refer to our “Practical RevOps Analytics Series”.